Young Adults & Transition

Hello and welcome to another Pivot Northwest Podcast. Today, we're talking about young adults and transition. There's perhaps no more turbulent time in a person's life than young adulthood, and this can have a large impact on the lives of young adults and how they interact with their church communities. If you're a young adult trying to navigate transition, or if you're part of a church trying to help young adults navigate life's transitions, we think this episode will provide some good food for thought.

We hope you are blessed by this conversation. Hello everyone. Welcome to another Pivot Northwest Podcast. Today, I am joined by Nate Humphries and Linda Montano, and we're going to hear from them shortly, but I just wanted to give a little preface to our conversation today.

Today's podcast is about young adults and transition. As we've learned from our church partners over the last five years or so, one of the biggest challenges for their young adult ministries has been transition. Young adulthood is perhaps the most turbulent time in people's lives. They're changing jobs, locations, going to school, navigating personal life developments like relationships, marriage, maybe children.

There's a lot on young adults plates, which often means that young adults don't feel like they have the bandwidth to invest in churches, or they'll get involved and then have to leave a few months later for one reason or another. So transition is often framed as a challenge, both for young adults whose lives are up in the air and for the churches that want to invest in them, but don't feel like they're really giving much of a return on investment. So I invited both Nate and Linda here today, because I think Nate's story and Linda's research helps us to change the framework through which we understand transition. Rather than viewing it as a challenge, what we've learned is that churches can view this as an opportunity instead.

So let's take a step back here and I will ask Linda and Nate to introduce themselves. Linda, maybe we'll start with you. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your connection to pivot Northwest? Sure, Lauren, I'd be happy to.

So my name is Linda Montano and I just completed my third year in a doctoral program in industrial and organizational psychology at Seattle Pacific University. I got connected to pivot. I was recruited to be a part of the project because of where I was at in my program. I had, you know, gained the research skills and knowledge that the program was looking for.

And so I have the opportunity to join about halfway through the grant and be part of the what we call the data team and the folks who were doing research. So that's how I got connected and it was a great journey. Wonderful. Thanks, Linda.

And Nate, can you also introduce yourself and tell us about your connection to pivot Northwest? Yeah, I'm Nate Humphries. I am currently just finished my second year at Columbia Theological Seminary where I'm going to get a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of the Arts in Practical Theology with a Focus in Past World Care. It's a bit of a mouthful.

Yeah, and I was involved for a little while with a pivot in, I guess, giving back feedback as a part of the grant research process and kind of being a part of one of the young adult groups that was funded by some of the pivot Northwest funding and letting them know about our experience as a part of that. Cool. Yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about your connection to the church that you were connected to that was involved with the pivot Northwest? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, so we have, it's actually kind of two churches in the Olympia Washington area. There's the United churches of Olympia, which is a combined UCC PCUSA congregation and Westminster Presbyterian Church, which is a PCUSA congregation. And I think this kind of grew out of, we just have a lot of similar values and the youth ministry was already kind of shared between the two churches, kind of, I think, as a practical matter for funding and also just to help have a larger youth group. So when the young adult funding came in with the grant, we sort of did a similar thing.

So it's a shared combined group between the two churches. I would say a lot of us are late 20s to mid 30s. I think we have a pretty good cross section of kind of where people are socioeconomically, but yeah, kind of a, I would say, small to medium size congregations. I think probably around or under 250 members in a kind of a, not a major metropolitan area, but it's, it is the state capital.

So it's kind of a, in between, it's like a big town or small city. Yeah, that if that helps give a better idea for the context. Great, Linda will switch back to you for a second. You recently wrote an article that specifically tackles transition.

So first of all, why did you decide to focus your research on that specific topic? Yeah, great, great question. So as we got towards the end of the, the grant, one of the things that the pivot leadership wanted to do was to try to capture some of the lessons learned and also dive a little bit deeper into some of the things that we were learning. And so we were given a lot of leeway to, you know, what resonated with us?

