Category: Young Adults

  • Outstanding book about college students; Book Review: I Once Was Lost by Everts and Schaupp

    Don Everts and Doug Schaupp have written a new book based on their experiences doing campus ministry with college students in Colorado and California for the last twenty years.  They describe the spiritual journeys of these students and how they have tried to help.  Anyone who works with college students or wants to understand them better, will find this book illuminating and encouraging.  See my full review below. 

    I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus

    I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus by Don Everts and Doug Schaupp (Paperback – May 30, 2008)

    5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for those involved in Christian campus ministries, September 19, 2008

    By
    Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) – See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)

    Don Everts and Doug Schaupp help the reader become sensitive to the typical stages college students move through when they become Christians.

    This book would be particularly helpful for those who work with college students or want to better understand college students–as it describes the pressures, thought processes, and friendship dynamics of this age group.

    It would also be helpful for those who ask the question, "Does anyone today convert to Christianity as a thinking adult?" Indeed they do. Everts and Schaupp try to find patterns in the journeys of the people they have observed moving through this process.

    They identify Trusting a Christian, Becoming Curious, Opening Up to Change, Seeking After God, Entering the Kingdom and Living in the Kingdom as key "thresholds" that people move through.

    The book is nice and concise (134 pages) and reads quickly. Everts and Schaupp are not trying to make an argument that these are the thresholds all Christians need to work through. Rather it is sociological or anthropological work–similar to the famous Kubler-Ross stages of loss (denial, anger, acceptance, etc.) or Christian Smith finding the phenomenon of "moralistic therapeutic deism" in teens.

    Everts and Schaupp essentially share their experiences and then ask if this resonates with others. This is not to denigrate their experiences–they have done a significant amount of interviews and they are in as good a position as anyone with their experience in college ministry with InterVarsity to make these kind of observations. Does their model have explanatory power? I think it does.

    If they are right that college students (and perhaps teenagers and adults as well–who knows?) that become Christians, move through these thresholds well, what are the implications for how college ministry and church ministry should change if they want to see more people become Christians? The unmissable point is that these students who have moved through these thresholds certainly did not do so because of one event or program. Someone needed to listen to them, give them advice, challenge them and encourage them. Though Everts and Schaupp sketch a process, they explode the idea that some specially designed program would be able to mass-produce followers of Jesus. This book is much more about how to do spiritual direction than how to do evangelistic programming.

    The book does not contain much formal theological language. In my quick reading, I do not remember a reference for example to the Holy Spirit or to baptism. Their goal is not to reflect theologically on conversion. Similarly they do not engage developmental psychology or other sociological research and draw parallels between that research and their conclusions. An academic researcher would want to do interviews with a representative sample of people who became Christians in college to test Everts and Schaupp's tentative conclusions.  [See update below].

    One final note, the book has in its subtitle the controversial word "postmodern"–What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus. I would simply say that this word plays almost no role in the book. It is not a book that views postmodernity positively nor one that views postmodernity negatively. The book describes students at colleges in California and Colorado in the last twenty years–that is all the authors mean by "postmodern."

    In conclusion, I would highly recommend the book as insightful, brief, hopeful and stimulating. College students will be loved better by people who read this book.

    Update:

    As far as other books that talk about conversion, see chapter five of the December 2008 release: Douglas Campbell, Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).  See especially pages 200-211 for numerous bibliographic references and a good summary of recent sociological discussion of conversion.  Much of the discussion by Campbell revolves around the insights of John Lofland and Rodney Stark.  The discussion begins with these citations. 

    John Lofland and Rodney Stark, "Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion from a Deviant Perspective," American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 862-75; and Lofland, "Becoming a World-Saver Revisited," American Behavioral Scientist 20 (1977): 805-18 and Lorne L. Dawson, "Who Joins New Religious Movements and Why: Twenty Years of Research and What Have We Learned?" in  Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader (Blackwell Readings in Religion) ed. Lorne L. Dawson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 116-30.

    According to Campbell,

    Lofland and Stark hypothesized that converts possessed three “predisposing conditions”: acutely felt tension or deprivation, a religious problem-solving perspective, and an overall self-definition as a religious seeker. Four further conditions—“situational contingencies”—depended upon a concrete encounter with a cult: a self-perceived “turning point” (near the time of the encounter), a strong affective bond with one or more cult members, reduced or eliminated extra-cult attachments, and further intensive interaction with other cult members. An individual who met these four further conditions experienced full-fledged conversion and became a “deployable agent” of the new cult (Douglas Campbell, Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 200-201. 

    I cite Campbell's work to (1) highlight his book and (2) to note that Everts and Schaupp are not alone in their interest in conversion; there are theologians like Campbell and sociologists like Lofland and Stark exploring similar questions. 

    Campbell notes that young and educated people are particularly likely to convert and that rational as well as situational factors are involved–consistent in some respects with the observations of Everts and Schaupp.

    See also 

    Christian Smith, Getting a Life: The challenge of emerging adulthood in Books & Culture, November/December 2007.  (Available online). 

