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Dear youth and parents,

I mentioned last week that I will be sharing bits and pieces from the Sticky Faith Summit that Steve Midgley, Larry Thomas, Kera Watts, and I attended recently, so here's an interesting thing I took away: Did you know that the length of adolesence has been increasing for the last 30+ years?  Whereas most teenagers reached adulthood around 18 a generation ago, today most researchers conclude that process continues into the mid-20's.  The life stage from 18-25ish has been called "extended adolescence" by some (ouch) and "emerging adulthood" by others (that's a little nicer).  The factors that have led to this go all the way back to the industrial revolution, but one of the most interesting thing's we learned from Chap Clark, a professor at Fuller Seminary, is that most of the structures that used to prepare children and adolescents for adulthood have either gone away or been transformed into something completely different.

Chap used Little League as an example.  Baseball became America's pastime in the early 20th century, and adults realized that youth and children needed to learn about baseball because it had become part of adulthood.  Enter Little League - designed to teach the fundamentals of baseball to children so that they could enjoy a central aspect of American culture as adults.  However, over the last 50 years Little League has largely ceased to serve that purpose.  Now, it's a competitive sport that's focused not on teaching the game for socialization, but to prepare children to continue to compete at higher and higher levels of play.  What's more, the primary role of coaches is not to teach a part of American culture to children and mentor them into adulthood.  They're expected to win, and to help players develop the technical skills needed to continue winning at the next level.  It's worth asking youself, "What things are my kids doing that are helping them transition to adulthood?  And what things are exclusively focused on competition or entertainment as children or youth?"

Last week I began offering family-oriented reflections shared by Herb and Jessica from the Sticky Faith Lenten resource they're using at youth groups on Sunday nights from now until Easter.  Read on for this week's reflection, Prom Dream sign-ups, and more!

Grace and Peace,
Russ 

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