Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adulthood: A Practical Theology for College and Young Adult Ministry

Title: Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adulthood: A Practical Theology for College and Young Adult Ministry

Author: David P Setran, Chris Kiesling

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Synopsis

• A thoughtful, well-informed analysis of the spiritual lives of today's emerging adults, this book provides a smooth integration of social science research and Christian insights. The authors go beyond the data to offer helpful suggestions for engaging these young people in religious life. Everyone who cares about guiding the spiritual development of emerging adults will benefit from reading this book."

--Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties

• David Setran and Chris Kiesling have written a conceptually rich book that also includes wise suggestions for formational practices. They are very aware of the challenges facing those in this generation but are also optimistic about how grace can work during this time of transition."

--James C. Wilhoit, author of Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing in Christ through Community

• Setran and Kiesling issue a timely call for a 'practical theology' that responds to the distinctive hungers of emerging adults. This well-researched, informative, practical, and evocative book will serve those who harbor a traditional Christianity--and others--as a significant response to that vital call."

--Sharon Daloz Parks, author of Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Emerging Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith

• In this book, Setran and Kiesling set the agenda for Christian ministry with emerging adults. Cutting through the fog of confusion and fear that surrounds this life stage, the authors convincingly and sympathetically explain why so many emerging adults struggle to grow into spiritually mature followers of Jesus. The authors offer wise, theologically grounded advice that can help emerging adulthood become a season of spiritual opportunity rather than a decade of life in which discipleship is on hold. Parents, pastors, counselors, campus ministers, college professors, and all those who care about the spiritual lives of emerging adults need to read this book."

--Thomas E. Bergler, Huntington University; author of The Juvenilization of American Christianity; senior associate editor, The Journal of Youth Ministry

Content

2. Spiritual Formation: Reversing Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

• Christ says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good… Hand over the whole natural self, and all the desires which your think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours” Lewis, Mere Christianity 195
• Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself... Each of us at each moment is progressing to one state or the other. Lewis, Mere Christianity 86

Beyond Deism: Practicing the presence of God

• Spiritual formation, therefore, must attend not only to the communication of the biblical and theological truth but also to the "enfleshed" aspects of emerging adult life.
• He quotes Willard on the spiritual disciplines which "can be divided into two main camps: Disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. Disciplines associated with abstinence or detachment, include such practices as fasting, solitude, silence, celibacy, secrecy, sacrifice, and frugality, while those associated with engagement or attachment, include study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession and submission.
• Disciplines of abstinence are generally devoted to the process of disrupting our "automatic thoughts, feelings, and actions" that pull us away from kingdom life while disciplines of engagement open us to the work of the holy Spirit and connect us in powerful ways to kingdom realities and God's grace.
• Six progressive steps of lectio divina or spiritual reading of the text: 1) silencio, 2) lectio, 3) meditatio, 4) oratio, 5) contemplatio, and 6) incarnatio.

4. Church: Forming Ecclesiological Vision

The source of Disengagement

• In part, of course, this is more broadly related to the nature of Protestantism itself. Because Protestantism highlights the spiritual authority of the individual over and against church and tradition, many have viewed local church as the a helpful peripheral agent of formation. Since the Reformation heralded the capacity of individuals to read Scripture for themselves and to go directly to God in prayer, some have viewed church involvement as unnecessary (and sometimes hurtful).
• For evangelicals, who stressed the primacy of conversion, personal heart religion emerged as the sine qua non (the essential ingredient) of "true Christianity. As a result, these groups speak much of salvation but little about adoption into the family of God.
• Bonhoeffer suggests, "The Body of Christ takes up space on earth. The body of christ cam only be a visible body, or else it is not a body at all."

