College Rejection Season
Its the week that High Seniors and their parents both anticipate and dread — they find out the colleges where they are accepted. And for many more than in the past, who were rejected.
A recent report in the NY Times says this year the elite colleges received the most applications in their history. For example, the applications at Yale went from 12,000 in 1998 to over 22,000 in 2008. As a result it accepted only 8.3 of its applications. Harvard’s rate of acceptance was 7.1 or to put it another way, they rejected 93 out 100 applications.
Why the high numbers? Because we are now entering the third year of the Youth Boom years of the Millennial Generation. Millennials, born from 1982 to 1999, form our largest generation and next year the number of high school seniors will peak. Today there are more children and youth in K-12 than at any time in our nation’s history. As a result colleges are now reaching a numbers crunch when it comes to meeting the needs of this population. In an ironic twist, the same thing is also happening in our prisons, as record numbers of young people under the age of 25 are now incarcerated in overpopulated jails and prisons.
While the mainline church as a whole is aging, a focus on ministry to young people and their families is essential as this new youth boom reaches its full bloom. For its during youth booms that each new generation finds its voice and has great influence over the whole culture.
If our passion is to create faith communities where people can discover the joy of following Jesus, we must engage our young people with the message of God’s redeeming grace and love. Most people make decisions about faith and practice before the age of twenty-five. This is not about saving the church, this is about connecting with a generation that is struggling with its place in our world and with individuals who find themselves devalued by institutions who are not equipped to meet their needs. There is little time to waste. Let us hope that it is not said in the future that in the first decade of the 21st Century the church rejected a whole generation at its greatest time of potential and opportunity.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Reaching the next generation is every previous generation’s challenge, yet the “Baby Boomers” so successfully molded the 2nd half of the 20th century around themselves that we seem to have forgotten that fact! And their molding process so alienated the “Builders” that now all younger generations are viewed by Builders with suspicion and intolerance.
Obviously, these are broad, sweeping statements that have significant exceptions, but as I survey the UMC, this seems to be our denomination’s reality. Your call to reach beyond this “generation gap” is important, and it seems our General Conference has an opportunity to make significant progress - especially in working through the issues related to the ordination process.
Now, I would like to add another element to your call for focused attention. It’s not just young people that need a place to be valued. Over the last five years, I have come to realize that our denomination has almost totally focused on urban/suburban ministry. And why not, that’s where most of the people are! Yet, our rural communities are just as important. They are “the least of these” in so many ways!
The county in which I serve is the 2nd poorest in Ohio. Its teachers’ salaries are at the bottom of the list. Households falling below federal poverty rates make up more than half the county population. Unemployment statistics are 3 points higher than state average, which itself is 2 points higher than national average.
I am the only UM pastor in the county with a single-point charge - and that’s about to change due to financial constraints. This congregation has paid 100% apportionments for more than 30 years, but now they face the dilemma of whether to continue that commitment or divert dollars away from apportionments and towards pastoral support and local ministries.
I’m sure their story is repeated at least a thousand-fold across all our denomination, yet the denomination doesn’t take it seriously.
Do we need these thousands of smaller churches to do more that they have? Absolutely! Do we have hundreds of ineffective pastors/churches that should be held to higher standards? You better believe it! But do we have a denominational process that keeps an effective pastor in place even when his/her costs stretch the church past the breaking point? Absolutely not!
Around here, the young people don’t see much future for themselves unless they go to the “big city”. Quite frankly, I would say that holds true for pastors. And that’s not the right answer if we are going to seriously give hope to the hopeless, bring relationship to the estranged, and add value to the valueless.