The Dwindling Desire to Grow Up

How do we address this cultural issue of students not wanting to step into adulthood?

A recent survey from Intelligent.com, where they surveyed employers on interviewing young adults today, tells us that 53% of young adults struggle with eye contact, 47% dress inappropriately for the interview, 27% use inappropriate language while in the interview, and 19% brought a parent with them to their interview. 

We are seeing a lack of maturity from young adults in today's culture. In this episode, Brody walks through 7 issues we need to address with the mentality some young adults may have. Our goal as parents, youth pastors, and mentors is to see the students under us step into adulthood with confidence, and the qualities we see in 1 Corinthians 13:11.

Let’s encourage and equip the young adults we know by pointing them to the Lord and showing them what Christ calls them to be.

• 1 Corinthians 13:11
• Intelligent.com
  
  
  

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to no Sanity Required everybody. It is Wednesday. This is week three of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitter Summer Camp, swo 24. And on Wednesdays we separate folks out by gender. That is not a catch word. When I say gender, I mean by male and female, as God has designed and planned for them to be. And we talked to the girls, uh, about, um, just biblical womanhood. And we talked to the young men, the boys, about biblical manhood. And it's been a a a long standing tradition here that we do that on Wednesdays. So this morning started the day off with the joint worship service and then the rest of the day they'll be split up. So, um, we go straight into, uh, in fact, as I'm recording this, the, the guys and girls are split up and then this they're in a breakout session. This evening, Uh, we'll have them split up again and I'll be talking to the, the, the boys and young men, about biblical manhood and just kind of what the transition at this stage of life should look like according to scripture and we launched that from Luke 2, 52, where Jesus increases in wisdom and stature, physical strength and growth, but also in understanding and wisdom and in favor with God and man, and we use that as an example. And then we look at Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13, where he says when I became a man, I put away childish things, childish ways Really challenge them. We call them to go against societal and cultural norms and embrace manhood, embrace womanhood and do this God's way. But that got us to talking uh, yesterday I was talking with Zach Mabry who is uh the the director over our snowboard wilderness outfitters leadership Institute.

Speaker 1: 1:54

The snowboard leadership Institute is a year round program, uh, for 18 to 25 year old people who are either doing a gap year from college or they're taking uh some time to figure out what direction God has for them in life and adulthood. And we have them here for a year. We work them in departments. They might be working in maintenance, they might be learning plumbing or electrical. We've had kids come out of that program and go on to be electricians and work in the construction field, the trades. We've had kids go on and become school teachers, student pastors, pastors, missionaries. We do leadership development, teach a vocational training. They could work in food service or in marketing and media front office. There's a lot of different jobs. It's a very effective program, a cool program for a kid. It's just wrestling with what next steps of adulthood looks like.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Or we have folks come in after they've earned their four year degree and uh, and go through that Institute and just to get some some good life experience before they go into the work world or the ministry world. Um, or when, when they're praying about transition and maybe to a master's program or seminary, or when they're praying about transitioning, maybe to a master's program or seminary. So the Snowbird Leadership Institute is a program that when a kid goes through that I keep saying kid, but when a young adult goes through that they can earn 24 hours of college credit in a year and you can do the program for two years. There's a one-year track or two-year track. The two-year track, you'd leave with 48 hours. That's almost half of your degree. Come in with, say, if you come in with you know a kid that graduates high school with an associate's degree, they could come into the Institute and almost be done with the four-year degree by the time they're done. So it's an awesome program.

Speaker 1: 3:40

But one of the things that we've learned in the years that we've been doing the Institute program is that we are at a deficit in terms of young adults behaving like adults are supposed to behave as a society, and so I want to talk about that today. For parents, for young men and young women, for pastors, youth pastors what does it look like to prepare and equip young people to become adults, to become contributors to society? What's that look like? And this is going to be pretty casual, more just observation and application things that we've observed over the last few years, and then the ways that we are implementing tools and practices to help equip that 18 to 25-year-old crowd really the 18 to 22-year-old crowd to enter into adulthood, to be an asset, not a liability. So I'm actually going to do a couple episodes on this. I'm excited about it. I think it'll be well-received by our listening audience and something that'll be practical and helpful. So that's a long introduction, but welcome to no. Sanity Required this week's episode A little bit late, but here we are.

Speaker 2: 4:54

Welcome to no Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.

