Here's another new(ish) resource from the other end of the age spectrum - the Christian Student Guide is an initiative of the Student Christian Movement, as part of a suite of projects they're doing around student discipleship. Take a look here.
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We've recently seen two good new resources for younger Christians managing the transition through life.
The first has been developed with a bit of funding from us, by the Student Christian Movement - their 'Going to University Guide' is out soon. SCM also have a page of resources about managing time at university and life after university - see here. For the guide, contact SCM here. The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity are also running the first of an innovative residential specifically to reflect on Christian discipleship in the first year of starting work. Called Changing Light, it's a camping weekend running from 9 to 11 September 2016 at Latimer Minster, Buckinghamshire. You can find more details here: http://www.licc.org.uk/changinglight/index.html There's an interesting short video on the millennial generation and social responsibility on the Mustard Seed Associates web-page here. See what you think. Does this ring true with your experience of today's 18-33s?
There was a very salutary article in The Guardian on 5 February detailing the latest ONS statistics on unemployment. The jobless rate amongst 16-17 year olds is 35.9%, and 18% amongst 18-24 year-olds, compared to 6.7% amongst 25-34 year-olds, 4.7% amongst 35-49 year-olds and 4.4% amongst 50-64 year-olds. Young people have historically fared amongst the worst in periods of high unemployment (this was broadly true during the 1980s, the inter-war slump and the late 19th century), but is no less concerning for all this. A few years ago St Peter's Saltley Trust funded Workcare (Coventry and Warwickshire's workplace chaplaincy team) to do some research amongst church-related projects helping young unemployed adults, (the material is temporarily unavailable on their website, but keep checking!). But there is more to be done. What can your local church do?
There's an interesting and entertainingly illustrated article in the Huffington Post from 15 September 2013 suggesting that high expectations of entitlement and specialness are at the root of much contemporary discontent amongst young adults. Such self-perceptions are not at all unique to those alive today (I'm currently reading George Eliot's Middlemarch, and there are several characters who exhibit similar traits - Rosamond Vincy is disappointed due to her expectations of her material and social standing in the community, whilst Edward Casaubon is ultimately deluded in thinking he has found 'the key to all mythologies' when in fact his thinking is not only wrong but not even terribly original). However, unhappiness due to feelings of entitlement and unusual specialness does seem pervasive at present (although Generation Y readers may wish to comment on whether the Huff Post article accurately captures what is going on for their generation).
Christian faith has a long track record of commentary on entitlement and specialness. It hasn't always found it easy to get the balance right - some spiritual traditions almost seem to divinise the self and its desires, whilst others too easily fall prey to an 'I am a miserable worm' sort of theology which can be particularly damaging to the estimated 1 in 4 churchgoers who already struggle with depression or low self-esteem. In reality both extremes are theologically questionable. A more balanced view arguably emphasises and holds in tension a view of the human person as fundamentally created in God's image and loved by God (something which should shape our identity more than any other consideration) with a view of the human person as marred by sin and in need of grace. True humility consists in knowing 'of what we are made', having neither artificially inflated expectations of ourselves or the world, nor harmfully imagining we are worth nothing. The question is: how to help people, through prayer, support, worship, and learning opportunities, to discover this strong centre in God which will prevent us from flipping and flopping between two more harmful extremes? According to new data from the Office for National Statistics, 26% 20-34 year-olds in England are living at home with their parents, an increase from 21% since the ONS began to collect data on this question in 1996, and representing a 25% increase in the overall total. Indeed, measured differently, the true figure may be higher, since the data does not include people who have moved back in with parents after being divorced or widowed, or those married or living with a partner or child but living together at their parents' home.
Key issues appear to be not so much house prices per se as the affordability of getting onto the housing ladder. Unemployment also appears to be a factor - the two 'peaks' at either end of the ONS graph also correspond to higher percentages of young people who are unemployed (people living with their parents were twice as likely to be unemployed). Intriguingly, the West Midlands had the highest percentage of age English region, with 29% of 20-34s living with their parents. Younger adult men are also more likely to be living with their parents than younger adult women. The numbers decrease with age (at least one paper's headline reads 'a quarter of 34-year olds living with their parents' which is in fact incorrect) - ONS data suggests that amongst 20 year-olds, 65% of men and 58% of women were living with their parents, but this falls to 8% of men and 3% of women by the age of 34. All this is very interesting - a few generations ago living with one's parents until marriage was a fairly normal pattern for many young adults, and newly-weds often started married life living at one or other parents' houses until enough had been saved for a mortgage. As with the fall and rise in the age of marriage and childbirth, this most recent set of data suggests once again that some of the classic/popular markers of full/independent adulthood are being pushed later into one's 20s and 30s as 'young adulthood' is elongated. I've noticed a number of articles and resources about loneliness recently. Loneliness can strike at any age (most people go through periods of loneliness as teenagers, or as young adults moving to a new job or town, or witness reports recently about the number of single-person households, not least due to high divorce rates in middle age). But it's often particularly an issue for older adults living in their own home but finding it increasingly difficult to get out an about.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have just released a 'loneliness resource pack' with practical ideas to help individuals and groups understand and make positive responses to loneliness within their communities. Take at look here. There was an interesting piece on LICC's 'Connecting with Culture' email bulletin recently on this new acronym used to describe a generation brought up on prosperity and being treated as 'special', yet experienced enormous disillusionment as current social and economic realities bite home. (Further evidence of this in the news today - one commentator on the housing sector suggesting that with the current resurgence in house prices, most people in their 20s today have only a 50/50 chance of owning their own home if current trends continue). I wonder what you think - does this experience ring true for Generation Y readers? (And if so, how can churches be places which help Gen Yers deal positively with the mismatch between what they have been led to expect and what they are actually experiencing?).
We've featured the US website '21st Century Faith Formation' in this blog before, and an email today reminded me to look at their journal. We've not featured so much about young adulthood and discipleship for a while, so here is a link to a good practice guide on 'best practice in young adult faith formation', from that site. The guide was produced in 2007 and so focuses on both Generation X and Millennials as young adults - whereas now in 2013 the baton of 'young adulthood' has been passed firmly to Gen Y/Millennials and those of us who are Xers are now having to admit that we're stretching the definition of 'young adulthood' to its limit, in our mid-thirties to late forties...! As a result, there is much good here, but also an implicit challenge to ask how much of the good practice in young adult faith formation built up over the last 10-15 years requires continuous updating in the light of a changed cultural context and in particular the developing life experiences and identities of those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s. If you're part of Generation Y, what would you add or change from what's here?
What would church look like for Generation Y? Here's one answer from a church in Luton. For me there are a few factual inaccuracies here (e.g., the biggest year-on-year decline in church attendance was actually in the 1960s and 1970s, not 'in the last 25 years'); however, this is an interesting discussion starter for anyone thinking about worshipping community for those aged c. 15-30. |
AuthorsIan Jones is Director of St Peter's Saltley Trust. Archives
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