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Lost in Transition

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Though most of us in collegiate ministry have heard the term emerging adulthood, not everyone has considered the social cost of delaying adulthood.  In Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Dr. Christian Smith uses sociological evidence conducted through surveys and interviews to show us the dark side.  And it is dark.  Centered around five chapters, the book provides an inside view of the attitudes, thoughts, and actions of emerging adults aged 18-23, roughly the tradition college age.

Emerging adulthood, a term coined first by psychologist Jeffery Arnett, describes a social transition which occurred after World War II.   First, due to the GI Bill and more emphasis on education, more students were able to go to college rather than go straight into a job.  Secondly, from 1950 to 2006 the median age of first marriage for women rose from 22.8 to 25.9 years.  Thirdly, due to global pressure, economic stability changed causing many young adults to not be able to enter into long-term careers right out of high school or college.   Fourthly, due to the factors listed so far, many parents made choices to continue to support their children well into their twenties and even early thirties as they attempt to have stable, adult lives.  Fifthly, the wide-spread use of birth control made it easy for young adults to have sexual relations apart from marriage and procreation.  Finally, according to Dr. Smith, during the 1980s and 1990s American collegiate culture began to promote poststructuralism and postmodernism which eventually moved into the mainstream of the culture where it morphed into individualistic subjectivism and moral relativism.

While emerging adulthood has allowed more access to education, travel, and experimentation in careers, it has also come with a price.  According to Dr. Smith there are five major problems which are taking a toll on these young adults.   The changing social conditions have led to problems that Dr. Smith documents in chapters entitled: Morally Adrift; Captive to Consumerism; Intoxication’s “Fake Feeling of Happiness”; The Shadow Side of Sexual Liberation; and Civic and Political Disengagement.

While I cannot go into detail about every chapter, I will give some highlights on the major points of each one.

Morally Adrift

  • Sixty percent of emerging adults express a highly individualistic approach to morality. For them morality is a personal choice, entirely a matter of individual decision.
  • Thirty percent expressed a belief in strong moral relativism.
  • Thirty-four percent expressed not knowing what makes something morally right or wrong.

Captive to Consumerism

  • Most emerging adults are perfectly happy with mass consumerism.
  • Those who do question the patterns of always buy more and more stuff often see it as a problem of other people.
  • Many emerging adults have come to see college as just another “product” to buy bought and consumed in order to make more money.
  • Most have embraced a notion of the “good life” in financial terms.

Intoxication’s “Fake Feeling of Happiness”

  • Of the 78 percent of EA who drink alcohol, 60 percent reported binge drinking at least once in the previous two weeks.
  • Twelve percent of EA surveyed reported smoking marijuana either once a week, a few times a week, daily, or more often.
  • There is a sharp rise in those who drink and use drugs from the 13 to 23 demographics.
  • Twenty-two percent were called “partiers” by Dr. Smith’s research group. These are EA who drink regularly, and often binge drink.
  • Four percent of those 23 or younger were already recovered addicts.

The Shadow Side of Sexual Liberation

  • The typical never-married American EA has had an average (median) of 3 sexual intercourse partners. In short, the vast majority of never-married EA ages 18-23 have been physically intimate with at least one other person.  The typical one started at age 16.  And half of the sexually initiated have had a good deal of sexual experience with more than one or two partners.
  • Smith concludes the chapter thus: “not far beneath the surface appearance of happy, liberated emerging adult sexual adventure and pleasure lies a world of hurt, insecurity, confusion, inequality, shame, and regret.

Civic and Political Disengagement

  • The largest group (27%) of EA were apathetic to politics. The genuinely political were the smallest group (4%).
  • Smith sees most of the “Obama bump” from emerging adults to have worn off. He sees no evidence that the current cohort of emerging adults (snapshot in 2011) will be more involved than Millennials or Gen X.
  • Smith attributes this lack of involvement due to several factors: mass consumerism; moral confusion and disorientation; individualistic relativism; and technological submersion in interpersonal relationships in private settings.

 

This book is worth a read even if it is almost seven years old now.  If you would like to know more about emerging adulthood, read my review of two other books on the topic.

For more on the topic of civic virture and its decline, read my review of Ben Sasse’s book The Vanishing American Adult.