Speaker 1: 5:04

Okay. So 1 Corinthians 13, 11, paul makes this statement. He says when I became a man, I put away childish things, and he says that in the context of thinking like a man, reasoning like a man and behaving or acting like a man. When I was a child, I thought a certain way, I behaved a certain way. Um, I reasoned a certain way, so I want to walk through um.

Speaker 1: 5:30

First some some observations that have recently come to my attention from. This is from uh, this is from a secular source. Um, this is intelligentcom. This was a survey. Now listen to this A survey of 800 employers, 800 employers from intelligentcom.

Speaker 1: 5:52

This was done in December of last year. It's a very current survey, 2023, december. Here's what 800 employers said when surveyed During job interviews. Employers say that recent college graduates OK, so this is a survey of, with 800 employers talking about transitioning kids out of college and into adult life as potential employees in companies. So we're talking about this is going to be kids that are like 22 to 24. So and again I shouldn't use the word kids, I should be saying young adults. So these are young adults, recent college graduates between the ages, probably, of 22 and 24, the bulk of these that are going to be applying for these jobs During job interviews.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Here's what employers have said During job interviews. Here's what employers have said 53% of 800, so over 400 employers in this survey said that the applicants that they're having come in and apply for jobs in their company struggle with eye contact. They struggle with eye contact. Second thing, they ask for unreasonable compensation. That's 50%. So 400 of the 800 said that they're asking for unreasonable compensation. Number three 47% said so. Again, almost half said that young adults that come in for job interviews dress inappropriately. I don't know if that's uh, it's probably a combination of modesty, um, or sloppiness. You know, crocs and and uh, joggers, uh, just just not professionally prepared for an interview. 27%, so over one in four. So, so, so we're talking about more than 200 employers said that young people will use inappropriate language when they're being interviewed 21%, so one in five.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Just a little bit more than refused to turn on the camera during a virtual interview. So think about this 800 kids, 150 of them, over 150 of them, I think, if I'm asked right. Uh, let's see. Well, yeah, yeah, uh, under 200, between 150 and 200. So over 150 employers said that when they're doing interviews with kids and these are virtual interviews and I'm calling them kids, and I'm going to keep calling them kids in this context, because they're not behaving like adults. 21% of them refuse to turn on a camera during a virtual interview, so they want to sit behind their computer, their device, and not have the camera turned on. They don't want to be looked at. So this goes back to the earlier. They struggle with eye contact, they don't want to dress appropriately, they don't know how to communicate.

Speaker 1: 8:46

And then the last one. This one blows my mind and I'm going to tell you this one, and I'm going to tell a story. 19% brought a parent to their interview, a 23-year-old woman bringing her mom or her dad to her job interview with an employer. What in the world y'all I'm going to tell you right now. I'm going to tell two stories that go with that last. I'm going to tell you two stories, but before I tell you two stories, let me just say one of the things we often say in student ministry is that one of the biggest hurdles we face in helping students you know, 14 to 18 transition and prepare for adulthood and get serious about their discipleship and the direction of their life, is college the right next step for you?

Speaker 1: 9:36

Or are the trades the right next step for you? Or let's see the military or missions which, right now, I would just be honest in today's. Let's see, um, the military or missions which, right now, I would just be honest, in today's, in today's, uh, social, cultural and governmental climate, we rarely would recommend that a young person go into the military, especially with our current commander in chief. I'll just say it, I'm not being political, just that when you look at the wars that have been started in the last, uh, four years, three and a half years, uh, I would not recommend a kid to go to the military right now, um, but, but it still could be a right fit for some people. Maybe it's certain jobs.

Speaker 1: 10:15

I would say this if I was going to recommend a kid to go to the military cause, I'm very pro military, patriotic, um, veteran aware like I'm. Like I'm talking about the current governmental climate where we're seeing pretty much all branches of the armed services pushing from the top down an LGBTQ, woke agenda. It kind of freaks me out to think about sending our sons and daughters there. It kind of freaks me out to think about sending our sons and daughters there and the veterans, and I'll say that that statement is coming on the heels of lots and lots and lots of conversations with veterans. I had lunch with two veterans yesterday and they same thing, lockstep, they're saying the same thing, and one of them has two teenage sons and he's like no man. I don't want them going in right now. It's just crazy. Now, um, we'll see where. You know that's going to change at some point, I hope.