Prospects for Emerging Adult Church Life

• To reenvision the relationship between emerging adults and the church, we must recognize these various sources of disengagement.
• Yet communal formation through the local congregation can serve as one of the most powerful forces of spiritual growth in emerging adult's lives, countering many of the deforming beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors endemic to this stage, while forming them in ways that lead to mature adult faith.
• In Acts 2:42-47, we are provided with a snapshot of the activities of the Spirit-birthed early church, a group of ragtag disciples who were nonetheless "devoted" to the apostles' teaching, to breaking bread in each others' homes, to prayer and praise, and to outreach. These key components of early church life - teaching (didache), fellowship (koinonia), worship (leitourgia), and outreach (diakonia) - constitute a kind of "curriculum" for the body, a holistic picture of the communal life of faith in the local congregation.

Teaching (Didache)

• A Christian form of self education will often put emerging adults in touch with resources relevant to their felt needs, but they really need broad teaching in "unchosen" areas that expose them to the bigger picture of God's character, human nature, and redemption history.
• Perhaps one of the most significant ways this can happen is through provision for times of testimony. Emerging adults should be given opportunities to describe the past and current work of God in their lives, speaking with the language of faith about their own formation and using the stories and characters of the Bible to draw comparisons and contrasts.

9. Mentoring: Past, Present, and Future

• Margaret Mead "proposed a theory of cross-generational relationships defined by three potential modes: "postfigurative, in which children learn primarily from their forebears, configurative, in which both children and adults learn from their peers, and prefigurative, in which adults learn from their children.

Looking Back: The Posture of Remembering

• The early Hebrews institutionalized the process of remembering through the feasts and festivals that commemorated God's miraculous acts on their behalf: the passover, the feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Pentecost, Purim, and many others. We, of course, have similar rituals in the Eucharist, Christmas, and Easter, but it is fair to say that we are somewhat deficient when it come to celebratory remembrance.
• This will also happen as we help emerging adults intentionally reflect on their lives in order to locate and remember key moments of divine work. By tracing key people, experiences, challenges, and deliverances of their lives, emerging adults can begin to "see" and reflect on God's hand in their personal stories, locating his power and grace in the mundane and memorable moments of their lives.

Looking Around and Within: The Posture of Attentiveness

• In his classic work Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis spoke of the critical role of this attentiveness in the spiritual life: "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake"

Looking Forward: The Posture of Envisioning

• The lives if Jesus and Paul demonstrate the power of this modeling method. Jesus obviously taught his disciples through words, but he also served as a living demonstration of that message through his interactions with people, his life of prayer, his use of scripture, his love and compassion for others, and his sacrifice.

Conclusion

• Emerging adulthood is a formative stage in which beliefs are solidified, life patterns are shaped, and key decisions are made regarding spirituality, identity, church participation, vocation, morality, sexuality and mentoring.
• With regard to self-absorption, Thomas Bergler has recently argued that American churches often foster a kind of "juvenilization" among members. Seeking to attract young people, church beliefs and practices emphasize emotionalism, romantic images of the God-human relationship, and emphases on fun and "feel good" faith.
• Throughout this book, we have attempted to outline a framework of a better way. Christian spiritual formation in emerging adulthood cuts against the grain of self-absorption, pointing instead to a life of costly discipleship marked by personal and cultural investment. Rather than a time marked by freedom from authority, emerging adulthood is defined as a time of growing responsibility for others and the world.
• There is therefore something about true Christian emerging adulthood that must blend the growing capacities of adult life with the childlike spirit. Jesus, of course, told his disciples that they must "become like little children" (matt 18:3) and receive the kingdom "like a little child" ((mark 1:14-16; Luke 18:15-17). This by no means implies that Christianity encourages a simplistic faith, avoiding complexities in order to retain a kind of intellectual and cultural naïveté. Paul, in fact implores the Corinthians to "stop thinking like children" ( 1 Cor. 14:20). While he wanted them to be infants "in regard to evil", he also implored them to be "adults" in their thinking.

Other facts

• Used for: TRS 753E Personality and Religious Development
• Purchased: January 2017

Bibliographic info

• Publisher: Baker Academic (August 15, 2013)
• ISBN-13: 978-0801039560