Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Earned degrees from Taylor University, 2010, 2012.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Taylor University, Upland, IN, former director of vocation formation, Vocation in College Project codirector, assistant athletic director, 2017–.
WRITINGS
Also author of Fathom blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Jess Fankhauser is the codirector of the Vocation in College Project at Taylor University. After serving as the director of vocation formation at the university, she became the assistant athletic director. In her Taylor University website profile, she stated: “I am privileged to spend my days conversing with students as they choose majors, wrestle with questions of faith and vocation, plan and prepare for graduate school or jobs after college, and … seek to live faithfully to God.”
In an article in the Echo, Fankhauser also talked about her experience as a foster parent in her Indiana community. She admitted: “I’ve always felt pretty called to a local community…. I thought, ‘How do I identify my gifts and talents, and how they align with needs within a local community?’ Children were always one of those aspects for me.” Fankhauser related that the foster care system needs “someone who can fully invest…. I’m going to love kids for as much or as little time as I get and trust that God is in control.”
Fankhauser coauthored Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties with Drew Moser in 2018. Based on their personal experience and their professional experience researching the lives of university students, the authors present a guide for young adults looking to set out in the world on their own. They encourage their readers to find a vocation—something that they are passionate about and meets a need in the community—to find a meaningful purpose in starting an independent life. With Christian themes to their advice, they discuss finding one’s role in church, new family dynamics, starting careers, and understanding childhood experiences.
In an article in the Chronicle Tribune, Fankhauser talked about the intended market for Ready or Not. “This book is for anyone seeking to live faithfully in their 20s…. It is not a prescriptive five step plan to success, but rather a practical guide for readers to take concrete steps forward in living well without feeling like they have to have their whole life figured out by the end of the book.” In the same article, Fankhauser concluded with her hopes for what readers will take away from the reading experience, noting that she hopes “they will live with a sense of freedom rather than fear.”
A contributor to Publishers Weekly took note of the book’s “light” tone. The same reviewer concluded that “Christian readers setting out into the wilds of adulthood will find this a helpful guide.” Reviewing the book in the Faith Contender blog, C.T. Adams stated: “I am sure that the authors’ goal (to equip one to live one’s twenties ‘with hope, purpose and meaning’) is off-mission compared to what the Scriptures say.” Writing in the A Simple Life, Really?! blog, Jalynn Patterson called Ready or Not “a great book for navigating young adulthood.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Chronicle Tribune, https://www.chronicle-tribune.com/ (April 10, 2018), Paige Conley, “Taylor Faculty Write Guide for Millennials.”
Publishers Weekly, February 26, 2018, review of Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties, p. 83.
ONLINE
A Simple Life, Really?!, http://asimplelifereally.blogspot.com/ (May 8, 2018), Jalynn Patterson, review of Ready Or Not.
Echo, http://theechonews.com/ (November 6, 2015), Gracie Fairfax, “Fostering Love.”
Faith Contender, https://faithcontenderblog.wordpress.com/ (April 14, 2018), C.T. Adams, review of Ready Or Not.
Taylor University, Athletics Department website, http://athletics.taylor.edu/ (Augsut 24, 2018), author profile.
About Jess Fankhauser
I'm a just turned thirtysomething who has spent her career thus far working with twentysomethings. I care deeply about being a present and active participant in my local community and helping others to do the same. Along the way, I research, study and write about my experiences and those of my fellow millennials.
Currently, I serve as the Assistant Athletic Director at Taylor University and co-direct the Vocation in College Project:
* Where I teach courses on vocation (calling) and professional development
* Where I work with students as they explore what it means to live faithfully
* Where I research and write on vocation (book forthcoming in 2018. Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties.
I co-wrote Ready or Not while still in my twenties, sharing what I learned along the way in the book. Vocation formation in my own life has deepened my desire to put down roots in my own local community by investing in my neighborhood, the foster care system and the local church.