What would we have the energy around following up further? And there was a theme that stood out really strong just across all of the ethnography work. And that was the theme of transition and the idea that young adult who did the time of transition. And so that stood out to me.

And then the second one, second reason is someone once told me research what you want to learn, write about what you want to learn. And I'm like, I want to know how to live well in transition because this is a life skill, right? Like this is a life skill. So, you know, it's something that has enduring value.

And, and so I really was fascinated by the topic, first of all. And then again, there were some really neat clues in the ethnography research where people have talked about gave us questions, right? So one of the questions was what would it look like if the church was a transition station? Can the church be a transition station?

Does it want to be? And so that idea really resonated with me. And so that sort of drove my, the direction that I went as I was trying to understand what does it, what does transition mean during the end of the period of life, especially what does it mean to live well? What does it mean when you put these things together?

And then what does it mean when you bring the church into the mix? So that was sort of, yeah, what kept me going through the project. Yeah. And what were some of your biggest take aways from that research?

Yeah, I think one of the most hopeful and exciting was this idea that you can live well in transition. I think we often think about happiness and life satisfaction is that thing you achieve at the end of a transition, right? Like when I get to school, when I, you know, find the partner, when I have the child, when I get the house, when, you know, when these things happen, you know, I get to the geographical location, I want to be, we often see, you know, life satisfaction and happiness and well-being and health, I think also around, you know, especially for folks who are in school, there's a tendency to push really hard, like, you get enough sleep, are you eating right? Like these, all these questions that also connect to well-being and living well.

And so the research was really clear on this, that it is possible and that it does require a little bit of a reframe. So this was my second big takeaway, which was the sort of like how to, and it really was this idea of thinking about transition not as a pathway to living well, but as a pathway for, it's the site on which living well is actually unfolding. And so that was, I think two big, two big things for me. Oh, that's great.

Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting to think about, yeah, a lot of our life is lived in the transition phase, like those moments of completing transition are often fleeting. And so it's, it really is important to think about how can you be living well in those parts of your life too. Let's see, let's talk back to Nate for a second.

I want to come back to that. But, Nate, can you tell us a bit about the transitions in your life over the past five years? Yeah. So I think partly just on the subject matter as a whole, and thinking about this, I think one of the things that's occurred to me and thinking about how people of other generations understand the experience of young adults and things like that.

So I think oftentimes, you know, especially in popular publications, things get framed as sort of affectations that are really adaptations. I think I know my experience and the experience of a lot of friends that I have is of growing, growing up and coming to adulthood in a time of very little stability. So for for big transitions in life, besides the normal ones of going to college and getting married, I think a notable one was graduating college in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse was a big thing. Other transitions I've been through are, I've moved a lot of different places before eventually settling in Washington, so relocating and all the things that go with that.

I went through a divorce after 10 years of marriage, which was a huge, you know, that's a huge transition on every level of your life. And through job transitions, I have also, I served on session as an elder, which is another transition of going from being a member of the congregation to being someone who's entrusted with making those some decisions and doing some discernment on behalf of the congregation. And then career-wise, just changing jobs, going back to school for seminary to go into ministry. I think that's another really common transition that's a part of that kind of continual cycle of adaptation that I see as you moving through phases of life.

And just something that really resonated from Linda's research and what she just said was the kind of doing away with the myth of arrival is called because we've had so much being in flux and instability that it's really like not feasible or sustainable to wait till you get to a certain point because there is all one journey, it doesn't stop. So even when we think we're at a point, you know, like you said, it doesn't last long so learning how to not wait to live and have a full life while also keeping down so you don't get burned out and things like that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And how has your involvement in church impacted you during these times of transition?

I would say it's been actually been helpful. Sometimes I've been and moving around, I've been to places where it was just really hard to feel connected to the congregation and feel involved. The places where it has felt easy, like I felt not just welcomed but like people understood elements of my experience well and people were interested and invested in me that made a tremendous amount of difference because it's hard to develop those social ties, especially outside of the workplace. So that's been a huge thing and going through different transitions.

