Response To John Piper (on church and maturity)

By Stephanie Snyder

1. The church will encourage maturity, not the opposite. ³Do not be childrenin your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature² (1Corinthians 4:20). 2. The church will press the fact that maturity is not a function of beingout of school but is possible to develop while in school.3. While celebrating the call to life long singleness, the church will notencourage those who don¹t have the cal to wait till late in their twentiesor thirties to marry, even if it means marrying while in school.4. The church will foster flexibility in life through living by faith andresist the notion that learning to be professionally flexible must happenthrough a decade of experimentation.5. The church will help parents prepare their youth for independentfinancial living by age 22 or sooner, where disabilities do not prevent.6. The church will provide a stability and steadiness in life for youngadults who find a significant identity there.7. The church will provide inspiring, worldview-forming teaching week in andweek out that will deepen the mature mind.8. The church will provide a web of serious, maturing relationships.9. The church will be a corporate communion of believers with God in hisword and his ordinances that provide a regular experience of universalsignificance. 10. The church will be a beacon of truth that helps young adults keep theirbearings in the uncertainties of cultural fog and riptides.11. The church will regularly sound the trumpet for young adults that Christis Lord of their lives and that they are not dependent on mom and dad forultimate guidance. 12. The church will provide leadership and service roles that call for theresponsibility of maturity in the young adults who fill them.13. The church will continually clarify and encourage a God-centeredperspective on college and grad school and career development.14. The church will lift up the incentives and values of chaste and holysingleness, as well as faithful and holy marriage.15. The church will relentlessly extol the maturing and strengtheningeffects of the only infallible life charter for young adults, the Bible.In these ways, I pray that the Lord Jesus, through his church, will nurturea provocative and compelling cultural alternative among our ³emergingadults.² This counter-cultural band will have more stability, cleareridentity, deeper wisdom, Christ-dependent flexibility, an orientation on thegood of others not just themselves, a readiness to bear responsibility andnot just demand rights, an expectation that they will suffer withoutreturning evil for evil, an awareness that life is short and after thatcomes judgment, and a bent to defer gratification till heaven if necessaryso as to do maximum good and not forfeit final joy in God.


I was reading this article by John Piper about and the church's role in helping grow children into mature adults. I liked his points about how culture has the tendency to cater to the immaturity throughout a child's later years into their teens and early 20's. This influence of culture that develops irresponsible, selfish, and aimless children that never grow up no matter their age is a growing problem.

I like Piper's sense of needing to address the church on this issue. I like how he doesn't make excuses for the church but rather challenges them to take the serious role of raising up real adults who will raise the next generation of children.