 

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Lost in Transition Part 2: Mass Consumerism

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Having lived through yet another Black Friday (the local radio station called it the “Black Friday Holiday”), I think it is an appropriate time to move on to Chapter 2 of Christian Smith’s Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood.  Chapter 2  is, appropriately,  about mass consumerism:  it is actually entitled “Captive to Consumerism.”  Frankly, this was an issue that I was not expecting.  But after reading Dr. Smith’s chapter, it makes sense.  Dr. Smith’s team set out to find what do emerging adults (aged 18-23) think about all the seemingly endless products, services, and “stuff” that is available for purchase.  Are there any dilemmas connected with a consumerist lifestyle?  What he found is that most are either positive or neutral about mass consumerism, and few express doubts.

Perfectly Happy

According to Dr. Smith, “Contemporary emerging adults are either true believers or complacent conformists when it comes to mass consumerism.  Most like shopping and buying things.  Most enjoy consuming products and services.  It is the way of life with which they are familiar and content.”  This group is sixty-one percent of emerging adults.

Inconsequential Concerns

Thirty percent of those interviewed did express concerns, but thought they could do nothing to change the situation.  For them, “mass consumerism remains in place and their lives remain unchanged.”  In this group, the problem of mass consumerism was often thought of as “the problem of other people.”

What is the purpose of a good education?

Having explained how so many emerging adults are “bought in” to a consumerist culture, Dr. Smith then offers an aside on what is the purpose of education.  And it’s a good question.  Having just shown that most emerging adults are fine with mass consumerism, we quickly find out that for most students a college education is nothing more than a ticket to better jobs, for money, for mass consumption.

What happened to education for the life of the mind, and soul craft?  It seems to be gone.  And this is a problem.  For one thing, more and more students are going into debt on hopes of a great job after graduation, only to end up deep in debt when they leave school.  Secondly, for a democracy to flourish, it must have an educated population that values civic virtue, a common culture, and understands where the nation has come from.  When one is looking at college as mostly an investment in making money, much of these important values are lost.

What is a good life?

But Dr. Smith is not finished with asking what is the purpose of education.  He goes on to ask what is a good life?  And it is a great question to work in with this chapter.  Is this all that life is about?  Amassing goods and enjoying services?

According to Dr. Smith, “when asked about a good life broadly conceived and what they wanted to achieve in life, the ideas of material success, financial stability, not having to worry about money, being successful in work, being able to provide for the family, and having money to spend on valuable experiences were expressed again as significant themes in the majority of their answers.”  Though sixty percent did bring up having kids, relationships, and stable marriages, most of these answers were also mixed in with talk about material success.  Only nine percent mentioned God, or some value related to religion.

Conclusion

In finishing the chapter, Dr. Smith pushes back about anyone thinking that the “next generation” is going to be alternative thinkers who care about environmentalism or question consumption (but remember this is a snapshot from 2011).  He sees a generation that is out to make money, sees no problem in spending any way it wishes, and is not concerned about deeper questions about the purpose of education or life.

Application

For those of us working with college students (emerging adults), I think that this chapter raises a lot of good questions to pose to students.  If the general culture or the educational institutes are not asking students to ponder the purpose of education or a good life, then it certainly is up to college ministers, lay people in the church, and pastors.  Of course, we can’t replace college teachers and the college culture, but we can help guide students to thinking beyond just getting a degree, making money, and dying with the most toys.

If you are interested in thinking about good books, the purpose of education, and what is a good life, check out my review of Senator Ben Sasse’s book The Vanishing American Adult.

Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

 

Why You Should Read The Benedict Option

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Rod Dreher is not an academic.  He has no Ph.D. and does not teach at a university.  Yet, he is able to take complex concepts of philosophy, sociology, history, etc. and explain them in ways that most people can grasp.  He is also not a priest, pastor, or leader of a parachurch organization.  Yet he writes and speaks as a layman with true spiritual depth.  He shares his own struggles, faith, faults, and victories with a transparency and sincerity that we can resonate with.  You would actually like to sit down with him and talk about life.  And this is one of the great things about The Benedict Option:  A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, it is not coming from an academic or denominational leader:  it is coming from the ground up.  And for the Benedict Option to work, that is exactly what is needed to get it going.

