Over the years, I have taught in several programs to equip laypersons for leadership in the church. Most of the time, I was asked to teach classes related to Christian Education or Faith Formation. At the end of March, I will teach what may be my last class in that type of program. For a while now, I have been teaching a class in developmental stages as part of the Faith Formation Leadership Training and Certification program of the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ.

As I prepare to teach the class, I have been going through syllabi from previous courses that I have taught and reflecting on what is most important for this year’s students. As has always been true, simply repeating what I have done before is inappropriate. New research and information need to inform my teaching. In addition, the students change. Since the pandemic, church faith formation programs have undergone significant changes. Many congregations have reduced their professional staff in response to decreased donations. Others have experienced substantial changes in attendance patterns for families with children.

However, some elements in my classes have remained the same. I still rely heavily on developmental psychology to enable church leaders to craft programs appropriate to children's ages and developmental stages. I don’t ignore the new science on parenting and education for health and lifelong thriving, but I try to contextualize it in some of its historical precedents. Many important ideas take several generations to mature.

In each class, I present an overview of Erik Erikson’s Stages of Development. While Erikson was heavily influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, who also believed that personality developed in a series of stages, Erikson added further development of the ideas. He was one of the first developmental psychologists to offer a theory that covers the entire lifespan. It seems obvious now, but at the time Erikson was developing the theory, interest in studying adulthood and the changes that occur in later life was uncommon. Psychologists focused on childhood as if the work of becoming human could somehow be accomplished, and once one became an adult, they had succeeded.

Erikson described five stages up to adolescence, then added three more stages of development. In his schema, young adulthood spans roughly from 19 to 40 years, middle adulthood from 40 to 65 years, and maturity from 65 years to death. It is easy to quibble with the specifics of when various stages start and stop. Indeed, individual differences mean people don’t always have the same experiences at the same ages. Erikson’s theory does, however, still provide an essential framework for understanding ourselves and the others with whom we come into relationship.

Erikson asserts that adults (those aged 40 to 65) need to create or nurture things that will outlast them. He cites raising children, accomplishing creative work, and other tasks as essential to adulthood. He then describes old age as a stage focused on reflecting on life. In this stage, people experience a sense of accomplishment and may discover regrets about their lives.

As I reflect on Erikson’s stages in preparation for teaching, I am struck that there are significant challenges in transitioning from one stage to the next. I am nearly 72 years old, well into Erikson’s final stage. However, I find that I am still struggling with the tasks of adulthood. Yes, our children have grown up and formed families of their own. I am incredibly proud of them. But I have trouble looking at them as something I accomplished. While I have impacted their lives, who they are and how they contribute to this world are mainly due to their inherent creativity, intelligence, and initiative.

Regarding creative work, I might feel like I have accomplished that task. After all, I am retired after a long career with modest success. On the other hand, I can’t see the work I do with my daily journal as being finished. In many ways, retirement has been a work shift for me rather than ceasing to work. These days, one of the primary focuses of my work is writing and re-writing the manuscript of a book and preparing it for publication. It is a very challenging project for me. There are days when I wonder if I am equal to the task. There is some fear of failure. What if I never complete the manuscript? What if no one wants to read it once it is published? I can wrestle with self-doubt as actively as I did in the early stages of becoming a pastor and establishing my career.

My editor works with many authors my age who are writing memoirs. Memoir is a popular genre of literature, and his small press has focused on that segment. He has suggested several times that I should be thinking about my memoirs. I am taking a “Wisdom in the Aging Years” class focusing on memoir writing. The assignments for the class involve writing essays that tell our personal stories. However, I don’t feel ready to write a memoir. So many other stories need to be told, and I think I may be able to tell a few of them before I focus on my own story.

When I teach the class, I caution students not to get too hung up on the order of developmental tasks or the ages assigned to those tasks. Not every person goes through the tasks in the same order. Not every person goes through them at the same pace. Social and historical events change the stages. I often cite statistics about adolescence extending well into the twenties for many youth today. In our culture, it is a more extended stage than in some other societies. I need to remind myself of those things, too. I may still be working on the tasks of middle adulthood regardless of my chronological age.

Perhaps it simply is taking me longer than others to grow up. Patience will be needed for me to move toward maturity.