You know, I don't I think it would have been much harder going through things like my divorce without a church that I really felt at home at and that I felt supported by and had people who were kind of walking with me through those transitions. Yeah, definitely. So and when you, let's see. So you were at Westminster, correct, in Olympia?

Yeah. That was your kind of home church. And how long were you involved with that church? She's time is so hard to figure out.

It was in the before times. I think COVID, 20, I want to say 2018 would have been somewhere around there. Okay. And you decided to go to seminary in 2020, correct?

Yeah. Yeah. So so you were able to be there for a couple of years. And during that time is when you is when you were on session, like how long how long were you involved with the church before you stepped into a leadership role?

It was not all that long. I think it was maybe maybe about a year or so before being being asked to be on session. And then you I guess what was how has the church supported you or what did that kind of what did your process of transition look like in connection to that church? Yeah, it does.

You know, and it was a during a weird time, which was 2020 when it's like, oh, well, hopefully by the fall when I'm starting, you know, everything will be back to normal waiting on that. But it's sort of in some ways, I think that was a helpful thing as hard as it was for everything to just like be in online and over zoom and things like that. That didn't mean that aside from the time difference, it was pretty easy for me to still stay connected and in relationship with people and feel feel like I was still involved in the community and that they were involved with my life. So I will say that was kind of unique circumstances that made it easy.

But there's there's little things as well. Like I still get cards in the mail from my deacon at church, just like writes little notes to everyone in her area and things like that. So sort of the appreciating it when people, you know, think of me and kind of reach out, you know, it's a very like validating and energizing thing to have. Yeah, for sure.

What was their reaction to you going to seminary? They were very excited and really supportive. So I think I think that is felt really good to have a community that I felt a part of really like seeing other people be excited for you, especially if you're the one going through the transition, sometimes you're a little caught up in the nuts and bolts of like, okay, I need to find a living situation and I need to figure out how I'm going to get, you know, my Subaru and load it up with all my stuff and then make it all the way across the country, with my dog and all of that. So that can be, I guess, almost a grounding thing is having people be excited for you when you're in the middle of trying to figure out all of those sometimes really stressful things can help you keep perspective.

Yeah, and it's through those church connections that you now have the internship that you do, correct? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think it's been nice to sort of see how involvement with different things kind of tends to come back up or, you know, when you're building something, you don't always know like the ways it's going to pay off in the future. Yeah, you know, I certainly going to the young adult group wasn't thinking like, oh, well, maybe I'll meet the pastor who's going to become a solo pastor who then I'm going to do an internship under is just developing relationships with those people.

And this has maybe taken us a little bit off the current topic, but I was going to say you mentioned getting people involved and invested. You think it is tricky for young adults? It's not that we don't want to be involved and invest, but just with schedules with other responsibilities. It's hard to be able to make commitments something I have seen be really successful.

We've done it on session at our church where we have a, I think it's helpful for everyone, even though we have a span of age ranges. And I've noticed it being a trend as seminary in the leadership of the student organizations. And that's more of like co-leadership models where you have someone who is a co-leader with you. So you have someone to collaborate with, some to bounce ideas off of, because it's a lot easier to take that on in leadership, where you at least have someone you can turn to and be like, do we have any idea what we're doing?

And do we feel, you know, are we both feeling imposter syndrome right now and, you know, having that flexibility, I think is helpful and useful. Yeah, that's interesting that you bring that up, because that's definitely something that we've seen in our research as well for young adult teams and for pastoral teams. It's just really helpful to have, to have a team as opposed to putting it all on one person's shoulders. Let's say, so Linda, this is kind of your first time getting to meet Nate and hearing his story.

So do you have any comments or questions on what you just heard? I do. And this has been really fun to be thinking about. And I'll just put it this way, Nate.

