With the emergence of a new season of life that has cropped up between youth and adulthood — known as Prolonged Adolescence or Emerging Adulthood (for more reading on this click here) — marriage is just one of the many responsibilities in life that many twenty-somethings are choosing to wait on.

And while this is likely true of a growing percentage of our students on campus… it’s not true of all of them.  A recent Barna study showed that nearly 60% of teens believe they will be married by the time they’re 25.

This being the case, a significant part of the ministry we have with college students should include preparing them for a potential marriage.

But how do we do this?

What does this look like?

We focus much of our attention on the spiritual lives of our students, and even come alongside the academic institution’s mission of preparing students for their life’s work, but what are we doing to help them prepare for their life’s relationship?

I’ve got a few ideas, but at the bottom, I’d love to hear yours… So here you go:

1. Provide opportunities for students to learn, AND talk, about relationships. ALL college students are thinking about relationships, at some level, and we need to be intentional to create spaces and opportunities for our students to talk about the relationships they’re in, the questions they have, the fears that hold them back and the hope that they find in the healthy relationships of others.
2. Provide resources. Students will expect us to be the campus experts on doing relationships well.  One of the ways we can best serve them is by helping them to navigate all of the resources that are available and pointing them to some of the most helpful resources based on what they are looking for.
3. Provide an example. Students don’t just want to see us talk about it… they want to see what it looks like in our own lives.  They’re not looking for “perfect relationships” to learn from.  In fact, they’d likely discount us if that’s what they think they’re seeing.  Instead, students want to see in us, or other godly couples, living faithful lives to God and to one another.  For many students this will be something new, something foreign, to what they’ve previously experienced.

Helping college students to prepare for marriage is an exceptional opportunity.

How do you utilize these critically formative years to shape students for life in marriage?