A few weeks ago a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook featuring Meg Jay, an author and psychologist who specializes in working with those in their 20’s and 30’s. The video was entitled “Why 30 is not the new 20.” The essential premise of her talk is that it is tragic that people are being told that their 20’s are throw away years. Often people in their 20’s are led to believe that it’s ok to enjoy an extended period of adolescence and not to focus on their careers or families until 30. Once they become 30 though they find that they are well behind their life’s goals and ambitions. They see others their age walking down the aisle to be married, they see others their age working their way up the job ladder and they suddenly feel left behind. Then in a short time span (about ages 30-35) they try to get married (and risk settling for the wrong person), have kids, and jump start a career. That’s a lot of pressure on a young man or woman! Meg Jay adds that although we are all aware of “child development” and how the first years of this stage (ages 1-5) are so crucial, we often don’t hear about “adult development” which would have the 20’s being the crucial years. It raises the critical question, why do we care so much about how are children develop, pushing them to know so much while so young only turn around and tell our young adults to push off adulthood and slow it down? Shouldn’t we care about helping our kids develop into healthy children just as much as we care about helping them become healthy adults? Meg Jay’s experience and research would suggest that treating the 20’s like they don’t matter is a step backwards.
As a young adults pastor I appreciated everything Meg Jay had to say. I think she’s absolutely right, the 20’s are critical to adult development. Her focus was on helping them develop a career and healthy relationships (both of which I agree are important) but I would also add we need to help them develop spiritually. During our 20’s we establish patterns that can potentially affect us for life. It’s in this crucial decade that many people decide to accept or reject the Christian faith. It’s in this crucial decade that many people will decide if they are going to be church goers or not (or be a church going family or not). There is an idea floating around out that there that we can let those in their 20’s and 30’s leave the faith and we can simply wait for them to come back. But as David Kinnaman points out in his book You Lost Me, they are not coming back.
So what can we do about it? More specifically what can we here at Darrow Road do about it? For starters we need to take an active role in helping the young people in our church grow in the faith. Be involved in the ministries to our children. Be involved in our youth group ministries. Then, when they become young adults you will have a stronger voice of influence and can help guide them in their decisions. If we wait until they are in their 20’s to speak into their lives they may not care as much about what we have to say. Second, you get involved in supporting our young adult ministries. Come and talk to me so I can get you plugged in this young ministry at our church. Third, we need to find more inroads to the young adults outside of the church. We have a place for young adults to grow and develop at Darrow Road but that’s not going to be enough to convince them to come. What we need is everyone in the church looking to make connections with those outside of it. Be active in our community and form relationships! Reach out to our younger generations and show them that you care! Then do what we as Christians are all called to do and share the Gospel with them. Together we can make a difference to the young adults here at Superior. Rather than looking back and seeing their 20’s as wasted years they can look back at their 20’s as the time they accept Christ and grew in the faith. This crucial decade, through the grace of God, can become the best decade of their lives if we help them find Jesus!
Keep the Faith,
Matthew