Like of the four kinds, and I'm kind of foreshadowing one of the questions that you had given us ahead of time to start thinking about kind of priming the pump, if you will, Lauren, which was like, what do you mean by living well in the transitions? Like, what is that? And so I'm curious, you know, for Nate, you know, thinking about the things that, you know, you've gone through and your experiences sort of four different lenses or ways of thinking about living well include, you know, good old-fashioned happiness, life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and then mattering, which is the ability to shake the decisions that are happening around you and the impact and influence, the trajectory of others that are in your sphere of influence. So, you know, just bits and pieces of your story touched on each of those.

And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the belt experiences as you were going through your journey, you know, what were some of the highs and lows? Because I think that was the other thing that really stood out for me and it was really great when I came across it, which was this idea that positive and negative emotions are not opposite ends of a scale. I kind of always thought that. And I was like, if I'm a good Christian and I'm supposed to be living an abundant life and I'm supposed to be happy all the time, what's going on here?

I feel sorrow. I feel frustration. I feel all the things. And so recognizing the truth of, you know, peace in the midst of pain, joy in the midst of sorrow.

And vice versa is, you know, not only biblical, but it's real. It's the human condition. And so really trying to tune into what are all the emotions and how do you make sure that you're not just getting once, you know, getting the negative ones and fighting the positive ones in there as well, but also not being unrealistic about, and I think for transitions, especially understanding and for churches and folks who are walking either through a transition themselves or with others, being able to recognize and understand that is crucial. So with that very long winded question, I'd love to hear your thoughts about your journey.

Yeah. I think the first thing that comes to mind is most of the things I can think of so far as living well are very relational. And I think there's a few elements to that and maybe jumping around a little bit. But also, I do think what you just said about being able to feel more than one feeling at once and validate those is really crucial.

I feel like that was a big moment for me was kind of learning to do that better. I think it's really helpful when you have people around you who just talk about that and kind of give you permission for that and most of all who model that because I think oftentimes if we don't do that, we're spending so much energy denying the feelings we don't want to deny that we actually don't have much capacity to feel the things that we want to feel. And at the end of the day, feelings are important and valid and they're also just information. It's your body's way of giving you feedback about what's going on.

So if you're able to listen to all of it, you have a better understanding of where you're at and what's going on. And then relationally, I would say, I think having just really strong friendships and sort of found family has been really crucial to me. I think it makes a huge difference going through a transition where you have spaces where you know you are fully seen and understood versus not having those spaces. And that makes a huge difference in the load that you're trying to shoulder.

I guess I would say inclusion and hospitality are tremendous things. And I would say I'm going to qualify that and say proactive inclusion because I think you do see a lot of churches saying like, hey, everyone's welcome here. And that's a really good place to start. The question is not like, are you going to push me out the door a lot of times?

It's more, is this a place where I can bring my full self and feel like there's going to be space for that and feel like people are going to have some understanding of my experience, or at least the curiosity to want to understand my experience? I think that makes a tremendous difference as well. Sorry, I'm going to jump into it for a second. Are there specific ways that you saw people in your church be proactively inclusive?

What does that look like or do you have an example of that? Yeah, I would say getting invitations to go to lunch just from people who I just met and maybe been talking to at the fellowship hour, I think being invited to meals in general is a big thing, a big way of building community. Also, I think seeing diversity in leadership, knowing that there are LGBTQ people on session, knowing that there's other people in leadership positions, making decisions that represent a variety of backgrounds, you know, ethnically, socioeconomically, things like that. The more you have of that, the better, because seeing that there's space made for other people is a good indication of like, okay, like, there's going to be space made for me here too, no matter where I am and all of that.

Thanks for letting me hijack that for a second. I do have one other thought, which it feels related to me. I don't know if this logic makes sense, but I do think there's something in how a church sees itself as a part of the broader community and relates to the broader community that I have found to be a big indication to me as to whether I'm going to feel at home there or not, because I've found, I think it comes down to being able to meet people where they're at. And I think churches that are involved in the community just for the sake of this is our community, and we want people here to, you know, have access to the things they need access to to not be going hungry, to have housing and things like that, in a way that's not like transactional, where like, you know, sometimes you see it with churches where it kind of feels like, oh, well, this is a approaching service, like a branding opportunity.

