It's 12:45 on Sunday afternoon, and I'm rushing to get to my 12:30 Sunday School class. As I gather kids on my way to the classroom, I see one of my older "kids" just standing around. "Why aren't you upstairs in the adult discipleship class?"

"I don't know." Or at least those were the words I'd say his grunt translated to. "I just can't relate to the stuff they talk about."

"Wanna come to the teen class?"

"I'm 20 years old."

"I know how old you are. You can help me teach."

He doesn't buy it. He doesn't want to teach and ask questions. He wants to explore his own questions, but he feels he has nowhere to go. Can I blame him? Can I really expect him to make the jump from teen classes to adult classes? Can young adults really play "smell-my-feet" one week then discuss the role free will plays in predestination the next—all because they had a birthday or graduated from high school?

My first inclination is to fix the problem by getting all the young adults his age into a small group, and voila! Problem solved. But that doesn't take into account all of the issues surrounding the college-age students who don't go away to college or don't go to college at all.

Feeling Left Behind

It's tough on those who aren't going away to college. They celebrate with their peers at graduation celebrations. They listen to people such as myself encourage them to write letters and send things to their friends away from home. They listen as their peers return for breaks and share their new experiences. They attend age-appropriate recreational activities organized during breaks, because, after all, that's when all the college kids are home. Again and again, they listen to the favorite phrase of a first-year college student: "It's different when you're away at college."

No wonder they feel left behind, like they're not as good as those who went away to college. A student epitomized this when she said, "I listen to all these stories from people in college, and I'm happy for them; but it makes me feel like I'm not smart enough to hang out with them." It didn't matter that she was in college, too. To her, if you don't leave home, it doesn't count.

I want to affirm those who made the decision to stay local, but often my actions fall short. I say there are other options besides college, but then I show them all the college catalogs in our library with no real talk about alternatives. I say that some students may thrive better if they stay local and have the support of their families, but there's little we provide for their spiritual growth here. So, while the returning students can talk about their new experiences and their campus ministries, the ones who were "left behind" have been attending the same meetings and doing the same activities, often feeling they have nothing new to share.

Not Fitting In

Students who stay home soon realize they can't fit in the way they once did. If a student goes away, experiences new things, and returns a changed person, she can understand why she doesn't fit. It isn't any less frustrating, but she understands it. She has to play a new role and bunk with her little sister, because her room is now a home office. She can understand why her next older brother is upset, because big sister is back and he's not the oldest anymore.