Emerging Adults
Emerging Adults
Over the last several decades, vocation and initial formation ministers have experienced rather profound shifts in underlying philosophies and strategies for ministry. Pre-Vatican II programs generally operated from a somewhat rigid, traditional discernment/ training approach for all participants. Read more...
When Hurricane Mitch devastated Nicaragua, the lack of accurate maps was one of the major obstacles relief agencies faced in a land where rivers had changed banks, roads were non-existent, and entire towns had been swept away. A smaller hurricane traveled up the east coast of the United States, and the force of the ocean surge leveled some sand bars and created new ones off the point of Long Island. Read more...
Much has been written in recent years about Generation X or young adult Catholics. From Tom Beaudoin’s impressionistic Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X to Dean Hoge, William Dinges, Mary Johnson, and Juan Gonzales’s recently published sociological study, Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice, researchers have sought to describe and understand Catholics raised in the post-Baby Boom, post-Vatican II era. Read more...
WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a Catholic, young (“emerging”) adult in the 21st century? This is a fundamental question we vocation ministers ask ourselves as we accompany young women and men on their journey toward understanding, both intellectually and affectively, how God may be inviting them into a deeper relationship with God’s self, and thus into a life of service for and with Jesus Christ. After all, isn’t that what vocation discernment is all about? Read more...
Emerging adulthood is proposed as a new conception of psychosocial development encompassing the late teen years through the twenties, with a particular focus on the 18-to 25 year age range. This was the stage of life during which many people once made vocational commitments to religious life, as well as to careers, marriage, and parenthood. Read more...
Through nine years of vocation ministry, animating community members has been a consistent goal and challenge. At times our friars have rallied around the cause of promoting our Franciscan life, and at other times they seem too busy, tired, frustrated or preoccupied to make much effort. Read more...
During Convocation 2000, participants not only listened to the input of scholars and young religious, they also had an opportunity to brainstorm strategies that respond to the major areas of concern highlighted by the speakers. Speakers pointed to the following areas as concerns in the effort to build bridges between members of religious congregations and young adults: the need for increased visibility and presence of religious; the need to develop a “culture of discernment,” that is, an awareness and acceptance throughout the church of the need to discern life choices; total community involvement and responsibility for vocations; the need to consciously work toward connecting with young adults; and the need and desire to improve the quality of communal life. Read more...
Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults documents that emerging adults are the least religious adults in the United States today, struggle with concentration, and generally indicate that religious tradition matters little to most of them. At more than 300 pages, Souls in Transition is a tour de force. Read more...
A NUMBER OF RECENT BOOKS examine the role of faith, church, religion and spirituality in the 20-and 30-something Americans that vocation ministers largely engage as future religious. David Kinnaman’s UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why It Matters (Baker Books, 2007) and Robert Wuthnow’s After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton, 2007) both provide dense, though helpful, sociological assessments of this demographic. Read more...
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