CFC and Adultescence
First off, before I begin, I love my church. CFC is my church and I care about it greatly. CFC is not a perfect church but I try to do my part to make it better. Though I raise issues w/ the church my desire isn’t to criticize or bash it but to bring to light issues that may or may not need addressing.
The topic of adultescence has appeared a number of time on different news articles and is a current topic for today’s sociologists. Someone recently posted an article (though the article isn’t recent) from Time Magazine on adultescence. As I read the article, the people it described reminded me a lot of people I know here at CFC. Right from the first paragraph “They don’t own homes. They change apartments frequently. None of them are married, none have children. All of them are from 24 to 28 years old.” All five of my roommates fit this description. Some other marks of the adultescence (the term I prefer over twixters which the article uses) are the constant changing of jobs, taking more than 4 years to graduate from college, living at home w/ their parents after they graduate, and the desire to live it up before being tied down with commitments. The sociologists are divided on whether this is a good or bad phenomenon. Most agree that this adultescence is a delay to growing up. My question is, does CFC enable or almost promote adultescence and is this necessarily a bad thing?
We live in a campus town where apartments are plentiful and fairly cheap. Life here is always marked with uncertainty with everyone indeterminate about long they’ll stay in the area. This uncertainty prevents the decision to buy a home. Another issue is jobs. As of late, it seems there are many more ‘professional’ jobs in the area. I have a ‘real’ job and get paid competitive wages. Many of my friends also have ‘real’ jobs – IT guys, web designers, teachers, accountants, business men, lawyers, etc. I do think this is a more recent development with many of the previous generations just taking odd jobs to make ends meet while they stay down here. There is still a bunch of that since it’s possible to survive out here with a minimum salary job. In this sense the college town enables the adultescence lifestyle. I would also say though that CFC ‘strongly encourages’ the staying beyond 4 years; whether it’s another year or so in school or taking a job in the area after graduation. From a worldly standpoint – it’s very difficult to ‘climb the CFC ladder’ in 4 years. Most are only coservants their senior year. If you want to be a small grouper leader, it would require more time on campus (though this is slowly being changed). But even as a first year leader, you’re at the bottom of the serving totem pole. If CFC were a business (which it isn’t and I’m not condoning the desires for titles, just merely looking at it from a worldly perspective) it would take more than four years to climb the ladder requiring someone who wished to do so to stay more than 4 years at college(town). On the issue of marriage, CFC strongly encourages the courtship model. The average marrying age of someone in CFC (as opposed to alumni’s) is probably around 26-28 for those who get married. There are a number who are older who aren’t married. This follows the trend of adultescence, a break from our parents who were married in their early 20′s.
Looking at this, I would say that CFC does encourage, promote, or at least enable the adultescence lifestyle. However, the real question is, is this Biblical or at least not un-Biblical.
Some of the major stress points of adultescence given in the article are financial freedom, direction/purpose in life, marriage/commitment and to a lesser extent or related to financial freedom job and home ownership. I’m no biblical expert so I can’t give a birds eye view on the subject therefore my view is narrow and possibly (mostly like?) incomplete. Genesis 2:24 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” To me this implies one Biblical aspect of growing up is leaving from parents. This supports the financial freedom aspect; we are to be financially free from our parents. However, I do not think that many of the other ‘requirements’ as posed by Time are Biblical. How long it takes to graduate, the kind of job someone takes, home ownership, when you get married are all secular ideologies to me. Mark 10:29-30 “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields?and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” Here Jesus is at the very least saying how we should not be attached to the things of this world as compared to him. Note he includes homes and fields (job) in his statement. These things are not as important in the Kingdom view as in the World’s view.
I feel the criticism against adultescence is most secular in its values. It elevates things that God does not elevate. I do believe that while CFC and staying in the Champaign Urbana area does enable many aspects of adultescence, they aren’t un-Biblical aspects and might even be Biblical as opposed to the world’s view. The people who do stay learn to become financially independent, maturing and developing character, and they do have a purpose. Maybe not the same purpose as the world would like them to have but we’re not out to please the world, just our Heavenly Father.