Of course, the success of the Benedict Option is also due to its timing.  Though Rod alluded to the Benedict Option ten years ago in his book Crunchy Cons, I don’t know if most Christians would have been ready.  Anyone who read Lesslie Newbingin 40 years ago, or Missional Church almost 20 years go will know the diagnosis of the decline of Christianity in the United States, but during these ten years since Rod mentioned the need for a new Benedict, so much has happened.  The Millennial generation has shifted to the left on social norms and politics, marginal issues like same-sex marriage and transgender rights have become new norms, businesses have become arbiters of family values, sports is a tool for cultural enforcement, and what was once considered out-of-control political correctness on our campuses is now ubiquitous.  I don’t need an academic to explain it to me, I see it everyday.

But there are other forces at work too. Technology like the internet and cell phones have brought us amazing amounts of information, but the ability to literally spend our whole lives on pointless trivia.  The “authentic self” that philosopher Charles Taylor wrote of in his masterpiece The Secular Age, reached its apogee in Caitlyn and Bruce Jenner.  Bruce Jenner, a Cold War hero to us in Generation X, became a cause celeb to Generation Z as Caitlyn Jenner.  Transpose that Wheaties picture of Bruce in 1976, winner of the Olympic decathlon and “world’s greatest athlete” with Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair, and you see trajectory of where we are headed as a nation.

As Christians we did not want to believe the academics.  Developing as a nation under the canopy of our country as a “city on a hill” from John Winthrop’s sermon A Model of Christian Charity, we always told ourselves we could “go back” to ideal times.  Revivals did help, and many truly believed that with the right focus on the right segments of society, we could still transform the culture.   But we finally find ourselves “strangers in a strange land” to steal a line from Robert Heinlein.  Continue reading →

Steps to Cross-Cultural Servanthood

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We know that Jesus came to serve and not be served.  His example sets a high standard for us to follow.  We all should be servants in some way.   But let’s face it, when it comes right down to it, we often are commanding servants, well-meaning but blind servants, or perhaps befuddled servants.  This is especially true in cross-cultural situations.  Often the way we serve is geared to our own culture and may not be appropriate in another culture.  The way we help might be confusing or frustrating to those we are trying to help.  According to a study cited by Dr.  Duane Elmer, 76% of missionaries are of a “duty bound” personality type.  This means they are interested in getting things done and transmitting communication.  They are not that good at receiving information or being sensitive to their hearers.  Think about that.  Those who have the drive to get something done, are often the least likely to listen to those they are trying to help.

Thankfully, Duane Elmer’s book Cross-Cultural Servanthood helps us layout stepping-stones to create a path to appropriate servanthood.  Though written for those who are going to be living in another culture, I have used his steps to help train volunteers here in the U.S. working with international students.  I think your training and ministry experience will be greatly improved by walking his path.

So what are the stepping-stones that lay out a path to culturally appropriate servanthood?   Dr. Elmer lists six overall steps:  openness, acceptance, trust, learning, understanding, and serving.

Here is his layout of the steps.

Openness is the ability to welcome people into your presence and make them feel safe.

Acceptance is the ability to communicate value, worth and esteem to another person.

Trust is the ability to build confidence in a relationship so that both parties believe the other will not intentionally hurt them but will act in their best interest.

Learning is the ability to glean relevant information about, from, and with other people.

Understanding is the ability to see patterns of behavior and values that reveal the integrity of a people.

Serving is the ability to relate to people in such a way that their dignity as human beings is affirmed and that they are more empowered to live God-glorifying lives.

Each definition includes the word “ability.”  An ability, according to Dr. Elmer, is “something we can do, do better and even master.”  And that’s good because we all need to to improve, especially when we are in a cross-cultural ministry.

Each one of these steps has much to offer us in improving our ability to serve cross-culturally, but I only have space to focus on the first two which are needed to begin the journey.

When I was heading up a ministry focused on ministering to international students one of my major frustrations was finding volunteers (both students and non-students) who were “open” to spending time with international students.  Many people were good at making meals, giving money, or verbally supporting what I was doing.  But it was often hard to get people to actually get in the trenches, so to speak, and do the hard work of cross-cultural relationships.  But after reading Dr. Elmer’s chapter on “Openness,” I understand that many people, even while wanting to serve, are not able to be effective due to a limited ability to be open.

According to Dr. Elmer, several skills are needed to be open.  These skills are:  suspending judgment, tolerance for ambiguity, thinking gray, and positive attribution.  To sum these skills up, perhaps we should say that we need more cultural mental “margin” in how we think about others.  Perhaps things will not make sense in the beginning, but with time we will come to see the patterns that do make sense in the lives of others.  By not writing someone off early in the relationship due to miscommunication, unexpected behavior, or prejudice, we remain open for more understanding and those long-expected “aha” moments.  Being open to those who are not like us is the gate to cross-cultural servanthood.