But I think if people are present in their community, engaged with their community and things like that, I think that just shows a culture of a church that is able to go out and care about people where they're at and meet them where they're at. And I think that extends to people who, you know, come to your church on Sunday. And there also tends to be maybe fewer assumptions, I guess, it's less about like, fitting in for the person who's coming and feeling invited in. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it does. You know, I remember when I had this point in the research as well, right, because I started out looking at living well through these very traditional lenses of happiness, life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and then it came across a fourth lens. Actually, one of my professors introduced me to this theory of mattering for Lotensky is the person associated with this. And it really is a fundamental redistribution of power.

Like, it's a kingdom movement where it's not about the people who have sharing what they have with others, but about fundamentally redistributing the fruits of our labor so that everyone shares in the fruits of their labor, right? And we're in a capitalist society where the fruits of the labor of any organization are not evenly distributed, right? The idea is that some folks deserve more of that share than others and based on whatever methodology is in play in terms of market values and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, if someone's not sharing in the fruits of their labor to a sufficient degree, that they also then have the power to do good, to shape the institutions that are making policies and laws, to shape the church, to shape the community, that's not living well, according to the fullest possibility of living well.

And so this idea that Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all this idea that like, oh, if my basic needs are met somehow living well or it's my meaning and purpose and that's all lovely. But this idea that it's not enough to be valued, but we also need to have the capacity to add value. And then our society prohibits someone from being able to add value. That's an injustice and it's something that, especially in the church, to be thinking about what does this mean and how do we address that at a systemic level, not just an interpersonal level.

And so that was something that really stood out in terms of how does the church think about being a transition station? What does that mean to the church to be in this space and helping every member of the body of Christ to live well? I think that's beautifully said and really interesting there's an Isaiah 65 sermon in there where it talks about, you know, God's people shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant food and vineyards and shall eat the fruit and they shall not build in another inhabit and they shall not plant in another harvest.

And then, you know, like the days of the tree shall eat for my people as I'm butchering it, but they shall long enjoy the fruits of their hands or something like that, which I think is important. And I'll bring in a specific example of early on going to Westminster and learning that there was an initiative to build a tiny house village to provide transitional housing on the church campus. So it wasn't, you know, I think this was a pretty unique thing. I've been to churches where they're like, okay, we're going to do this good thing for this issue.

We're going to send it off somewhere else. But this was more of a, I think, a model that had a little more mutuality to it. And that was, you know, we're going to invite people into our community. We're going to work with the city to provide these services and this place for them to have stability so they can move on to hopefully permanent housing.

And I think that was a huge signal to me, one, about the way that that church interacted with the community and viewed its relationship there. But to go with what Linda was saying, it was like something very substantial and concrete and meaningful that also was like, oh, I could be a part of this, you know, homelessness in the Olympia area as it is in many places is a big and growing issue. And it can be really hard, you know, seeing people living in tents and campers and stuff. So being a part of a community where you're feeling like we're not going to solve it, but we can do something meaningful, I think, is a huge, a huge thing.

Yeah, that's a great example. And what you were saying, Linda, also just reminds me of, I mean, it ties in so perfectly with what we've seen from our young adults and the ways that they connect with churches. It's churches that we're just trying to like provide for young adults where they're just like, come to this pizza party, come to this thing that we have created for you. They didn't gain the same traction as churches that really were intentional about telling, showing the young adults that they wanted them in the leadership structures or that they wanted their voices involved in decision-making or they wanted those young adults to find ways that they could, yeah, matter to that community.

