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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Leaving young adulthood prompts life crisis Eric Van Meter, Jan 20, 2009
Eric Van Meter
By Eric Van Meter Special Contributor
Editor’s note: This is the first in a six-part series.
A new year begins, and I’m in crisis. Not that this is a new thing for me—or for anyone.
Given the violent uprisings and economic meltdowns the world has witnessed over the past 12 months, I don’t know many people who are not dealing with some sort of catastrophe.
In the wake of so much turmoil, I realize that my personal crisis is miniscule. Still, it’s my crisis.
It stares me in the face every time I look in the mirror. It tugs at my ankles whenever I go up for a jump shot. It’s even starting to shine through my hair in front and on the crown of my head.
I am now 35 years old.
Thirty-five is no man’s land, in terms of aging. It doesn’t carry with it the same distinction as 16 or 21 or even 50, nor does it come with the black balloons and over-the-hill coffee mugs of 40 or 60.
It’s too old for an identity crisis, too young for a midlife crisis. When I tell friends about my struggles—particularly those who have broken the four-decade barrier—I get little sympathy.
Yet 35 does carry with it an important distinction: I am no longer a “young” adult; I’m an adult, without qualification.
I could run for president, but I no longer understand the Super Bowl commercials. I have lower car insurance, but United Methodist researcher Lovett Weems can no longer count me as one of the young clergy on his endangered species list.
I’m not sure I’m ready for this, but there’s not much I can do to stop it. Einstein notwithstanding, time for us always moves at the same rate and in the same direction. A transition has been thrust upon me, whether I like it or not. I can either whine about what I used to be and what I wish I still were, or set my sights on what I still might become.
Sound familiar? To those of us who call ourselves United Methodists, it should.
Mainline churches in the United States have been lost in transition for most of my life. In the last 10 years, I’ve heard the data about declining numbers and aging congregations repeated ad nauseam. I’ve seen many people grieve over the denomination’s decline in social and political influence.
But is that really what we want? Influence and power? Those didn’t seem very high on Jesus’ priority list.
The answer, regardless, is that what we want is moot. We are transitioning into a post-liberal, post-conservative, post-institutional—in short, postmodern world. Institutions, and especially churches, must recognize that their influence is at least changing. The UMC may be moving a bit slower in this than the culture at large, but the transition is upon us nonetheless.
So how do we grapple with this new reality? How do we move from bemoaning what we’ve lost to embracing what we can become? I doubt I have the authority to write the prescription—much less fill it—but I can offer some ideas based on my ongoing transition into Unqualified Adulthood.
First off, if there is a magic pill for courage, I suggest we swallow it. We’ll need it if we want to take an honest look at the past we cherish or the future we hope to inhabit.
I found this out the hard way. Just before my birthday, a friend posted some photographs of our college days on a social networking Web site. In my mind, these were golden years, filled with the friendships that continue to nurture me to this day. When I clicked the link, I expected to see the Me of my memory.
Unfortunately, memory and reality were not even in the same area code. Instead of a confident young man with boyish good looks, I saw a cross between Alfred E. Neuman and Richie Cunningham. The geeky, awkward kid in the photograph stared back at me through enormous glasses, five years out of style, even in 1993. My ego has yet to recover from the sight.
Looking at our church’s past may not be quite so painful. We have much to celebrate, to be sure. But we’ll need a healthy dose of courage to realize that however good the good old days were, they cannot be recreated. The pictures—whether triumphant or embarrassing—make great scrapbook material, but lousy road signs.
Once we accept that we cannot recreate the past, courage becomes even more important. A friend of mine likes to say that people do not fear change so much as they fear the unknown. Given the amount of time we spend on vision and planning and strategy, I’d say he’s right. We go to great lengths to manage the future, to cure our own anxiety by allowing only the changes that are inevitable, even as we couch our immobility in the most cutting-edge vocabulary we can find.
Again, I’m afraid Jesus has bad news for us. His invitation to discipleship is frighteningly open-ended. Come follow me, he says. Rarely does he include the destination. If we have the courage to answer him, we’ll also have to develop the trust to follow without knowing where he will lead. Some might even call this faith.
I’ve been encouraged lately by conversations I’ve had with some of our denomination’s leaders. They are expressing not only a desire for Methodism to transition from institution to movement, but also a realization that such a transition cannot be managed. It seems we’ve found ourselves out of Egypt, but without a map. The best thing we can do is to follow the cloud.
Transition, then, takes the courage to leave the past, and the faith to begin the journey without knowing the destination. If you think that sounds far too nebulous, you’re probably right. So I suggest we infuse all of this with a healthy dose of humor.
Not surprisingly, I’ve had to do this with my own transition across the young-adult threshold. A college student I work with recently observed that I was now the same age as his mother was the year he was born. I suppose he thought I’d find that funny. After smashing a few things on my desk, I did. It’s all right for us to laugh at ourselves. In fact, I’d say it’s a must.
The best thing about a healthy transition is that once it’s accepted, it opens up nearly endless opportunities for us to grow. Crises aside, I look forward to what I’ll become in the next phase of my life. I look forward to what my church will become as well. Ready or not, it’s time to get moving.
Mr. Van Meter is the director of the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University.
Eric Van Meter