What I like about the chapter on “acceptance” is how he describes obstacles that prevent us from accepting others.  He lists five:  language, impatience, ethnocentrism, category width, and dogmatism.  Each of these obstacles have impact on our ministry to people from other cultures, but one that really interested me was “category width.”  Narrow category width people don’t have as many categories for classifying experiences.  Thus when they experience something that seems culturally “different” they may just place it in the “wrong” category.  This person, this situation, this behavior is “wrong,” so I need to move on.    For those with “wide category width” they are able to create new categories for “cultural differences.” You can see how having “narrow category width” sets up conflict between missionaries/servants and those they wish to help.

So how does Dr. Elmer’s steps help us become better servants?  Discovering, learning about, and processing these obstacles is a great training exercise to improve one’s ability to be a better servant.  Reading through the list of steps and then asking yourself or team questions about how they relate to your ministry will bring out issues you most likely have not thought about.

  • Do you care if your team is building trust with those you are serving?  Or do you “serve” from a position of power?
  • Do you want to learn from those whom you serve?  Or do you just want to teach them?
  • Do you see integrity and value in the culture of those you minister to, or do you just want to change them?
  • Is your serving affirming their dignity and empowering them to live God-glorifying lives?

I could go on and on with the questions, but I think you are getting an idea of how you will be challenged yet encouraged by reading Dr. Elmer’s book.  Doing cross-cultural ministry can be an exciting, spiritually rewarding ministry.  It can also be a frustrating and draining ministry.  But the good news about working with young student volunteers is that you can begin bringing up these issues and improving skills before natural tendencies that make cross-cultural ministry difficult get deeply ingrained in them.  Start laying out your steps for this very important journey.

Five Disruptions That Could Shake UP College Ministry

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IMG_3099In his 2011 book, College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture,  author Stephen Lutz listed five trends that could shake up college ministry as we know it.  I love looking forward at coming trends, but also backwards later to see where predictions were correct or off point.  Lutz’s book is about half way through the ten year span that he forecast from, so now is a great time to look back.  By the way, he did a great job in picking out these five topics.  If you have not read his book.  You should.  Here are the five possible disruptions in no particular order of importance.

The Higher Education Bubble Will Burst

The rapid growth of Higher Ed was built on the largest cohort of college students ever, plus years of low-interest rate student loans.  But that was before the Great Recession.  With tuition costs at an all-time high, and loan obligations stretching out  longer, people are increasingly wondering if college is worth it.  Institutions themselves are overextended and making cuts.  The system as we know it may not be sustainable for much longer  p. 172

 Five year laters there seems to be no large-scale drop in enrollment of students.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 20.2 million students expected to attend college in the fall of 2015.  This is up 4.9 million from 2000.  Though the 20.2 million is slightly down from its 2010 high, it does not seem crippling.  See the data here.  But we still have five years to go.  Can cost still go higher?  Will a flight to community colleges cripple some colleges?  We will see.

Technology Will Distance, Disperse, and Depersonalize Connection to Students

The rise of online learning is a profitable boon for Higher Ed, but it’s not an unmixed blessing.  The lower cost and easy accessibility of online higher education make gaining a college degree easier for older students with families or those who can’t afford living and learning on campus.  But among other things, online students miss out on gathering as a group in a classroom, learning not only from their professors but from their peers.  p. 173

Since students will not be spending as much time on campus, it will be harder to meet them, round them up and expect to minister to them in large groups.  Instead Lutz sees campus ministry having to go outward and smaller to reach people.

More

The future of all campus ministry may look like what’s happening at community colleges around the country–large but disjointed student bodies, moving targets that are exceedingly difficult to reach.  p. 174

This is, perhaps, the hardest to verify in numbers, but we know it is happening.  More and more campuses are integrating distance learning with online classes and online tests and homework.  Students are able to have a more flexible schedule, but it also shows the fractured lifestyles that we all live now.

Non-Traditional Student Will Become More Traditional

I can say with certainty that on this one Lutz was right on.  In researching for Generation Z and North American trends, I can see the non-traditional student becoming more traditional.  Lutz sees more of these types of students:  older, part-time, more females than males, and a huge change in the demographics of students.

