terri martinson elton, phd

Why study young adults? “There is something particularly powerful and poignant about the ‘twenty-something’ years, harboring, as they do, both promise and vulnerability. Young adults embody critical strengths and yet remain dependent in distinctive ways, upon recognition, support, challenge, and inspiration. Not only the quality of individual young adult lives but also our future as a culture depends in no small measure upon our capacity to recognize the emerging competence of young adults, to initiate them into big questions, and to give them access to worthy dreams.” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, xi Big questions Worthy dreams

What are…  …their ways of thinking?  …their forms of authority?  …their patterns of belonging? These are the critical questions, according to Sharon Daloz Parks, that will help us understand the imagination of young adults and there implications for forming meaning, purpose, and faith. Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, xii

“Now, at the dawning of the twenty-first century, I continue to watch young adults reach for a place of belonging, integrity, and contribution that can anchor meaningful hope in themselves and our shared future – while the tides of cynicism and the prevailing currents of consumerism play big roles in charting their course.” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 3

Cultural clues for young adult’s passaging into adulthood.

“What is the key marker that defines the task of the young adult era?” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 5 The central work is not a task or circumstances… ”Rather, the promise and vulnerability of young adulthood lie in the experience of the birth of critical awareness and the dissolution and recomposition of the meaning of self, other, world, and ‘God.’” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 5 Whether this work is done, or not, has consequences for the adult years ahead. Hence…young adulthood is the time for “asking big questions and discovering worthy dreams.” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 5

“We human beings seem unable to survive, and certainly cannot thrive, unless we can make meaning.” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 7 Meaning helps humans make sense of things – to create order and patterns, make decisions, envision the future, withstand suffering. Parks invites readers to associate this capacity and demands for “meaning-making” with the word “faith.”

 “Faith is more adequately recognized as the activity of seeking and discovering meaning in the most comprehensive dimensions of our experience.” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 7  “To become a young adult in faith is to discover in a critically aware, self-conscious manner the limits of inherited or otherwise socially received assumptions about how life works – what is ultimately true and trustworthy, and what counts – and to recompose meaning and faith on the other side of that discovery.” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 7 Agree or Disagree?

 Without special attention to young adulthood, these adult visions will be shaped in a vacuum without guidance of larger societal institutions and/or will be overly influenced by the particular aspects of the culture that are paying attention to young adults. “young adulthood is the birthplace of adult vision” Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, 8

How this work gets done, for each generation, matters to society as a whole! And given the extremely fast paced culture in which we live, with much discontinuity, without tending to this phenomenon, the wisdom of previous generations will be lost, as will the imagination of the current generation of emerging adults! Without BOTH society will not be able to address the challenges and opportunities of this complex, multi-dimensional, global world in which we live.

What would ministry around meaning-making look like for younger adults?