A Theory of Young Adult Ministry

Note that anything I put up here comes from the very limited framework of my own experience. That said, I hope there are some thoughts worth putting out to the world for discussion.

We tried to have a Young Adults ministry a couple years ago at my church. A friend of mine and I as his trusty sidekick were behind just about everything that happened, and we watched it start out, grow suddenly huge, and then slowly waste away.

I have been involved with my own age group in a teaching ministry of one sort or another since I was about 19, and only in the last year or so did that go away, and I have had time to reflect from the outside on the successes and the failures that we faced.

It goes without saying that desire is crucial, but many people mistake desire for ability and people are placed in situations set up for failure because they don't know how to go about it. Even so, I still place prayer and dependence on God as the crucial framework for any ministry, to young adults or otherwise. But said dependence involves being willing to stop or change when needed, and it is in that willingness that I personally think I failed.

But on to theory. In my mind, Young Adults is a term that can be applied to people from 20 - 35 or so. The specific ages are very flexible, and the group is best defined not by the number of years under someone's belt, but by whether a person feels like they belong. This is, in fact, the first major distinction of this group. Whereas Children's Ministries, Youth Groups and College Groups are defined almost exclusively by age, Young Adults transition not on a birthday or a graduation date, but by a sense of identification - when they realize that they have somehow, almost by surprise, become adults, and they don't have quite as much in common with the college freshman as they once did. They have different perspectives, different life situations, different goals. When does someone move from being a Young Adult to being an Adult? I'll let you know when I get there. I am only 26, working hard on 27, and am still on the way.

Within the broad group of "Young Adults" there can be defined three very distinct groups, all of which have many vital things in common, but each of which has very specific needs that need to be addressed. There are the Young Marrieds, the Old College People, and the Young Singles.

Old College People are those who are in their early twenties and are looking seriously at the life ahead of them. The security of the established systems they have grown up in - both in education and in church are about to pass away, and they are wondering what comes next. I had no idea what was next. I had always learned that you went through the Youth group not dating, because you were not yet ready to make such a commitment, you went to College and got married, then graduated and had a family and career. I was almost frozen with fear as I approached the end of college without ever having even dated someone. Suddenly, fully half of the future I had always expected had not materialized. My gut reaction lined up nicely with advice that I got - continue going to school. Go to seminary - lots of women go there looking for husbands. I did not follow that path for a few reasons, beyond the scope of this. The point is that this is a time of "rubber meeting the road." Its onset is relatively sudden, its ramifications lifelong, its impact intense. The young have not reached it, the old may have forgotten how it felt.

Young Singles are a group utterly overlooked in the church, in my experience. My experience echoes the lesson mentioned above. There is High School (no dating), College (dating, courtship, and marriage), and Career (family). To be in my mid to late twenties, with no reasonable hope or good plan for finding a wife, I am suddenly faced with the prospect that I may never get married. The College Group, that frenzied dating connection in the churches I have known, contains people almost 10 years younger than me. And at less than 30, that is still 1/3 of my life. My church has a class (at least in name) for the Young Married people (the "Couple's Connection"), but seemingly without a thought toward a growing group very much in need of reassurance that they are not alone - Singles who are begining to think, not as a stressed-out high school student fresh off their first big break-up but as adults, that they may never get married. This is scarrier than I know how to put into words. The defining thing for most adults is their family. And while I come from a great family, when you talk to a 30-year old about their family, they mention their spouse and possibly children first. Who grows up dreaming how they will never find love? The stereotypical guy is fine with no marriage, but he is interested in a casual means to satisfy his desires, and doesn't want commitment. What do you do with desires you are told to "save until marriage" when marriage suddenly seems very much in doubt (for some, like me, a thing that it hurts to think of for the simultaneous want of it and confidence that it is unattainable)? How do you go about making a home for yourself without the standard division of labor, and the responsibility falls squarely on you. I could continue, but being in this group myself, I could write many pages with no discernible point.

Young Marrieds are such a large part of the Young Adults, both in perception and in large part composition (though not as much), that my church and others I have read about, often go too far and have just a Young Married's ministry. But this is a distinct group with distinct needs, none of which I will claim to have understanding of. I believe this from those I know who are in said group. And forgetting the lion's share of Young Adults in pursuit of unity with those not in this group is an injustice to them and foolish.

This is not the problem I see at the moment, but rather the sole existence of a Young Married's class, with nothing else. Perhaps they assume that Young Singles and Old Collegiates will feel welcome there, but I personally feel anything but. If you need, take the more sympathetic example of a couple who desperately wants to have children, but through repeated attempts and failures thinks they may never have children. Now, create a class for couples with children and tell me how welcome this couple will feel in this class.

How do we, then, go about integrating these groups? Do we really need to do so? Tune in later. For now, a recap.

Statement henceforth assumed to be true:
Three groups of overlapping ages exist within the 20-35 age spectrum. The Old Collegiates, newly facing asystem of slow advancement in a much less structured environment both at work and in church; the Young Singles, growing old and moving on with life, with the marriage they had assumed to be in their future suddenly looking like it has passed them by; the Young Marrieds, learning what it means to love another person before yourself, beginning to move ahead with a body that has two heads, often two careers, and often brining two seperate visions of what the future should be.