Changing Sea: The Changing Spirituality of Emerging Adults Project, The Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, Catholic University of America

Welcoming the Wave to Come: Ministry with Emerging Adults

Carol Howard Merritt
Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.

ChangingSEA is not only a good acronym (Changing Spirituality of Emerging Adults), but it is also an apt metaphor for what seems to be happening in our religious landscape right now. There are so many evolutions in our popular culture, social technology, and generational distinctions that church leaders can feel awash in change. Often times, in our congregational life, we realize that we are in the midst of a larger rhythm. Attendance patterns are different. Energy expands into other places. We can feel torn as we work with various generations, as we watch the tide fall and rise. As these shifts occur, we see the life cycle of churches come to an end, and we can also see the upsurge that is taking shape and cresting in the distance, as emerging adults begin to take up leadership positions and begin to guide us into what church might become, and we wonder what we can do to welcome the incoming tide.

As we look at the changing sea of emerging adults, there are many factors that we can keep in mind. To begin, our mainline denominational congregations often have a trajectory that longs to reach back. Our congregations flourished in the late fifties and early sixties, and so our cultural identity and habits often reflect those days. But many things have evolved in our society and in the life of the church in the past fifty years, so the ways in which we practice our faith will also need to change. Three major things have occurred for emerging adults, and have an impact on how congregations minister to them: (1) economic situations evolved, (2) people deferred marriage, and (3) volunteer hours diminished.

First, several factors have made a major impact on the economic situation of emerging adults. Each generation has their own set of financial difficulties, but there are particular factors in this new generation. Women and men often go to college and may even attend graduate school, incurring student loan debt that they will need to pay off at a later date. The cost of education and student loans increased dramatically in our country, and young adults found themselves buried under a load of debt before they began their careers. Housing prices rose and quickly fell, leaving many people in difficult situations.

The economic crisis has made job situations so unstable that emerging adults have to be nimble and strategic with their professional lives. They have not begun our careers in a time of corporate loyalty and 9 to 5 jobs; rather it has been in the midst of temporary employment with no benefits. In this environment, emerging adults are often being laid off and they have to constantly read the writing on the wall and prepare for quick moves and better opportunities. This does not mean that they are irresponsible slackers, they are extending adolescence, and they do not have an emotional immaturity that prohibits them from growing up and settling down. It is simply their reality. As church leaders, we will need to be careful of attitudes that might diminish the society’s responsibility to care for young adults and heaps blame on them.

Our congregations do not always keep the context of young adults in mind. Economic instability means that emerging adults may not be in our churches for long periods of time. As Penny Edgell highlights in “Work and Careers,” “the average American worker today will hold seven or eight jobs between the ages of 18 and 35 (25% of emerging adults will have more than 10 jobs).” We may not be able to count on them for a six-year commitment to leadership or even a twelve-month financial pledge. They must be incredibly savvy and flexible in this new economy. Yet, we often expect years of attendance and faithful pledging before we allow men and women to step into leadership.

Can we respond to new cultural realities with understanding? Vital congregations realize that we need emerging adults in positions of leadership in order for our congregations to effectively minister to them. So we will have to encourage leadership earlier and communicate understanding if they cannot serve their entire term. This may be difficult, especially when our congregations might have a bevy of willing retirees with lots of stability, time, and energy, but the shift in leadership will be crucial to navigating the waters ahead of us.

Second, as Conrad Hackett points out, “the majority of emerging adults in congregations have never married” and “until age 29, the majority of emerging adults in congregations have no children.” People have put off marriage and starting a family. Now it often takes two incomes to maintain a household. Even with the educational debt rising, the cost of housing becoming volatile, salaries did not adjust at the same rate, and two incomes went from being a luxury to a necessity.

Often the most responsible thing that a person can do is live with their parents as they can recuperate and gain some financial stability. In our society, especially among Caucasians, we look at this move with disdain. Because “financial independence” has been a marker of adulthood, people are encouraged to refrain from marriage until their bank statements are in order. Sometimes couples might live with one another before they get the certificate, but a person will often refrain from proposing to his fiancée from the basement of his parent’s house.