Young adult groups that gave the power more to the young adults and asked them what they wanted to do, how they wanted to structure and how they wanted to integrate with the larger church. I mean, you can see that in Nate's story where, you know, they asked you to be on the session after you hadn't been there super long. That really shows that you as a whole person mattered to them and you were able to, it seems, feel that and you gain both of the church and you gained a lot from that experience. Yeah, especially not that any of us knew that this was going to happen, but especially as that very quickly became I'm on session as we're trying to figure out and make decisions on COVID, you know, like March, April 2020 and that was that I felt like I mattered, you know, obviously, and it was a humbling thing and it was, yeah, I think a great thing for me and hopefully a great thing for the churches as well to have people like me involved.

Yeah, so I have just a couple more questions if you all are okay with that. The first one being there, so there is an understandable perspective from a lot of churches that, you know, young adults are in so much transition, they don't stick around very long, it can feel to churches like they don't get back what they put in when they try and develop relationships with young adults, they'll invest in a young adult and then a couple months later, this person will be gone and that can be really hard on churches and it can be frustrating for leaders or congregants who are trying to develop relationships. This question can be for either of you or both of you. What would be your response to people who voice that perspective?

Well, I think for me, the, I guess, the question that comes to mind is what does success look like? You know, if we're talking about return on investment, what is that return? And if success is, you know, a young person becoming established in the congregation and being there for the next 60 years, you know, that's going to be a challenging thing. If success is we are bringing people into our community and caring for them and letting them care for us, you know, the best we can as a part of that, then, you know, you can have success no matter how long that duration is.

And I will say that I think, basically, you never know how things are going to circle back around because maybe that young adult will have to move for a job or whatever happens, but there might be a time when they're able to come back and they have the ability to be like maybe have more control over where they live. And they might be like, I want to go back here because I know that I have this community that loves me and accepts me as a part of it. Or even if that doesn't happen, then some other community is going to benefit from the development and the seeds you planted to go to a prevalent biblical image. Those will sprout elsewhere sometimes, but that also means that hopefully, you know, the winds of transition will carry other seeds to you from trees and plants that other people have planted.

I think it really takes looking at the very big picture and not getting too hung up on, you know, the particular metrics, so to speak, of the local congregation. Yeah, I think that's really well said. We got Pastor Nate here, bringing the biblical references. I like it.

They're training you well in seminary or seminary is just a good fit for you. Linda, you want to add to that? Yeah, yeah, and it's great that Nate's got the theological perspective because I've only got the psychological piece, so. Well, that's hopefully wonderful.

You two are complimenting one another here. Yeah, so there are two things that stood out to me that I would like to highlight. And one of them is that the grief curve and the change curve mirror each other to a startling degree. And one of the things that we heard in the research from folks who are older and younger alike is that it can be difficult time after time after time to build relationships, get attached to somebody, and then have to say goodbye.

And so I think that's one of the reasons we need the whole church to be involved in this is that when one person maybe doesn't have the bandwidth to invest in a new relationship, someone else does. When someone needs to take a step back and, you know, nurture existing relationships, there's someone else maybe who's ready to step into a new relationship. So I think that recognizing that not everybody can at every moment be experiencing growth in relationships and taking on more, but at the same time we need some who can't, right? And so being really cognizant of the role of grief and getting really good, I think this again gets back the idea of when the church thinks of itself as a transition station and what are the skills that it needs to develop?

What are the, you know, the things that needs to get really good at? And one of them is comfort, right? Like, where's our comforter? Who's the comforter?

Recognizing that we need comfort when we go through transitions, whether we're the one experiencing them or walking beside somebody who's going through them. So I think recognizing the church is a place of rich resources of, you know, the resources that Christ has given us and being able to lean into those and remind each other of those is really, really critical. And then the second thing going back to young adults and transitions being, again, thinking about cultural norms that a lot of the challenge comes from the fact that there are biological norms and clocks that are ticking for folks. There are societal norms and expectations that maybe parents, grandparents, larger society, employers, and people in the church have about what a successful young adulthood looks like.