Speaker 1: 11:12

But for now, um, the closest we're coming to recommending that would be some students were recommending um, guard service, uh, or certain jobs that that might benefit you down the road, with, with, with in that context. So mostly we're encouraging kids to go trades, learn a trade. There's a lot of, there's so much money y'all to be made right now in the trades. If you're a mechanic, if you can, if you get certified um, if you can uh work, you can work in an electrical field, hvac, plumbing, anything in construction, welding, anything in the trades. But then also, if you're going to pursue a college degree, be commonsensical about it. Get your associates through community college and save $80,000 before you go off to your last two years at a state school and then be very particular about what you're going to pursue in a career field and then don't accrue a whole bunch of debt and then don't pick a field that's going to make you miserable just because you feel like you can make a bunch of money. And so, saying all that to say, typically when we're trying to coach and counsel kids that are coming out of high school and maybe are in our summer staff program or our leadership institute, a lot of times we face big hurdles with parents.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Now, the kids that are in our institute program. Their parents are usually awesome because they're encouraging and supporting their sons and daughters to be in the program. But we see a lot of young adults that want to be in the program that can't get in the program because their parents won't let them. They won't get behind it. They're insistent. I talked to somebody recently that parents are pushing them and really, really applying a lot of pressure and not letting them out from under the expectation to get a four-year degree from a pretty prestigious state university that this kid's going to finish with $80,000 in student loan debt $85,000, I think and and now they're strapped and they got to go find a job.

Speaker 1: 13:12

That goes back to um, the the second thing on our list that we looked at, 50% of of young adults going into job interviews are asking for unreasonable compensation. Sometimes I think the reason for that is they're looming. They're looking at this looming wall of student loan debt and they're like, man, I gotta get this paid off. Um, now, more times than not, um, I think that unreasonable expectation of compensation is because, just because we're very materialistic and so you look at the conversations driving what the cost of minimum wage should be and it's like, okay, everything's unrealistic and inflation's through the roof and we're just in a crazy place as a society. So when I say parents are one of the hurdles to student ministry, it's just a reality and we're fortunate at SWO to have a lot of kids come here with very supportive and strong parents. But man, the kids that come through our camps. It's so often that we have a conversation with a kid that says you know my folks, they just they want me to kind of go on a certain career path or direction or they don't go to church, they don't support that, they don't disciple from within the home. So we face this a lot. But that last one on the list they brought a parent to the interview. Twenty percent of the people, these 800 employers said that 20% of them said parents came to an interview. So let me tell you these two stories. Okay, so let me tell you. Here's the first story Young lady I'm going to give you bullet points. Young lady, 20 or 21 years old, working in the Institute. I don't remember what department she was working in, but she is a member of the Snowbird Leadership Institute.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Our employees, our full-time employees, get six weeks of vacation a year. Two of those weeks are personal, I think one or two weeks, maybe it's a week. And then, after you've been here a while, you get a second week, but four weeks are mandatory. The week following summer camp everybody gets a week off. Thanksgiving week everybody gets a week off. Christmas week Everybody gets a week off. And then I said four weeks, uh, the fourth week is not a, it's not a um, so there's three weeks of full mandatory. And then, if you add up the rent, like at Easter, there's some time off and um, and then you get a couple of weeks paid. So, um, our full-time staff get three weeks plus two. Our Institute gets a fourth week at spring break. So they get four weeks leave off time. So a full month and it's just a nine month rotation, so they're getting a full month of off time. In addition to that, they get three days off that they can take as personal leave days.

Speaker 1: 15:57

Well, coming off the Christmas vacation, everybody has to come back because we do two big winter conferences between Christmas and New Year's and we require all of our staff to be at both of those events. But we have to have them to be able to pull them off. They're massive events, they're sold out, they're packed house. To be able to run rec and do small groups and effectively run two student ministry events, we have to have all of our staff here. So they're coming off of an eight day Christmas break, the way the break fell that year eight days.

Speaker 1: 16:26

This young lady comes back and immediately wants she wants to work one day or two days and go home for three days to go to a dentist appointment. She wants a day to travel home. She lives less than four hours away, I think right at four hours. She wants to travel home on one day, be off that day, go to the dentist the next day at nine o'clock and 10 o'clock in the morning, have that day off and then the next day to travel. And so we said, no, you can't do that. We wouldn't approve it because she's just had eight or nine days off and we said you should have went to the dentist while you were home. You should have gone to the dentist then and she pitched, I mean a fit, a temper tantrum fit, and I wasn't dealing with it.

