Adam Kelchner

In just a few months, I along with many of this church's youth and young adults will undergo a significant transition. Graduation! I can only imagine that many students are already counting down days until the end of the semester. For some students, the transition will be a move away from their parents’ home for the first time to a place some distance away. The freshman year of college will be a time of tremendous challenge and growth for those students. For others, graduation will serve as a stepping- stone to start further educational endeavors such as nursing school, a master’s degree, or a PhD dissertation. For me, graduation will signal a transition from formal academic study to full-time pastoral ministry.

Even though the second semester has just started, there is quite a bit of chatter about graduation anxiety (even for students who don’t graduate for years to come). The students are asking questions about and thinking through the next phase of life. Where do I go from here? What do I do next? What am I supposed to be doing in this world? As a campus minister, it is my privilege to listen to students who are working out answers to some of life’s difficult questions. They are figuring out how to be in this world as individuals formed by faith and love for God’s work.

I offer these questions for you to consider as individuals, families, and a community of faith. Where are we going next? What is ahead of us in the next phase of Christian life together? The tentative answers to these questions will give us direction, remind us of the path we’ve taken up, and even motivate us for our journey toward God’s vision.