Taking time to settle
Editorial
by Anna GroffPrint Article Email to a Friend
30’s the new 20.—Jay-Z, best-selling rap artist
Many young adults, Mennonite and non-Mennonite, take their time “getting settled” with a career, home and church, even into their 30s. And during this time of navigating multiple life decisions, many young adults wish for grace and flexibility from church congregations.
Among young adults, there’s the sense of “we’ve got time”—time to explore new locations, live with friends, travel abroad to serve or travel just to travel. The “life schedule” for graduate school, career and family becomes fuzzy and extended—and for many this is good and freeing.
As seen here, many young adults choose to move to a major city during this time.
I will live in a city for the first time in my life in November when I move to Pittsburgh. My new office location will be in the Union Project, a community building started by MennoCorps volunteers. I look forward to working around people who are committed to Pittsburgh.
When it comes to young adults, the pastors from urban churches “get it.” They seem to understand the predicaments and decisions young adults face and have adopted a patient, understanding attitude. They are OK with young adults who take their time figuring out how often they want to attend church services and at what capacity they want to join Sunday schools, small groups and other activities.
These pastors note that what works best for including young people in their congregations is encouraging their church to remain true to what it is and what it offers. Special programming and events geared to young adults often turn off the intended audience. Instead, churches that feel like family—where young people can interact with older people, children and youth—attract young adults, especially when they are in a new city and looking for a congregation to join.
I applaud their perceptiveness. Whether it’s been through trial and error or genuine conversations with the young adults they know, they have realized that creating an intentional space for young adults can feel forced and fake. Instead, young people want to contribute their gifts to the church services and community as equal adults.
They also know that during the years 21 through 30—and beyond—church can provide a place for young people to seek out advice about careers, ask faith questions and learn from the other adults at the church who are in a variety of life stages.
Through talking with friends and listening to young adult peers at Mennonite conferences and conventions, I hear them voicing these concerns (and many more) in their relationship with church:
• balancing the tension between investing in Mennonite Church USA and personal yearnings for freedom and growth away from our home congregations;
• moving away from their rural Mennonite communities into larger cities with fewer Mennonites;
• being transient while also asking for a voice in Mennonite Church USA;
• feeling stuck between wanting to be asked to participate in church and wanting to take initiative;
• experiencing “tokenism” as a young adult from older adults;
• bringing emotional and spiritual baggage that influences how one relates to the church;
• searching for a place in an intergenerational community, with adults to look up to and youth to be role models for;
• struggling to connect to the language and music used in services;
• desiring to make the way from sitting in the back pew to contributing during sharing time or even leading worship—and in one’s own time.
These concerns vary dramatically across the range of young adults who relate to Mennonite Church USA, and many of these statements may appear contradictory or indeterminate. Working through these issues requires grace, patience and love from church members and leaders. I found much encouragement through the thoughts and advice from the pastors of urban churches featured in this issue.
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This comment was posted by admin for Sheldon Good. Imagining where to live as an ordinary radical: Ideas that seem ordinary can also be radical. I recently finished reading Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical. The back cover of the book reads: “a new and ancient way of life that is so attractive, who would settle for anything else?” Claiborne notes that when he gets branded as a “radical,” he reminds himself that the word actually means “root” in Latin. “Radical is not something reserved for saints and martyrs,” he says, which is why he combines the word with “ordinary,” so as to imply that he is an ordinary person living in a radical way. I am an ordinary 20 year-old radical, currently splitting residence between my home in Telford, PA – suburbs of Philadelphia – and my Goshen College small-group house. A popular question for me as a college student has evolved from “what are you going to do when you grow up” (I guess people finally realized I can’t answer it) to “where do you want to live when you grow up?” I’m not really sure where I want to live. After reading Anna Groff’s article, “The appeal of cities,” in the October 2 issue of The Mennonite, my uncertainty has only been further complicated. I never knew I shared a dream of living in a place like Denver, Pittsburgh, or New York City. Oftentimes I find myself surfing Wikipedia, looking up city skylines, climate statistics, public transportation grids, and demographic make-ups. And then the next day I surf the Mennonite Voluntary Service website, searching for updates on service locations. But what if I moved home after graduation – maybe not necessarily to my bedroom, but to somewhere in Telford, Lansdale, or, to fulfill my urban inclination, Philadelphia. What would happen if we all moved out, if we all decided to move somewhere deemed “ordinarily radical?” Who knows if I will end up in southeastern Pennsylvania. It’s a thought, and one that I’ll consider. Moving home? Maybe it’s just ordinary, but what if it’s ordinarily radical? By Sheldon Good, scgood@franconiaconference.org