    Notre Dame sociologist Smith (and attender of Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church where he along with Campbell and I attend) overviews recent sociological, anthropological, and psychological studies of young adults. 

  • Should you use technology to reach young adults or offer them something wholly different?

    There are some pastors who work with youth and college students who say, "We cannot compete with the world in terms of technology and entertainment.  What we can offer is relationships.  We need to focus on people, not programs." 

    Similarly, many people from liturgical traditions report that the young adults they know are turning to liturgical traditions and mystery and contemplation. 

    See for example Christianity Today’s February cover story:

    Chris Armstrong | posted 2/08/2008
    Christianity Today

    In this month’s Chronicle of Higher Education, there is a similar story by a University of Virginia professor suggesting that college professors need to help their students slow down and think, rather than pursuing the latest technological teaching technique.  The article is a must read for people who have an interest in college students because I have never read a better description of the internet generation.   

    Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students’ spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable

    By MARK EDMUNDSON

    ChronicleReview.com

    From the issue dated March 14, 2008

    Hat tip to Gary Friesen


    Five comments about whether the answer to reaching young adults in the church is to use technology or to offer them something totally different.
     

    1. In the church, you have to motivate people to come back.
      It is probably appropriate for an English teacher with very highly motivated University of Virginia students to try to slow them down.  As a professor the last two years at Taylor University, I was amazed at the power the professor had over students in comparison to being a pastor.  As a pastor you need to motivate people to want to come back.  As a university professor, they have to come back – their grades depend upon it. 

    2. Excellence in communication and teaching needs to be pursued.
    I would not want university professors to rest on the fact that students don’t need technology, they just need old school teaching methods.  College students need outstanding classroom teaching to interest to help them engage the subject.  Regardless of the style, technology or no technology, the teaching task still needs to be done well.   Ditto, churches.   

    3.  The liturgical tradition is certainly not winning the day in terms of any sociological measure that I have seen.  Roman Catholics and Mainline churches are losing great numbers of people.  Many are becoming evangelicals.  But also many are becoming "no-religious affiliation."   See Pew’s Survey The Religious Landscape of the United States for the latest example.  "While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic
    faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as
    Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not
    for the offsetting impact of immigration . . .  members of mainline Protestant churches and Jews are older, on average, than members of other groups."  There is much confounding here: there are too many variables to sort out why people are turning away from mainline and Catholic churches but I am simply pointing out that liturgy is no automatic solution for attracting young people. 

    4.  I like liturgical and nonliturgical churches and I think they can both learn from one another.  I think it is great to have liturgical churches and I have tried to push all of the evangelical churches I have pastored to greater appreciation of the church’s past and to implement forms of liturgy thoughtfully.  However, when I am around people (often connected to Wheaton College or Duke Divinity School) who argue that informal liturgical styles are woefully lacking, I tend to defend "the three songs and a biblical sermon" evangelical-style as having much to commend it.   

    5. I continue to argue that pastors need to think like educators or missionaries.
      Educators who teach second grade, gear their programs to that age level.  We have to do the same in the church.  Meet people where they are at.  Similarly, missionaries to a new culture, need to speak the language of the people.  Though I agree with the Professor Edmundson that sometimes the culture is poisonous and needs to be critiqued – he argues that the frenetic lifestyle of students hurts their ability to understand life – we also will not be able to critique that culture until we demonstrate (as he has) that we know it well.  What I mean is that churches, if they expect to be effective at reaching un-churched or de-churched people with the gospel, need to be able to communicate with them.  I think the question, "How will someone experience our church if this is their first time here?" is an extremely important question and people need not betray their tradition to address it.  They may simply need to explain their tradition better so that the new person has a better experience.

    I think there is great reason to be suspicious of highly fragmented lives powered relentlessly forward by dizzying forms of technology.  However, I do not think that purposefully anti-technological liturgy communicates clearly enough with many people who are immersed in American culture.  We need meet un-churched and de-churched people half-way with modest uses of technology and draw them into community and contemplation from there. 

  • Bonhoeffer and the Emerging Church: Ph.D. Application Paper

    Update January 31, 2007.
    I have posted below the revised paper.
    Update December 31, 2006
    I have posted below the revised paper.You are still welcome to give me feedback for later deadlines though the immediate deadline is passed.
    Original post December 23, 2006
    It is crunch time now and I'm getting my application materials ready for Princeton, Luther, Fuller and Emory in about a week.  EmergingchurchDuke is a month later.  See my quick update about the Ph.D. here.
    I would love it if any of you wanted to read my paper and give it some feedback.   
    The paper is about Bonhoeffer and the Emerging Church movement.  I think it is worthwhile stuff but I would appreciate your advice about things to change.  Not academic enough?  Work on the writing? Focus more? 
    I have attached it below. 

    Download bonhoeffer_and_emerging_church.doc

    Download bonhoeffer_and_emerging_church.pdf

    Thanks so much.  Thanks for your prayers.  I hope you are well.  Merry Christmas.
    andy