Speaker 1: 17:06

This was being dealt with in the department that she was working in and within the leadership institute. So Zach Mabry would have been in the conversation. Whoever her department head, her direct supervisor and community group leader was, they were dealing with it. She pitched a fit. So what they allowed was okay, you can go home the day of your dental appointment. You can go home the night before. You can leave early that evening. Leave it at six o'clock after have supper with your students, leave, go home. So we made a concession you get, you get your dental appointment knocked out the next morning, which was an off day. All of our students were leaving that morning. So leave, come home, go home, get the dental appointment done and come back, and then you'll be back for the next day when the second winter conference would start. So basically we were we were making some concession, letting her leave early from an event, but she wanted three full days off.

Speaker 1: 17:59

She pitched a fit, her mother called me. I wasn't in the conversation with the young lady, but the mother called me and gave me an earful. And here's what I said to the mom. I said, mrs So-and-so, we don't discuss matters of employment, um, with non-employees. And she said, well, I'm her mother. And I said, well, she's a 21 year old woman, it doesn't matter what your relationship to her is, we don't discuss that. It's confidential. There's, there's like we don't. So it just it made me realize that this woman was being treated by her mother as if she was about 14 or 15.

Speaker 1: 18:37

Second story uh, we had a young man that had had broken multiple I don't want to say rules. He had done things that he had been reprimanded for in a workplace environment and in a ministry context, and we're trying to address some things with him. And one of the things was he was dating, he had entered into a relationship he's 19 years old or 20, and he had entered into a relationship with a 17 or 17 year old girl I think he was 19, 17 year old girl who had come here as a, as a camper, as a student, and then she had worked in our element program. So she was an employee for the summer, but she's a 17 year old employee, so she's a minor, a minor. We don't allow that. We can't do that.

Speaker 1: 19:28

We find out that he's been talking to her. He's gone home to see her on his off days. She lived a couple hours away. Her parents were okay with it, but we were not. We said, hey, you can't do that. Zach brings him in to talk to him. He says, hey, I want to call my mom, 19-year-old. And he says, hey, I want to call my mom. 19 year old man, legal man, adult male calls his mama and puts her on speakerphone and his mom and dad get on the phone and take up for him why he should be allowed to have this girlfriend. People, you can't make this crap up. That's crazy. So we sent him home that day. Like that day, that dude was done. We're like you are done. Because he refused to not talk to this girl. So that's, that's a couple of stories. Now I'm telling you the like two most recent horror stories.

Speaker 1: 20:17

99% of the people that we're working with in the 18 to 24 bracket are cream of the crop. They are amazing young men and young women. But I wanted to give you. I have people ask me of the crop. They are amazing young men and young women, but I wanted to give you. I have people ask me all the time. Last night I had a youth pastor ask me hey, how do you, how do you find your staff and how do you train them? And they're so solid. How do you get this done in a in a cultural climate where it seems impossible to find mature 18, 19, 20 year olds? Um, again, I'm gonna read back through this.

Speaker 1: 20:46

During recent job interviews, these 800 employers said 53% of them said recent college graduates 22, 23-year-old people struggle with eye contact. 53% of them Ask for unreasonable compensation. 50% of them Dressed inappropriately for an interview. Almost 50% Used inappropriate language 27%. Over one in four. One in five refused to turn the camera on during a virtual interview. They didn't want to be seen. It goes back to eye contact and the way they present themselves. And then one in five wanted to bring a parent to the interview, brought their parent to the interview. Mom shows up Like what in the world. So what do we make of this? How do we as a ministry here, how do we address these things? Let me give you some thought process in how we train and equip our staff In that 1 Corinthians 13, 11 passage, and tonight I'm going to be sharing this with our young men.

Speaker 1: 21:50

I'm recording this on Wednesday morning. I'm recording it from the beautiful hardwoods of the Coleman property that is adjacent to Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. This is the place where the dream and the vision for Snowbird was cast, and I love being on this property, on this land, so it's cool to sit here and record this. Tonight I'm going to be talking to these young men, but we're also going to be addressing the ladies, so I'm going to be talking from the perspective of when I became a man. There's a quote that I'm going to start off with, and the quote is this there's a moment when every boy realizes that no one is coming to save him, and that's the moment when he becomes a man. Some boys never get there and they stay children forever. I would, I would say that that young man and that young lady in the stories I told, nobody's, somebody's coming to save them, and so they're not they. He has not become a man and she has not become a man and she has not become a woman. Now, hopefully, that's changed.

