Slide presentation for the fourth session of MidAmerica-UUA's online course Youth & Young Adult Ministries. This session was about Late Adolescence & Emerging Adulthood.

1. Youth & Young Adult Ministries
Session Four
Late Adolescence/Emerging Adulthood
& Worship

2. Late Adolescence (ages 18-22) Emerging Adulthood (18-26…27…28)
ADOLESCENT/YOUNG ADULT DEVELOPMENT

3. Physical Growth
• Achieves full physical development
• Gains more assurance about body image
• Engages in sexual activity; more likely to be
partnered
• Learns to manage stress and maintain health

4. Cognitive, Intellectual Development
• Particularly open to learning; a time ripe for
formal/informal education
• Expresses ideas with more linguistic skill
• May see many points of view and may claim
multiple realities as the truth (relativism)
• May claim self as a ―producer‖ of knowledge
(not just a consumer)

5. Social, Affective Development
• Increases self-reliance
• Develops sense of identity and intimacy
• Expresses interest in vocational and personal life
choices
• Brings to realization sexual identity of self
• Makes choices (either explicitly or not) to claim
sexual identity
• While relationships with peers are still important,
they do not define the self

6. Social, Affective Development
• May feel pressures to claim racial/ethnic
identity in different spheres
• May reject alliances based solely on race
• Negotiates more knowledgably racism as a
system of privilege and oppression
• Needs involvement with diverse peers to
continue healthy racial and ethnic identity
development

7. Moral Development
• Wrestles with personal morality and life
choices
• Expresses interest in moral and philosophical
thinking, for self and wider world

8. Spiritual, Religious, Faith Development
• Claims authority around issues of faith
• Further develops spirituality as an important
part of self
• Engages in ―faith‖ beyond traditional
organized religion
• Considers the role of faith in identity

9. Support for Late Adolescent Stage
• Continue providing information about safe sex
and contraception
• Provide for self-care including stress management
• Respect the privacy and intellect of the young
adult
• Provide complex problems and thick questions to
ponder
• Tie activities to broader concepts or issues (i.e.
philosophical, existential, social activist lenses)

10. Support for Late Adolescent Stage
• Understand that intimacy and identity
development are tied together and respect the
young adult’s attention to this aspect of life
• Provide models and conversations about
vocations and life choices
• Celebrate and channel the young adult’s moral
idealism into action
• Celebrate the process of searching that is part
of late adolescence

11. Youth Ministry in Late Adolescence
• They’re still adolescents!
• They need a gentle shove into adulthood.
Youth workers must take careful note—in an age
where adulthood is delayed and adolescence is
lengthening—to help kids grow into people who
know who they are and who take responsibility
for their lives.

12. What Is Emerging Adulthood?
• It is the age of identity explorations, of trying out
various possibilities, especially in love and work.
• It is the age of instability.
• It is the most self-focused age of life.
• It is the age of feeling in-between, in transition,
neither adolescent nor adult.
• It is the age of possibilities, when hopes flourish,
when peoplehave an unparalleled opportunity to
transform their lives.

13. Emerging Adulthood Development
• Developing intellectual, social and physical
competence.
• Learning to manage emotions.
• Moving through autonomy toward
interdependence.
• Developing mature interpersonal relationships.

14. Emerging Adulthood Development
• Establishing identity.
• Developing purpose.
• Developing integrity.

15. Generational Faith Formation
• Builder Generation (1945 and earlier)
• Baby Boom Generation (1946–1964)
• Generation X (1965–1979)
• Millennial Generation (1980–1999)
• Generation 2000 or the iGeneration (2000–)

16. Millennial Generation
• introduction to technology, literally at birth
• constant media diet
• adeptness at multitasking
• fervor for communication technologies
• love of virtual social worlds and anything
internet-related
• ability to use technology to create a vast array
of ―content"

17. Millennial Generation
• unique learning style
• need for constant motivation
• closeness to family
• confidence
• openness to change
• need for collective reflection
• desire for immediacy

18. Millennial Generation
• Can we have that yesterday?
• Our attention spans are shot.
• We still haven't grown up.
• We remember what it was like 'before'
• We're all going to be famous. Briefly.

19. Millennial Generation
• We have multiple personalities.
• After we die, we live on, online.
• We care less about cars.
• This will be on our permanent records.
• We are expert multi-taskers.

20. YOUTH & YOUNG ADULT WORSHIP

21. Youth Worship
The "Coming of Age" worship
experience helps late adolescents/emerging
adults to:
• learn more about Unitarian Universalism
• have ways to articulate their own beliefs
• A core CoA worship feature are the statements
of personal belief (credo statements)

22. Youth Worship
"Coming of Age" worship service participants:
• experience worship that ministers to their
spiritual and social needs
• develop skills and confidence in planning and
leading worship
• grow in their capacity to take on
responsibilities in a group

23. Young Adult Worship
Myths About Worship For Young Adults
• It is not a ―dumbed-down‖ version of
traditional Sunday morning worship.
• The message is just presented in a different
way
• A way that keeps people’s attention and brings
them to a deeper place

24. Young Adult Worship
• Another common misconception is that the
phrase ―spiritually vital and alive‖ means that
somehow we must abandon all hope of a
message that is rational.
• Spirituality and reason can go hand in hand,
and young adults do not ask for a religion that
does not make sense to them based in their
own experience.

25. Young Adult Worship
Emerging adults want worship
• that speaks to their experiences in life
• that challenges them to develop deeper
relationships
• that connects them to things that are beyond
themselves—in human relationships, struggles
for justice, or a connection with nature or God
or any other profound mystery.

26. The Sermon Sandwich

27. A Contemporary Worship Platter