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In recent weeks, I've been sharing some thoughts about how we make faith "sticky" for our kids (or for any of us, really). You can read the three previous articles here, here, here, and here, but here's a quick summary:
I have a friend Jen who is an experienced Director of Faith Formation (so fancy) who I ran into a few months ago at a swim lesson for our kids. We talked about family ministry and she shared with me four generally-agreed-upon touchpoints that make the faith we share with our kids stick with them for their whole life. You could consider this a checklist, though each one is complex:
- a regular Sunday routine
- summer church camp
- a transformative journey
- campus ministry
The idea is, if our kids have these in their experiential tool box, they are significantly more likely to be part of spiritual community later in life, but they're also significantly more likely to be those compassionate, resilient people reaching out to others as Jesus did.
I'll share more about these four topics in future emails, but for now, maybe notice how each of these showed up in your own life--what was your Sunday routine growing up? It doesn't have to be the same now, but what was it like? Did you go to camp? Or on a mission trip or pilgrimage? What was it like? Were you part of campus ministry? What did you know about it from others if you didn't?
Campus Ministry
College-age folk--18-25 or so--are so curious, so open to the world. Certainly they're not monolithic, generational descriptions are only so helpful, but this moment in our lives is typically marked by leaving home for the first time and coming face to face with a world that is simultaneously more glorious and more dangerous than we'd dreamed. And this age-group is singularly ready and open to receive and hold both.
We all grow up with scripts, a kind of "how to" for life that includes things like how we treat people of a different gender or race, whether we go to church or temple and what that means, what "it's clean" means in practical terms, whether you write thank you notes, how to forgive or apologize, and even what holiday traditions are most important. When we meet other people, and more importantly live with them, those scripts are called into question.
"You open your gifts on Christmas Eve? All of them? Huh."
"How can you consider -that- clean?" or "This is clean enough, I don't understand what more you want from me?"
"I am so sorry for not asking you about your schedule before I planned a movie night. I'll try to check in in the future."
The point is, we are suddenly confronted with other people's experiences that are different than our own and we -get to- ask ourselves how we'll respond. Certainly we often respond poorly, with anger or resentment or sadness or disbelief. And frequently college-age folk don't know they're asking or responding as they are. But this is the laboratory for spiritual experimentation--things are not as I expected them to be, so what do I do with that information?
And campus ministry, at its best, supports those questions and those experiments, in particular with worship and community that value them. Campus ministry provides respite from heavy class loads, emotional stress, and even feelings of meaninglessness.
And, campus ministry provides a bridge between childhood and adulthood. How do we make what we've learned as kids real in our adult lives? What do we want to bring into our lives from our families of origin and what do we want to leave behind? And how is God moving in all of this? How can we see God? At its best, campus ministry doesn't answer these questions but supports the students' in their wondering--kind of like Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, "I wonder..." In my campus ministry, we frequently said, "Tell me more," or "Help me understand that," as a way of inviting more conversation. We mirrored the natural curiosity back to help them consider what they wanted and how the Spirit was nudging.
It's a chaotic time, to be sure, a messy time in folks lives as they feel out the edge of things, but it's also an extremely life-giving time simultaneously. They take what they've experienced in their families and Sunday morning routines, in their camp experiences, in their transformative journeys, and in their everyday lives and shape it into something new.
I wonder how campus ministry was for you? Who was pivotal in your college life? How could St. Tim's support local college ministries? How could we support our own college students who are heading off to study this fall, whether for the first time or the fifth? Begin chatting with your kids long before their senior years about your own experience of college, whether church-y or not. What was important to you? How did you see God in your work and relationships?
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So how to share the faith we have, how to help our kids navigate a dangerous world with compassion? I'm going to muse about these things in the coming weeks here, but if you ever want to just come chat or go have a bourbon and rant about it, please message me! As Cole Arthur Riley writes, "Together we won't get lost in despair."
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