Speaker 1: 22:49

But helicopter parents that continue to helicopter through the, the, the, the late teens and twenties create extended boyhood and girlhood and adolescence. The problem is you've got a biological man who is a mental boy, a biological woman who is, you know her, her physical body is she's a woman. His physical body is he's a man. It looks like a grown man can grow a beard, you know, look like, you look at him and and, depending on how he presents himself, you think that's a man. But but, but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, he's a boy because he's being facilitated, that boyhood's being facilitated, that childhood, that girlhood's being facilitated. And so I want to give you the first approach and let me read you a quote from Zach Mabry.

Speaker 1: 23:38

I talked to Zach about this and he said, um, he's. I said what, what are some things that, uh, that that you are thinking about going into this upcoming Institute year? And he said what I'm challenging our folks with is they're applying to be in the Institute, is that that, uh, we're, we're going to hold their hands initially, push them forward, and then we cannot control where they're at as they're coming into into the program, but we're going to absolutely work to change the trajectory of their life. So I thought that was good. So how do we change the trajectory of their life? How do we prepare them for manhood, womanhood, adulthood? Well, it's these three things. They got to learn to speak like men and women. So they got to. They got to stop talking like children.

Speaker 1: 24:29

You know, pointless banner, uh, foolish and silly colloquialisms and and catch words that are that are very adolescent, um, saying the word like a hundred times in a sentence like this and like, like, like I, like, I, like, like you know, like you know, learning how to speak, just learning how to communicate in sentences. And and it's been amazing to me how many people have have and I mean, I don't want to personalize this with my own kids, but I've had so many people say to me after talking to, to, to Tucker or Lely oh man, it's so enjoyable talking to your daughter, she, she, she, just, and and she's just having a normal conversation, she's 18., she having a normal conversation, and what people are realizing is, oh, it's refreshing to talk to an 18 year old that can actually communicate, just like I'm talking about, just can speak, and so learning to speak and then. So we're going to help them learn to speak. We do that by constantly engaging them in conversation, day-to-day conversation, and addressing conversation. That is not mature. The second thing is and oh, one more thing I would say with teaching them to speak, we address the, the, the vernacular they use, and that includes swear words, filthy talk, like, like that, that type of language you know where. One of the things that you'll hear people say is that I've heard multiple people say this swearing and using vulgarities is a sign of immaturity and an inability to communicate at a high level. So we address that. Second thing. Paul says when I became a man or an adult. So we address that second thing. Paul says when I became a man or an adult, uh, I stopped thinking like a child. So, teaching them to process and think like men and women, what does that look like? Um, well, let me, let me tie that into the next thing, which is teaching them to reason like men and women. So how do we teach them to think and reason like adults? Um, we want to teach them. Um, let me, let me give you, let me give you a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven things that we address.

Speaker 1: 26:36

We're going to attack any sense of entitlement. Reasoning like a child is to reason with a sense of entitlement. There's no place for an adult man or woman to have a sense of entitlement. There needs to be a mindset of respect is earned in the workplace not just given, but earned. Now there's a baseline degree of respect that you should expect people to give you as an adult. So be self-respecting and expect people to respect you at a baseline, but then to earn greater respect. That's a goal. So you're not entitled. You go earn what you get from respect to compensation. So this goes back to that one thing where it's like how how can people think that they deserve more compensation than what is realistic? Well, it's a sense of entitlement, and a lot of times that comes from the home.

Speaker 1: 27:29

So I challenge parents don't raise your kid with a sense of entitlement. Teach them to work for what they get. There's some things they're going to get. You provide shelter and food and clothing and you know healthcare and education. I don't have a problem with parents paying for college. There's nothing wrong with that. Like to to help your young man or your young woman get through college, but but learn how to. They need to learn how to to pull their weight and earn their keep. They may not be buying groceries, but they need to learn not to waste food. They need to be appreciative. They need to learn to say thank you at every meal they need. They need to keep you know, keep their room clean and do chores and start learning to work for a wage. You're teaching them how to manage money, so sense of entitlement.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Second thing that I think is often a hurdle to entering into adulthood and something that we address with our young adults here victim mentality. Woe is me. I'm a victim, I've been done wrong. This is something you'll see a lot when a kid comes home from school and they're talking about the coach. The coach should play me more. The teacher's picking on me, and that could be true. Maybe the teacher is picking on your kid, maybe the coach is showing favoritism, maybe it's daddy ball and he's giving his kid the fair shake, but not yours.

