NARRATIVE

DISCIPLESHIP
 Para kanino ka bumabangon?

Job & Harlan

FREQUENT ISSUES ABOUT THE QUESTION
OF COMMITMENT
1. The roots of commitment
2. The fear of finality of commitment
3. The preference for individualistic endeavors

Job & Harlan

1. THE ROOTS OF COMMITMENT

Young people have lost their rootedness

because they live within a culture of
COMPLICATION.

Job & Harlan

2. THE FEAR OF FINALITY OF COMMITMENT

The search for self-establishment and self

securing by young people is coupled with a fear
of the FINALITY that comes with commitment.

Job & Harlan

3. THE PREFERENCE FOR INDIVIDUALISTIC
ENDEAVORS

Young people are becoming more concerned

with being self-made individuals. This is caused
by the emerging culture of INDIVIDUALISM.

Job & Harlan

How can young people commit to something
greater than themselves in a culture like this?

How can one commit to FAITH? To a life of

DISCIPLESHIP?

Job & Harlan

EMERGING ADULTHOOD
 Theory of development from late teens
through the twenties (18-25 years old)

 Neither adolescence nor young adulthood but

is theoretically and empirically distinct from
them both.

Ann
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
 Distinguished by relative independence from
social roles and from normative expectations.

 Emerging adulthood is the time of life of

independent explorations.

Ann
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: COLLEGE CONTEXT

For most emerging adults, college is more

than simple vocational training but a
combination of social and intellectual
experiences.

Ann
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification
Jayeel Cornelio

Six Main Themes

Positively Valenced Negatively Valenced

• Pursuing authenticity in
perceived relationship to
God
• Maturing in spiritual
development
• Having corrective relational
experiences with God
• Guarding against emotional
vulnerability with God
• Fluctuating in feeling
connected with God
• Experiencing frequent
emotional insecurity in
perceived relationship to
God

Ann
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Pursuing authenticity in perceived

relationship to God
Emergent adults tend to draw from various
resources in order to reinforce their own
personal understanding of their religion,
which can be claimed to be
REFLEXIVE SPIRITUALITY.
Personally experienced with God, right living over
right believing
Jaidene
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

“Genuine religion demands spirituality, while

spirituality needs the forms, insights, and
community of religion”

~William Spohn~

Jaidene
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Maturing in spiritual development

For emerging adults:

 spirituality must be lived in order to mature
and develop in the faith.
 Spirituality is CAPABLE OF GROWTH

Jaidene
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Developing and Maturing spirituality is moving

from:
a. External to internal spiritual motivation
b. Behavioral to relational intention
c. Conceptual to an experiential orientation
d. False self to real self
e. Petitionary to contemplative prayer
f. Compartmentalized to a more contemplative
and well-integrated spirituality

Jaidene
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Having corrective relational experiences

with God

 Emerging adults have gone through corrective

relational experiences with God, their
understanding of themselves in relation to
self, God and other is OPEN TO FORMATION.

Jaidene
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Guarding against emotional vulnerability

with God

 Emerging adults commonly experience an

EMOTIONAL DIALECTIC: they want to be open
with God yet they also want to protect
themselves from expected hurt (God’s
perceived rejection, disappointment, anger,
judgement)

Arrianne
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Fluctuating in feeling connected to God

 Emerging adults can have fluctuations in

feeling connected with God, often as a result
of a difficulty to locate God within one’s life or
the feeling of GOD’S ABSENCE WITHIN ONE’S
LIFE.

Arrianne
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: Religious or Spiritual Identification

Experiencing frequent emotional

insecurity

 Experiences of insecurity were typically

accompanied by NEGATIVE EMOTIONS such as
anxiety, worry, fear, inadequacy, guilt, shame,
or confusion.

Arrianne
 How do we begin in the articulation of
a faith narrative?

Gerard
 Spiritual Narrative Questionnaire
 Is a tool developed by psychologists from Biola
University for help in their various studies in
psychology, spirituality, and religion.

Gerard
 SPIRITUAL NARRATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE
1. Describe how important owning your faith is to you.
2. Describe the degree to which you feel you own your
faith.
3. Describe the process you have gone through to get
where you are.
4. To what extent do you feel like you are part of a
spiritual community?
5. How important is your spiritual community to you
and what role does the spiritual community play in
your life?

Gerard
 SPIRITUAL NARRATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE
6. How safe do you feel being real in your community
(you might think about how honest you are with them
or is it difficult for you to share)?
7. How did you community form?
8. Describe a struggle (something difficult or troubling
you have experienced in the last 6 months)?
9. What do you believe caused this struggle? Why did it
occur?
10. Was your relationship with God involved in this
struggle? If so, please describe.

Gerard
 SPIRITUAL NARRATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE
11. Describe how the struggle was resolved. If it was
resolved, please describe your attempts to resolve it. If
it was not resolved, please describe how you expect
your connection to God to be impacted by this
struggle.
12. Was God involved in the process of resolving the
struggle? If so, please describe this.
13. How does God communicate to you and how do you
know the communication is from God?
14. Please write in adjective or phrase that describes your
relationship with God.
Gerard
 SPIRITUAL NARRATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE
15. You described your relationship with God using the
word you gave in the previous question. Please write
down a memory or incident that illustrates why you
chose this word/ phrase.
16. Please describe how you imagine God feels towards
you generally in the last few months (for example, do
you imagine God is happy with, disappointed, angry,
disengaged?) Please give at least two memories that
will support your description.

Gerard
 SPIRITUAL NARRATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE
17. How do you imagine God feels towards you when you
sin? Please give at least two memories that will support
your answer.
18. People sometimes experience God differently
throughout their lives. How was your relationship with
God changed over time? Please give at least two
memories that will support your answer.
19. When you are aware of God’s presence, how do you
feel (If you don’t feel God’s presence much, just
indicate that in your answer)? Please give at least two
memories that will support your answer.
Gerard
 Examples of Faith Narratives

Bryson
“She’s naked. The one word that describes my faith journey, I think,
up until this point is EXPOSURE.”

“If I could just focus on doing SMALL THINGS, if I could be

very good at being generous in small ways everyday, if I could listen
at my funeral to have people look at different things that are small
and insignificant, and say ‘Hey, he did that and we really appreciated
it, it was really nice.’ ”.

Chariza
 Examples of Faith Narratives
Bryson
 Exposure
 diversity is a vital aspect of faith
 pay attention to small things often unnoticed

Chariza
 Examples of Faith Narratives
Kate
“I keep it because I like the way it smells, because you can’t even
burn it. It’s so cheesy but it’s like me now. Kinda rough around the
edges, it used to burn bright, and now it’s a little more reserved. It’s
confused. I don’t know what it is I really.

“My faith that used to be lively, but that had become DORMANT,
pushed to my subconscious. The wick, though visible, was broken
and buried beneath once-melted wax.”

Chariza
 Examples of Faith Narratives
Kate
 broken
 requires both divine and human relationships to
be in good spiritual health.

Chariza
 MODEL OF FAITH
Father Diego Cera De La Virgen Del Carmen:
Organ Maker

Gerard