Vocation and Lockboxing

July 31, 2009

Brad M. Griffin
Brad M. Griffin

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Just listened to this podcast through Princeton’s Institute for Youth Ministry with sociologist Tim Clydesdale, author of The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School who developed the “lockbox” theory we’ve been exploring in our College Transition Project research.

The interview was on discerning vocation, but one comment that was really interesting to me was Tim’s insistence near the end of this interview that we as youth workers should really be focusing our energy on sophomores and juniors when it comes to helping them avoid lockboxing their faith.  Seniors are often already checked out in many cases, and their mindset has shifted toward a different constellation of concerns.

Would love to hear other thoughts about that — what are we doing to help sophomores and juniors develop faith that sticks beyond high school?

©2009 Fuller Youth Institute

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  • http://mattcleaver.com Matt Cleaver

    Although I’m sure there is a lot more, one thing that immediately comes to mind is getting teens involved in leadership as soon as possible, not just when they are juniors or seniors, but when they are freshman and sophomores, and even in junior high.

    However, one thing that is very hard to overcome in the lockboxing phenomenon are the geographical adjustments that make it easy to put one’s faith in a lockbox. As long as college freshman are geographically apart from their communities of faith in such a transitional time of life, it will be difficult for them to assimilate into a new community where they attend school. This thought needs to be developed a bit further, but I think it is pertinent to the discussion.

  • http://www.fulleryouthinstitute.org Brad Griffin

    Matt, two good points. Yesterday I was meeting with a new group of middle school students interested in getting involved in worship leadership, and I was thinking about the potential that involvement has on keeping them engaged through high school–very exciting.

    On your second point, one thing we’ve been talking about is a “4+1″ approach to high school ministry, where youth pastors re-envision their scope through the first year out of HS. Even if that just means more intentional/frequent contact with recent grads who are scattered geographically, it can help with anchoring them through that first part of the transition.

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