Speaker 1: 28:53

That doesn't mean you get to create a victim mentality. Poor, poor me, poor, poor me. I don't get to play because the coach doesn't like me. So a victim mentality helps no one. It helps no one. It doesn't help that kid get along in life. So what you do is instead. So how do you address the victim mentality? How do you keep that from happening? You just. You just have to teach the principle that sometimes, sometimes things don't go your way, sometimes things go against you, and that should make you stronger, not weaker. A victim mentality weakens a person when things go against you. Work harder, expect conflict and get through it and and and press more into your relationship with God. Where's your identity lie? It lies in your relationship with Christ.

Speaker 1: 29:37

Third hurdle is an acceptance of mediocrity. We, we, we are creating a generation of man, boys and girl, women, or women, girls. How are you going to say that that are okay, being average in their pursuits and endeavors? Just strive for mediocrity. You don't want to strive for mediocrity. Strive for excellence. The Lord tells us that in whatever we do, to do it to the glory of God. So we should strive to be the best at what we do. If it's art, if it's in the arts or the trades, or if it's in academics or athletics, strive to be the best you can be. You have a ceiling. You can only go so high. You know like it's not realistic to make my kid think that he's going to play in the major leagues or that she's going to be in the you know, the New York Symphony Orchestra, if she doesn't have that kind of ceiling. That's where, as a parent, I need to do the hard work of finding out where that ceiling is, and then we go as hard as we can to get there by being the best that we can be.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Help your kid figure out what they're good at and what they're gifted at, what they're passionate about. Help them do great things in that field, but don't live vicariously through them. Don't put unhealthy pressure on them, but at the same time, don't make it easy on them. Make them work for it. That's a good thing. On the heels of that, I would say laziness is common Laziness. Kids come and they want to do the bare minimum. What's the least amount I can do to get away with? We got to put a great deal of pressure on them, hold their hand or lock arms with them and get them through some pressure situations. Show them a sense of not entitlement, of accomplishment and a sense of pride in their work.

Speaker 1: 31:17

Simple, simple example Kai, who's kid number five in our, in our six kid family, uh, the other day, uh, he had, he had been on the weed eater for an hour, and as simple as walking through and saying dad, gum man, look how good this looks. Look where you weed. Eat it around these raised plant beds, little's garden, like man. It looks so nice here. And that you did that. Just look at that.

Speaker 1: 31:47

Same thing with Moses, who's my 11 year old. I'm teaching him to mow on the big zero turn and he runs a weed eater and he mows. And so we did a section of a field and just going back oh I mean, it's not rocket science you learn how to work the levers on a mower. It's really actually enjoyable and not hard to do, you know. But we go back over it and we celebrate. Look how good the lines in this grass look. It's celebrating the accomplishment and then putting a strain on them. Here's a weed eater. Here's a bank down the creek that needs to be weeded. Well y'all, that bank did not need to be weeded, but I wanted him to do something hard. So put a weed eater in his hand and spend an hour weed-eating the bank along the creek and then celebrating it afterwards.

Speaker 1: 32:30

And so don't allow laziness to creep in. Excuse making that's a hurdle. Making excuses, and I think that gets into the Garden of Eden and, like our first parents, it's rooted in us to make excuses and not accept responsibility for our actions. So we got to teach young men and young women to accept responsibility, not make excuses. It's not acceptable to do that. Next, a lack of commitment, and that's typically where it matters most. You got to commit to something and finish it. We have every year.

Speaker 1: 33:00

We have someone drop out of the program and and and we will. Sometimes we have people drop out of the program and it's a good thing. They've got an opportunity that comes up that was unexpected and it's like, hey, you're ready for this? Go. We've sent folks into ministry positions. We had a guy in a program a couple of years ago have an opportunity to open up at his home church to go be an interim student pastor. And we send him. We're like you go, just go do it. And then he came back for the next summer. Uh, we've had, we had a guy leave the program one year to go be um, a student pastor under an exiting student pastor. He went and mentored under him and trained under him. So we turned him loose and sent him out of the program before his year was up. We were happy for him, excited for him to do it, and we've continued the relationship with that young man. He's now the student pastor and is thriving. He's got an awesome student ministry.

