Rooted Spirituality: Emerging Adults in the Church

As part of my spiritual guidance course we are interviewing people from three different age groups: emerging adult/young adult, middle adult, and older adult. Last week I interviewed a 20-year-old college sophomore about her life and spirituality. She called her spirituality "Grassroots Spirituality." Her understanding of God came from her experiences at a Christian summer camp and have grown in relation to the physical world around her as well as to her intellectual and emotional growth. This idea really struck me. Rooted spirituality. Those who have the luxury to be emerging adults (ages 18-24ish) are thought to be drifting without roots. They move frequently and explore their identity and career course. But all the reading we've been doing makes me think we've got it wrong, and this interview confirmed it. Stop thinking all young adults want in a spiritual community is a rock show. There's enough in our world that is shallow. We want a deep community with roots. True, some of us also want a rock show; but that's not the only thing. Our roots need to be nurtured as we continue growing toward the Sun. We can't do that alone.

So many members of churches have asked me "How do we get more people your age into the church?" Welcome us. Nurture us. Go out and find us. Realize that not everyone has transportation. Stop thinking that changing something in the liturgy means you're giving up your religious tradition. Read the Bible as a community and be willing to hear voices you don't agree with or voices you've ignored/didn't know about. Be authentic. Be open to listening to our questions without feeling you have to know the answer to everything. Put us in leadership roles. Mentor us. We're not asking you to be perfect. Don't expect us to be like you were at this age. Accept us for who we are and know we're going to transform if you nurture us. Without sun and water plants die. Offer us Living Water and the Light from God to nurture us and prevent spiritual death. Take the time to explain tradition. Offer introductory classes or even informal conversational groups to discuss what it means to call ourselves a Christian and what it means to call ourselves a certain denomination. Don't exclude the single. Don't exclude our LGBTTQI friends/family/partners/selves. Know we may not fit into traditional membership categories and be open to our involvement anyway. Empathize. Don't assume. Recognize us. Know no church is your church or my church; it is God's church. Sing a new song, sing old songs, just choose songs that have theological content. Celebrate worship with many languages. The sacraments are cool; we'd like to talk about them because they're also confusing to a lot of people. Help us find silence and stillness in a world that demands noise because we want to hear God. Don't preach at us. Preach the Word in the midst of us. Feed us. Point out God's actions in the world so we learn to pay attention to God. Enter dialogue with other religions and other traditions from Christianity. Find a way to support those of us who are single parents. Help us get involved in the local community mission/soup kitchen/garden/after school tutoring program/food drive/whatever. We want to make a difference. Show and tell us how Christ made a difference. Don't expect us to believe everything exactly the way you do or to sign up for something we don't want to do. Love us in spite of ourselves and yourselves. We like our agency and intellect and believe both come from God. Even if we are only in your community for a short time know that our roots have been entwined and the journey will never be the same. Be joyful in our transitions through break ups, new jobs, marriages, illness, grappling with grief, changing majors, graduation, and making difficult decisions even when they're hard for us. You are the love of Christ to us during the hard times. Engage us in the hard issues the church is dealing with. We worship God in wholistic ways in our everyday lives and would be thrilled to see Sunday morning come into the week. Guide us into taking ownership of our own faith even knowing at the same time it is the faith of our ancestors. Talk about the Cloud of Witnesses. We don't get many Christian role models in pop culture. We don't want our faith to be fueled by fear, so please don't try to make us do things you think we "should" do by threatening us with hellfire. That's not your decision to make. If we disagree politically or theologically remember we are each children of God and deserve to be treated with respect. Don't talk down to us just because we're young. Know there are some things we can only learn from experience but don't be condescending about it. Take us seriously and with flexibility. Plant some seeds of wisdom. Pray for peace and act on those prayers. Be thoughtful.

Preach the Good News of God's love.

Practice what you preach.

Live the Good News for the world today and into the future with us.

Nurture our roots.