In addition to non-traditional students, we’ll also need to adapt our methodologies to appeal to students of differing ethnic and racial backgrounds and cultures.  Many college settings remain overwhelmingly white, but as the demographics of North American continue to shift toward a majority of minorities, Higher Ed is following suit.  p.175

In July of 2015 a U.S. and World Report article came out declaring the younger than five demographic to be more than 50 percent minority.  It also pointed out the huge growth in multi-racial marriages and the children that are being born to this age group.  See the article here.  Generation Z is now entering college, and will be the most diverse generation in US history.

Combining with technology, transferable credit, and huge cost increases, more and more students will look at crafting their own academic learning paths that may pull from multiple campuses, and learning venues.

The elephant in the room for many ministries will be reaching an ever-growing minority demographic.  Churches, campus ministries, and para-church groups will have to reach minority groups, and transition leadership to those groups to make any lasting impact.  It’s going to be disrupting to many groups, but for those who get it, it will lead to more students reached on the campus.  It didn’t take ten years to prove him right on this one.

College Ministers May Face Diminished Access to Secular Campuses

In 2010 the campus ministry community was reeling from the Hastings case, the Supreme Court case that allowed the Hastings Law School to restrict clubs on campus from excluding members, even those who disagreed with the club on matters of religion and policy.  What followed the ruling was the decision by the California state university system to not recognize numerous Christian clubs for excluding those who did not hold to their doctrinal beliefs.  Later, the California university system walked back from that policy.  However, in many ways, that drama was overshadowed by the Obergefell case which finally legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States.  That case was quickly followed by lawsuits, issues relating to transgender rights, and a recent bill in the California senate which would allow homosexual students to sue religious colleges and universities for discrimination.

From Bilola University

The provisions of the proposed bill represent a dramatic narrowing of religious freedom in California. It would mean faith-based institutions would no longer be able to determine for themselves the scope of their religious convictions as applied in student conduct policies, housing and restroom/locker facilities, and other matters of religious expression and practical campus life. Though the free exercise of religion is guaranteed by both the U.S. and California Constitutions, SB 1146 would make religious institutions like Biola vulnerable to anti-discrimination lawsuits and unprecedented government policing.

Even though the state senator who introduced SB 1146, decided to pull the bill, we should still be concerned that the bill got as far as it did.  In fact, he has hinted that he could possibly reintroduce the bill at a future time.

In looking at these situations and the general trend, Lutz’s speculation seems entirely possible.

Eventually, many more campus ministries may have to figure out how to function without full university recognition or legal sanction. . . . We ought to be working on navigating the coming challenges with grace and humility, adding value and generally seek to bless our campuses, and planning the future model of our ministry in the event that we have to go “underground.” p.176

He is right on this point, but the question is do enough churches, campus ministries, and Christians grasp this point?  Looking forward, it seems that the fallout of Obergefell and a tendency to restrict religious liberty will continue, and will affecting Christians on campus tremendously.

What is your ministry doing to prepare in case it cannot retain its RSO status?

Financial Sustainability Will Be Challenged

The next ten years will likely mark a significant decrease in the North American base of ministry funding, as approximately 100,000 churches will disappear.  The world War II generation will be gone, and the Baby Boomers (now at the peak of their earning power) will transition from giving to organizations like ours to receiving Social Security, Medicare, and the like on reduced incomes.  p. 176

He hit it right on.  Though we are only five years from the book’s publication, we have seen the International Mission Board of the largest Protestant denomination pull back hundreds of missionaries from the field, and other data that tends to show a demographic tsunami which will affect church patterns shortly.

In his book, The Great Evangelical Recession (published in 2013, two years after Lutz’s book) John Dickerson echoes Lutz in his concern over future giving in a chapter entitled “Bankrupt.”  Looking at stats from the SBC, there were mixed results in the 2015 report.  Numbers for members and baptisms were down slightly, but giving was up slightly.  But we still have five more years to go. Of course these are stats from just one denomination. What exactly will happen?  We do not know,  but those doing collegiate ministry would be wise to start thinking out of the box to figure out how to grow staff who can generate income through support raising, or bivocational ministry.

I hope after reading about these five possible disruptions you will be encouraged to pick up a copy of College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture, and think about how you do college ministry, and what you need to do to get ready for the next five years.  You will be challenged.

Hear Steve talk about these five disruptions as he talks with me in the No Campus Left Podcast