Speaker 1: 33:51

But more often than that, we've had kids leave the program because they just they're like I can't, I don't want to, I want to go home, I just want to go home. And so we got to teach them how to fulfill commitments. You commit to something, see it through. And then the last thing that I would add in this list of hurdles to adulthood or hurdles to to to, to embracing and entering into adulthood, would be, um, the wrong, that they have the wrong influences in their lives. They're, they're listening to the wrong voices. They're there. They have the wrong influences speaking into their life, and that could be negative parental influence or negative social media influence. So one of the things we've got to do is constantly teach them how to, how to temper the volume and the and both of the noise volume and the and the massive volume of content that's coming into their life through social media. That influences them very negatively most often. And then sometimes the influences from home.

Speaker 1: 34:52

I remember a few years ago we had parents urging one of our institute guys to quit and come home because he had been sick. I don't even remember what it was now. I just remember thinking. I remember sitting down with this young dude and saying hey, man, you need to power through this season and tell your folks and his parents are Christian, godly people they just weren't here, they weren't near to the situation and they wanted him to leave and come home. And I can't remember. I don't remember the exact details of why it was, but I remember sitting down with him and saying I don't think it's the right thing, I think you need to fulfill your commitment and go home in August. And he did that. And his parent. He ended up staying the next August and doing a second year and his parents actually got on board with it and have become great partners to the ministry and uh, and so just just teaching them what voices to listen to. And we didn't tell him not to listen to his parents, but we said look, you need to think about what are the, what are the voices of counsel and wisdom that are coming into your life? So let me run back through this again. Uh, we want to teach them to speak, think and reason properly.

Speaker 1: 36:01

One thing under reasoning that that we might get into in the next episode is thinking with theological grounding, so thinking through with a biblical worldview and a strong theology and being loving in the way that they reason things out, loving towards others. And then the hurdles that we want to teach them how to get over tear down entitlement, victim mentality, mediocrity, laziness, excuse making, a lack of commitment and wrong and unhealthy influences. Got to tackle those things. If we can go into, we do this with our summer staff, our element program as well as our institute. These are things that we're going to hit hard. These are things that I'll address in talking to our young men tonight in this Wednesday evening session. If we can do this and tackle these things, I believe we have a good chance of establishing healthy, strong young adults. Now this is separate from a love for the scripture and discipleship and their spiritual formation and growth and development. That's another conversation that we'll have in a different episode.

Speaker 1: 37:06

But what triggered this is just thinking about that again. That 800-employer survey that was done. That just blew my mind. It wasn't that mind-blowing that folks would say I mean 50% of over 400 saying that kids are just not showing up ready to go to work. They can't make eye contact, they don't know how to dress, they don't know how to talk, they they don't want to be seen. They want to do a virtual interview and not have the camera turned on. They bring parents to the, to the interview, like that's where we're at as a society, y'all. Um, that that's just where we're at and we're seeing it. But, but, thanks be to God, we're seeing young men and women who are stepping up and are a light amongst their generation and I'm thankful for that. So thank you for sitting and listening. I hope it's helpful.

Speaker 1: 37:58

Please give me some feedback on this. I'd like to. I really would like to do a follow-up episode. I've got an episode, a heavy episode, of Beyond the Flannel Graph where we're going to talk about hell, the doctrine of hell, the biblical teaching of hell that's coming up. That'll either be next week or the week after, depending on how the feedback goes on. If you want some more content on this subject matter right here, and if the feedback comes in slowly, then maybe we'll do the episode Beyond the Flannel Graph episode on hell next week and then follow it up the next week with a part two to this.

Speaker 1: 38:29

And then I've got an episode coming up on Judas. It ties into some of the stuff we've done in the past on not turning away, not drifting away, not walking away. How do we stay the course? Keep our hands on the plow, plow on, plow on, plow on. Don't take your eyes off Jesus. Don't take your hands off the plow. Grind it out. The Christian life is a marathon. It is a long journey, but in the end the prize is worth it.

Speaker 1: 39:00

And so we're going to look at Judas and consider what went wrong, what happened. How do we avoid that at all costs? So those are the upcoming episodes that I'm excited to bring you. Thank you so much for tuning in. Continue to pray as we're in SWO 24, week three. God is moving, doing awesome things. We'll have a report coming up in a future episode, kind of a midsummer report, and some of our listeners we're going to be seeing you in the weeks ahead. Some of you were here in the last couple of weeks and just appreciate all of you. Thanks, love you, appreciate you and Appreciate all of you.

Speaker 2: 39:28

Thanks, love you, appreciate you and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.