One of the things I like about this exercise — prognosticating about what future college students, and our ministry with them, might look like — is the opportunity we have to take some liberties and simply say…

What if?

What if, “Tiger Moms,” or Tiger Parents (to be fully inclusive of us dads as well), become the vogue mode of parenting at some point over the next decade?

Instead of showering their kids with unconditional love and acceptance, constantly affirming their ability and capacity to achieve their every goal and dream; these parents instead choose to push their kids to do more, better — never, EVER settling for anything less than perfection.

I know, I know… it sure doesn’t sound very likely — or even American.  And in it’s origins it’s not.  It’s Chinese and it is more of a cultural reality (in the larger world) than you might realize — and you can read more about that here.

But what if parents in America, in response to many of the negative characteristics that we’re seeing in today’s college students (or Emerging Adults — ages 18-29), attempt to correct this.

Standing at odds with the irresponsibility they see in the EA demographic today, they vow that their children will be different.

So they drive them hard.

They correct them.

Constantly.

They make it their personal mission to produce the most exceptional of kids.

And what if, as a result of this new way of parenting, a “new” breed of Christian is born.  The perfection that is expected in all other facets of their lives serves to shape the future student’s faith and faith formation process.

So students, instead of loosely holding a faith that is unfamiliar and more tied to their family of origin, come to us in full on discipleship of Jesus — possibly even to an unhealthy extent (assuming that’s possible).

What if we see a manifestation of something akin to Christian Perfectionism meets a works-based faith?

What if…

I realize that there is a lot of time that can be wasted on considering the what if’s of life…

Because I don’t know that we’ll see a massive influx of students, at least the kind I’ve described in this post, arriving on our campuses 10 years from now.

At the same time… I don’t know that we won’t either.

So, if we do, here are a few questions I’d like us to consider:

• What might be the biggest shift our ministries would need to make in order for us to have meaningful ministry with this kind of student?
• Given how different this kind of student might be from what we currently encounter on campus, what might we imagine needing to assist this kind of student with?

Take a moment to share your thoughts in the comment section below!

And if you didn’t care much for this post, or liked it SO much you want to read more thoughts I have on the matter (hahaha), you can check out this post from earlier this week: Future Student: More Responsible, Less Entitled.

———————-

Guy Chmieleski is the founder of this blog, FaithONCampus.com, and serves as the University Minister at Belmont University.  With 14 years of ministry experience with college students, on 4 different campuses, spanning 3 different denominations, Guy is always looking for meaningful dialogs with colleagues around the world about the intersections of faith, culture and the college experience.  Beyond this blog, you can keep up with Guy on Twitter at: @guychmieleski and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/guy.chmieleski.

[ back to The Future of College Ministry homepage ]