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

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.

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