And the reality is for some folks, that maybe their vision as well. For others, it may not map at all onto who they are or what they need to experience in life. And so this can create challenge and intention and make this time of life especially difficult because it is a navigation, a navigational process. And so, again, going back to churches that are willing to embrace this idea of being a transition station, recognizing when are we as a church contributing to, you know, to human flourishing across the board, when are we, you know, creating maybe unrealistic expectations or we have, you know, sort of church traditions that simply aren't going to work.

Given, again, I keep thinking about like technology, globalization, the forces that keep people moving and have them experiencing life in different ways. So for churches that, you know, take up this idea, I think it's really exciting. I think it's a really wonderful way to sort of reimagine what it means to be a Christian, to be Christ with others. It's super exciting.

And I think young adults are the leaders in this space, right? Who better than the person going through the wild ride and to be able to say, here's what's working for me. Here's what I need. Here's how I can help someone else and really be a part of the future of the church.

That's bringing, I'm realizing something as I'm listening to Linda talk, which I think the grief aspect is really interesting, because I think part of dealing with transitions and instability and part of dealing with grief is the importance of relationships which we've talked a lot about and also the importance of rituals. The rituals and milestones, at least of my life are looking very different than they are for my parents when they were my age or what have you. So there's not necessarily scripts for them, but you know, we're not taught how to end things or how to breathe or how to sit with ambiguity. And I think that's something that I think the church is theologically like uniquely positioned to be able to help foster that and provide space for that in a culture where it's kind of like, oh, you start something and then you just have infinite growth forever.

And that's the end of the story. So how to thinking about things of how do we, you know, a lot of times, having an item that people sign and write notes on can be very meaningful, or you know, you kind of come up with them, I think, in each individual context. But finding ways to mark that these are changes and that brings the things and that brings hard things and being alongside that. And I think that also goes into the view of what the church's mission, the church's location is as a whole, you know, and is it something that we measure by metrics and membership or giving or things like that?

Or is it more a more fluid perspective that is making an impact in the world and bringing comfort, reconciliation, healing, safety, justice, you know, to the people around us, to the world around us. And then I think that opens up a lot of creativity for how we how we do church and how we judge the success if that's the term we want to use of what we're doing. Yeah, yeah, that's a great thought. I think your idea of ritual is really powerful.

And it can be really healthy for both the church and the young adults for it, just to if you do have, I don't know if I want to phrase it this way, but like a strategy for how you go about a ritual, a practice for how you send young adults when they are, when they are moving on or how you're sending, doesn't have to be a young adult. Anyone who is ending their time with their congregation can be really meaningful to have some sort of process. I know in my church when we've had, you know, some young couples move or people going to different locations, and it's really meaningful when they come forward on a Sunday morning and we're able to pray for them and bless them as they go forward to whatever is next for them. And that feels there's a sense of not closure necessarily, but like a strengthening of community in that that doesn't exist when people just kind of fade away when they choose not to come anymore and they don't let anybody else know.

And then we're kind of wondering for a few months, like, are they coming back? We're not really sure just haven't seen this person for a while. It's nice to have that ritual sending, and I think that can be something like that is a great idea for churches who are dealing with us. Anything else on that topic, or should I move us to the last question?

We could probably talk on all of these forever, but in the intro, please, I mean, I feel like I just, you know, want to go have coffee with Nate and keep this conversation going. You know, and Lauren, you too, like let's let's do it at some point. But yeah, in the interest of your podcast and you're probably going to have to, you know, what a finite amount of time, I'm happy to move on. Yeah, yeah, this could certainly be a whole series of podcasts and discussions.

It's a very rich topic and I love what the two of you are bringing to this. So just my final question, which we've sort of already covered at different points in this podcast. So feel free to just kind of reiterate something you've already said. But the last question I was wondering is what advice would you have for churches working with young adults who are going through transition?

If there's like one main thing you want people to take away from this podcast, what would that be? I can go first that way, Nate can have the last word, because I would really like to, you know, have the last word on this. So from a psychological perspective and psychology perspective, I think the thing that I would I would want to say is it's a process, right? You learn as you go.