This means that men and women can get caught in a trap. They cannot gain financial stability until they’re married, and because our economy is based on a two-income household, they cannot get married until they gain financial stability.

What does this mean for our congregations? Often our church ministries are geared toward families. Couples who live together before they are married or same-gender couples can be discriminated against in our congregations. We expect that men and women will get married and return to church have their child baptized. We have vibrant Christian education programs, geared toward children. While all of our family ministries are extremely important, in this moment church leaders realize that we can’t wait until people have children before they make their way back into the church. And if all of our ministries to emerging adults are geared to young families, then we are indirectly communicating a message to many young adults: that they must become something that they are not before they can walk into our doors.

Vital ministries respond to the realities of emerging adults who are not married and have no children. They do not wait for baptism to woo the family back, but they make it clear that people are welcome, no matter what their “family” might look like. I have watched as congregations have become intentional about forming tribes in their churches. They do it in different ways: through contemplative prayer services, volunteer opportunities, or pub outings.[1] But they have become deliberate in communicating that church is not someplace that a person has to enter into two-by-two. They are aware of people who slip into their shiny pews alone, and they make sure to reach out to them in meaningful ways.

Third, volunteer hours have diminished. In the late fifties and early sixties, when many of our congregations thrived, it was often because of the hard work of women who had the time to put into programming and potlucks at the church. Mothers made sure that their families got to the church service. Now, as Annette Mahoney points out in “Marriage and Family, Faith and Spirituality among Emerging Adults,” many emerging-adult couples “cannot afford for either spouse to be a full-time homemaker, and most wives are employed before and after having children.” It takes eighty to a hundred hours to keep a household running and many wives make more than their husbands, so a working mother’s life can be extremely stressful. She prepares breakfast, gets the kids off to school, goes to work, picks up her children from after-school care, cooks dinner, makes sure the homework gets done, and tackles the laundry.

In our congregations, women can no longer go to the 10:00 Bible study on Tuesday morning. Our potlucks are looking rather shabby, as men and women have difficulty making a special casserole and they end up stopping by the supermarket for a vegetable tray instead. Mid-week meetings are becoming harder and harder for them to attend. In other words, the vast volunteer force that has kept our churches running for decades has diminished.

How are churches responding? There are many ways that we can compound the problem. We might heap shame on a new generation for not keeping our church customs running. We could berate people for not being able to handle leadership commitment. And we could whisper a bit of nastiness because a new generation of moms is not keeping the women’s programs running and neglecting the potlucks. We might criticize families for not having their priorities straight. But shaming a new generation into church will be largely ineffective.

I have seen many positive responses to these changes. One pastor started by rethinking the church’s committees. He began at his church with 50 people attending on Sunday morning. Then he was surprised to find out that the small congregation had twelve committees. He quickly changed the burdensome structure, making sure that there was a strong board and ad-hoc committees when they were needed. Often our committees necessitate a huge amount of volunteer hours. While committees are meant to be tools to empower lay ministry, they can often leave a new generation feeling disempowered, especially when the committee members are expected to rubber-stamp everything that was done the year before.

These three things—economic instability, marriage postponement, and diminishing female volunteerism—affect our churches in crucial ways. As we look to minister to and with a new generation, as we welcome the wave to come, we will need to keep these crucial realities in mind.

1 As Penny Edgell points out in “Faith and Spirituality among Emerging Adults,” there is a focus on spirituality among younger generations. Often churches respond to this longing through contemplative prayer services. The pub outings reflect Carolyn McNamara Barry and Stephanie D. Madsen’s findings in “Friends and Friendships in Emerging Adulthood” as well as my own work in Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation (Herndon, Alban Institute, 2007).

Carol Howard Merritt is a pastor at Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. and a Campus Minister at George Washington University. She is the author of Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2010) and Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation (Herndon VA: Alban Institute, 2007). She blogs at TribalChurch.org and co-hosts God Complex Radio with Bruce Reyes-Chow and Landon Whitsitt.