The Questions We Asked and the Ones We Didn’t

Research field notes on young adults

When we launched the Next Is Now project, we thought we understood the problem we were trying to solve.

Many churches do a wonderful job helping young people grow in faith through youth groups and campus ministries. But somewhere between graduation and the next chapter of adulthood, many begin to drift. We wanted to better understand what was happening in that transition and what role the church might play in helping young adults navigate it well.

We commissioned research with the Harvest Collaboratory, interviewing young adults who had been deeply involved in campus ministry after they graduated. About half had found a new faith community. About half had not. Interestingly, even many who were no longer connected to a church still spoke with warmth and conviction about their faith. The question wasn’t whether faith mattered. It was why the transition into the next season of life was proving so difficult.

As we listened, several themes emerged. Young adults talked about belonging. They talked about the constant transitions that define this season of life. Neither of those surprised us.

One finding did.

Again and again, young adults talked about mentorship.

The surprising part wasn’t simply that mentorship mattered. It was that we had never asked about it. No interview question mentioned mentors. Yet participants kept returning to the idea. They weren’t asking for formal mentoring programs or assigned relationships. They longed for people who were just a little farther down the road—someone who could say, I’ve been where you are. Let me walk with you for a while.

That unexpected insight shaped the next phase of the project.

We gathered leaders from six campus ministries and invited each of them to design an internship around one of three priorities. They could help graduating seniors prepare for the transition beyond college. They could build community for recent graduates who were still connected to campus. Or they could strengthen partnerships between campus ministries and local congregations so that students already had relationships with churches before graduation.

Four of the six chose the church partnership approach. That was again a little surprising.

Then it clicked.

The young adults had unexpectedly asked for mentors.

The campus ministers responded by asking a different question: Where are those relationships most likely to happen?

Their answer wasn’t another young adult program. It was the local church.

Not because congregations need more young adults to secure their future. But because healthy congregations already contain something young adults told us they need: people at different stages of life who can offer wisdom, encouragement, hospitality, and friendship.

Perhaps that’s the field note I’m carrying from this project.

One of the gifts of research is that it challenges assumptions. We expected to learn about transitions. We expected to learn about belonging. We did not, however, expect to discover that mentorship may be the bridge between them.

Young adults named the need. Campus ministers recognized where it could be met. Together, they reminded us that the church’s most enduring resource has never been its programming. It has always been the generations who learn, worship, and grow together.

We began this project wondering how to help young adults navigate the next chapter of life. We are now wondering if the answer has been sitting in our pews all along.