And so it's not like you have to get it right the first time. And so embracing the idea of transition as an important part of what people go through in the church and what the church itself goes through because it is made up of all the people in it, right? So the collective experiences are shaping it. And so being willing to just keep doing it, keep trying, keep experimenting, keep it, you know, experiencing together and being intentional about learning from the process, learning from the experiences, and recognizing that it's a process, it's an ongoing journey.

I had a couple thoughts, and I wanted slipping. I guess, oh, that's what it was. I guess I would say an important thing is remembering that this is about more than I think, I think a lot of times this subject has the framing of how do we sustain the institution of the church or of the local church or whatever. And I think maybe taking a step back from that, I would say not ignoring it entirely, but maybe trusting the Holy Spirit with a lot of that and taking a look at the young people that churches are trying to be inclusive of have a whole lot of gifts, a whole lot that they want to offer.

And so I think a good question to ask is how do we put people in positions where they can have the blessing of sharing their gift and the community can be blessed by that gift. I would also say something for churches going through lots of transitions or trying to be alongside in adults going through transitions is I think presence matters, perhaps more than anything. I think presence and curiosity go so much farther and do so much more than jumping to reassurance because we've probably heard that Bible quote before. And maybe it's helpful and maybe it isn't, but you're going to have a lot more ability to discern when you've kind of sat and just been present with their experience, what they're going through, their highs and lows and uncertainties, and letting them express those things in a way where they'll feel seen I think is as important as anything else both for the young people in that position and also for the church as a whole.

He used to kind of sitting in that ambiguity and learning to walk alongside it I think is a challenging thing but also something that can be really help grow in all kinds of ways and develop and create new things. All right so we've got the importance of just being present and being curious, we've got Linda's counsel to not it goes along with presence to be present in the process and learn from the process don't try and don't assume that you're going to get it all right the first time this is you know relationships are messy and that's what this is it's building relationships it's going to as this podcast it's going to go in different directions in ways that you didn't necessarily expect but yeah I think you need also for just reminding us that like this isn't something that we're doing on our own this is something that we can entrust to the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in our churches and that work might not look the way that we expected to but we can trust that God is working all these things for good for our churches for the young adults that we're trying to encourage along the way and for the world that we're trying to serve. So thank you both so much for joining me and this was a wonderful and rich conversation.

Any last words that either one of you wants to say as we wrap up here? I'll say thank you I know I've benefited going through the you know being part of Pivot Northwest I think the beauty of so many people coming together around care this idea of you know care for each other care for community care for the world care for self as well it was all it was all in there and so to have an opportunity to come back and kind of revisit that through a conversation which has been really fun and really affirming that the work is important and that it matters and that it can make a difference and so you know I think that you know is my big takeaway from the conversation and some huge thanks Nate for being willing to share your story because I think that's and again I feel like there's more than I want to know and so looking forward to staying connected with you and also Lauren thanks it's just been such a pleasure working with you as well. Thank you to both of you as well it's been wonderful to have this be one of the things that kind of circles back and in a delightful way and it's been really interesting here about Linda's research and the insight she has had and I guess the final word I'd maybe end on is just the importance of perspective and priorities you know I think especially being in seminary there's lots to talk about the future of the church and things like that and I think there are a lot of uncertainties and unknowns but I also want to have faith that if we focus and prioritize the most important things which is you know how do we love and care for each other and for the world and the community and the people around us if that's our focus then some of those other things those other questions are going to be answered along the way and we'll just kind of fall into place. Yep very true well thank you both again this has been absolutely wonderful I'm really glad we got a chance to connect and I will look forward to hopefully another one of these conversations down the road so thank you both.

Thank you for listening to this pivot Northwest podcast we hope it was encouraging inspiring and helpful please do all the things that help others to know about our work such as liking, subscribing, reviewing, rating but mostly we hope that you will share this with other young adults and young adult leaders so that they can feel encouraged and inspired in their faith and participation in the church. God bless.