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Posted: April 9th, 2008 at 1:40am By: Rev. Rebecca Schlatter
As a pastor who has logged a few years ministering with young adults, I sometimes get questions from older adults wanting to help or support the young adults in their lives. Sometimes the question comes from older adults who want to know how to get the young adults "launched" and out of the house.
Here's one answer that fits some cases: If you want to help young adults flourish in life and career, become an advocate for their own inner voice.
Some young people in the millennial generation could use your help with this (that's the generation currently age 14 to 20s, depending which calculation you use). By some measures, this generation has grown up busier and more programmed from before birth (think of "Baby Einstein" products), with less time to themselves, than any generation before them. Outer voices of "what you should do" and "how you can be safe and secure" can be so loud for them that the inner voice of "what I want" has rarely been invited to speak, even in simple ways such as "What do I want to do today?"
From my own young adulthood, I remember the terrifying question "What do I want to do with my life?" I felt stuck between two equally unappealing options for decision-making. First there was my college's Career Center, with its personality tests and seminars and shelves full of binders with internship options and grad school information. I was immediately lost, because I had no idea what I wanted. Or if my desires even mattered.
My Lutheran tradition offered an alternative approach. There I found a respite from the Career Center's impression that my life depended on making the right choices. There I knew I was a loved child of God: No matter what I chose or what I did, God had saved me and would always love me. Knowing that was a relief sometimes, but not all the time. After all, I was in college; I didn't want to be a "child" anymore, of God or anyone else. I didn't see the church offering me help in growing up. So if adulthood resided in the rows upon rows of Career Center choices, then that's where I would focus.
Then, as a college sophomore, I attended a national gathering for Lutheran college students. The speaker was Dr. Tim Lull, who would become, years later, the president of my seminary. One line he said rang like a bell for me: "What do you want to do, now that you don't have to do anything to be saved?" (Years later, I would reread the line in a book Dr. Lull assigned for a class: Gerhard Forde's "Justification by Faith.")
I'd never heard a Lutheran pastor use the "w" word before: "want." Finally! Here was someone who thought my desires actually mattered, could even be helpful. After a lifetime of Augustine's "original sin" influence bleeding all over Luther's tradition, I experienced this new idea with both a great relief and a great terror.
I'd long understood (or misunderstood) Luther saying, following Augustine, "Nothing good comes from within you; everything good comes from God, who speaks outside of us." Desire, I figured, came from inside me and was therefore likely to lead me astray. So, having never felt allowed to desire deeply, I had no idea what I wanted.
I began to wonder, if I could locate my desire, whether it could be the key to navigating through all those options lined up on the shelves and beyond. Perhaps desire could provide a compass (a helpful image I later found in Margaret Silf's book "Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality"). The question was, was I allowed to use that compass? Did it have anything to do with God?
Years later, I finally discovered a new language for desire when I became a campus minister at a Jesuit university. The spirituality in the tradition of Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), opened a way to understand those desires as potentially coming from God — not always turned against God.
Finally, I could hear Dr. Lull's question as a sign of the freedom we have in Christ — not a freedom that leaves us directionless in a sea of choices, but a freedom to pursue hints of the divine within our own desires.
It took only 12 years and a surprise connection in ministry for me to learn that. But with support from mentors and friends and loved ones, I hope today's young adults can hear that liberating good news much sooner.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email }. © Copyright 2008 by Rebecca Schlatter.
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As a pastor who has logged a few years ministering with young adults, I sometimes get questions from older adults wanting to help or support the young adults in their lives. Sometimes the question comes from older adults who want to know how to get the young adults "launched" and out of the house.
Here's one answer that fits some cases: If you want to help young adults flourish in life and career, become an advocate for their own inner voice.
Some young people in the millennial generation could use your help with this (that's the generation currently age 14 to 20s, depending which calculation you use). By some measures, this generation has grown up busier and more programmed from before birth (think of "Baby Einstein" products), with less time to themselves, than any generation before them. Outer voices of "what you should do" and "how you can be safe and secure" can be so loud for them that the inner voice of "what I want" has rarely been invited to speak, even in simple ways such as "What do I want to do today?"
From my own young adulthood, I remember the terrifying question "What do I want to do with my life?" I felt stuck between two equally unappealing options for decision-making. First there was my college's Career Center, with its personality tests and seminars and shelves full of binders with internship options and grad school information. I was immediately lost, because I had no idea what I wanted. Or if my desires even mattered.
My Lutheran tradition offered an alternative approach. There I found a respite from the Career Center's impression that my life depended on making the right choices. There I knew I was a loved child of God: No matter what I chose or what I did, God had saved me and would always love me. Knowing that was a relief sometimes, but not all the time. After all, I was in college; I didn't want to be a "child" anymore, of God or anyone else. I didn't see the church offering me help in growing up. So if adulthood resided in the rows upon rows of Career Center choices, then that's where I would focus.
Then, as a college sophomore, I attended a national gathering for Lutheran college students. The speaker was Dr. Tim Lull, who would become, years later, the president of my seminary. One line he said rang like a bell for me: "What do you want to do, now that you don't have to do anything to be saved?" (Years later, I would reread the line in a book Dr. Lull assigned for a class: Gerhard Forde's "Justification by Faith.")
I'd never heard a Lutheran pastor use the "w" word before: "want." Finally! Here was someone who thought my desires actually mattered, could even be helpful. After a lifetime of Augustine's "original sin" influence bleeding all over Luther's tradition, I experienced this new idea with both a great relief and a great terror.
I'd long understood (or misunderstood) Luther saying, following Augustine, "Nothing good comes from within you; everything good comes from God, who speaks outside of us." Desire, I figured, came from inside me and was therefore likely to lead me astray. So, having never felt allowed to desire deeply, I had no idea what I wanted.
I began to wonder, if I could locate my desire, whether it could be the key to navigating through all those options lined up on the shelves and beyond. Perhaps desire could provide a compass (a helpful image I later found in Margaret Silf's book "Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality"). The question was, was I allowed to use that compass? Did it have anything to do with God?
Years later, I finally discovered a new language for desire when I became a campus minister at a Jesuit university. The spirituality in the tradition of Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), opened a way to understand those desires as potentially coming from God — not always turned against God.
Finally, I could hear Dr. Lull's question as a sign of the freedom we have in Christ — not a freedom that leaves us directionless in a sea of choices, but a freedom to pursue hints of the divine within our own desires.
It took only 12 years and a surprise connection in ministry for me to learn that. But with support from mentors and friends and loved ones, I hope today's young adults can hear that liberating good news much sooner.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email }. © Copyright 2008 by Rebecca Schlatter.
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