If you missed this past Sunday’s Manly Presbyterian Hour, the topic you missed was “Failure to Launch”. We were considering the cultural phenomenon in which young people, both men and women, either seriously delay or fail altogether in leaving, cleaving, and exercising dominion (Gen 1:26-27). Like a boat loaded with cargo or a rocket fueled for a trip into orbit, young people have much invested in them. When the times comes for them to set out in life and instead they sit home nearly everyone is disappointed. Boats, rockets, and young people are made for launching (Psalm 127:3-5).
There are a multitude of cultural, social, economic, psychological and other reasons for the phenomenon. The more important question for us is “How can the church respond?” Below are suggestions from several sources as to how we can encourage our young people to fulfill their callings in this life:
Encourage them toward godliness. Young adulthood is a rough patch of temptation. They need to be encouraged to continue in godliness. The call to holiness is not optional. It’s the nature of regenerate believers to be holy (1 Peter 1:13–16), to be distinct from the world. Anyone attempting to make his way in the world is going to need the encouragement of others who’ve been there. Our unique calling from God requires that we don’t follow the culture but that we follow Christ in the context of the culture. Providence may dictate what job you have, but godliness dictates how you do your job.
Encourage them to sober-mindedness. Paul gives a series of exhortations to Titus for offering specific encouragement to different types of people in Titus 2:1-14. In one place he says, “Exhort the young men to be sober-minded.” You could translate that as sober or serious or even sensible. This is what mature adults do, they don’t chase passions, emotions, or feelings. They pursue responsibilities and commitments.
Encourage them toward marriage. The leave and cleave concept needs to be a regular part of our ministry, especially toward young men. But similarly, the young women need to be encouraged not to hold out for prince charming, but simply an eligible believer with whom they think they can grow in sanctification. Marriage is ordinary, lawful, and good. It’s extraordinary not to marry (Mt 19:1-12).
Encourage them toward maturity in family relationships. There should be a general pressure to establishing their own identity. We want them to be as David Powlison says “self-irrigating Christians”. We hope that their faith is the same faith as their parents, but not that they are relying on the parents’ faith. We want to help them have adult relationships with their own parents and with other adults in the church that is mutual and not purely dependent.
Encourage them to find a church home. If they stay at our church, they need to embrace an adult Sunday School class and Shepherding group. They need to talk to an elder about having his specific accountability as an adult. If they move somewhere else then they need to become a member of a church in the ordinary way adults do in whatever process that church uses. But wherever they are we want them to see themselves as a communing member of the congregation. As part of this encouragement we should go out of our way to welcome them into the fold of the mature.
Encourage them in what they are becoming and might become. They need specific encouragement in the big categories – marriage, college (if appropriate), and work (of one kind or another). At the same time we can be open about specifics but try to help them discover how their natural aptitudes, education and training, and providential opportunities suit them to particular work and kinds of independence.
Encourage them against the natural tendency toward excuse making. Proverbs 26:13 comes to mind: “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!’” or Proverbs 26:16, “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.” There are undoubtedly a multitude of plausible excuses and fears put forward to escape life as a responsible adults. This is all the more reason they need to be helped, encourage, AND ALSO warned that it’s disobedient and dangerous not to put their talents to work (Mt 25:14-30).
Encourage them against the consequences of laziness (Proverbs 10:4-5, 12:11, 19:15). You might even need to help them, if you’re in a position to do something about it, to suffer the consequences of their inactivity. Hunger apparently motivates. Don’t make it easy to stay comfortable at home if home is not where they should be.
Encourage them to accept that the Fall WILL negatively affect their work life and independence. We do, after all, live in a Genesis 3:17-19 World. That means everyone needs the mature and realistic understanding that work is made complex and difficult by laziness, passivity, accidents, bad decisions, and interactions with fallen, sinful bosses, coworkers, and customers.
Encourage them against pornography. Peter was not being hyperbolic when he said that the “passions of the flesh…war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). Derek Brown explains it well: “Lust robs men of ambition, discourages initiative, perverts inclinations, sabotages desire for godly productivity, promotes passivity, dampens passion for adventure, hinders taste for spiritual truth, and weakens the ability to concentrate,” (JBMW, Spring 2015).
Finally, they need to be encouraged that God’s call on them to exercise the stewardship of their gifts is truly a matter of their eternal well being. We know salvation is not by obedience but we also know our works give assurance of salvation. Jesus denies comfort to those who are idle with His resources: “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Those are the words of Jesus from the end of the Parable of the Talents (Mt 25:29–30).
In all this, the goal is their maturity evidenced by their assumption of responsibility. Frustration, disappointment, and criticism might be our reactions to their inaction, but we too are called to be patient, wise, and diligent in our efforts to bring them to maturity. As you encourage, consider your Savior’s patience with you.
Scotty is a native of Santa Anna, Texas. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1994 and completed his Masters of Divinity at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 2005. Scotty’s Air Force service of eleven years included time as a Security Forces Officer protecting nuclear weapons and also instructing at Officer Training School before being called into pastoral ministry. He and his wife Kerry are parents of three children, Clayton, Avery, and Grace.
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