Fostering love
November 6, 2015 11:00 am·Comments Off on Fostering love
Jess Fankhauser learns life lessons and reliance on God through foster parenting
Jess Fankhauser, director of the Calling and Career Office, currently fosters two children.
By Gracie Fairfax | Echo
You will typically find Jess Fankhauser in professional attire as she serves as the director of the Calling and Career office, but what awaits her when she returns home is anything but typical. As of April, she also serves as a parent in the foster care system.
Fankhauser’s fascination with the foster care system began in high school when she worked with preschool and daycare classes that had foster children in them. She witnessed how children thrived with the consistency created in their classes, despite the chaotic home lives they returned to at the end of the day. She asked herself what it would look like to offer that consistency to foster kids in her adult life.
“I’ve always felt pretty called to a local community,” Fankhauser said. “I thought, ‘How do I identify my gifts and talents, and how they align with needs within a local community?’ Children were always one of those aspects for me.”
Fankhauser felt she had the right personality for the job.
“They need someone who can fully invest,” Fankhauser said. “I’m going to love kids for as much or as little time as I get and trust that God is in control.”
When she’s on her agency’s list for openings, she has to stay on her toes, as she might get a call at any hour. Since she is licensed for foster care, but is not a pre-adoptive home, children leave her home either to be reunited with biological parents and relatives or to be moved into a pre-adoptive home. So far, she has had shorter placements, as the ultimate goal is to put children in a permanent situation.
Currently, Fankhauser is fostering her third and fourth child. She can care for two children at a time based on her home size and status as a single woman working full-time.
Although Fankhauser loves being a foster care parent, it requires sacrifice and self-awareness.
“You have to . . . enter the system to the capacity that you’re able,” Fankhauser said. “It wouldn’t be fair to those children to be in a space where I can’t even get them logistically to everything they need to get to.”
You might find her walking back and forth during lunch breaks between Taylor’s campus and her home in Upland to do laundry, wash bottles, run errands and make phone calls. Sometimes knowing her limits means the hard decision to turn down opportunities to take in foster children.
“I say no about as much as I say yes to the calls I receive,” Fankhauser said. “You don’t enter the system to say no. You enter the system to say yes. But knowing your limits is really key.”
Fankhauser wouldn’t be able to juggle her busy lifestyle of work and foster parenting without the help of her friends and family. Even though her brother, who lives with her, is gone for business a couple of weeks out of the month, he helps her balance the load when he is home. She also has an incredibly supportive community of people in Upland who babysit for her and are willing to help out at a moment’s notice.
As a foster parent, Fankhauser is able to see beyond the bubble of Taylor and into the greater Grant County community where she works alongside others who are also passionate about seeing families restored.
“That doesn’t always happen, which I think (is one of) the hard parts of the system. You can long for and hope for things, but it can be really heartbreaking and complex at the same time,” Fankhauser said. “I can want a child to stay with me and I can want a child to go back to their family—both at the same time.”
The foster system can be emotionally difficult and full of goodbyes. While Fankhauser knew what she was getting into, it doesn’t make the hard aspects of the job any easier. When helping children transition smoothly out of her home, she stresses the importance of learning to say goodbye well and beginning the transition early by talking through the process.
“Foster care, for me, is one of the most tangible reminders every day of just how much I’m not in control—God is,” said Fankhauser. “I’m thankful for even small amounts of time where I get to join him in the work of caring for children in this community.”
Jess Fankhauser is the codirector of the Vocation in College Project. Jess has spent her entire professional career teaching, researching, and working with college students and twenty somethings. The former director of vocation formation at Taylor, she currently serves as the university's assistant athletic director. She co-leads the Fathom Experience, a one-day interactive exploration of calling for twenty-somethings offered all over the United States.
Assistant Athletics Director
jessica_fankhauser@taylor.edu
765-998-5317
The 2017-2018 year is the first for Jess Fankhauser as TU's Assistant Athletics Director, after starting her tenure on June 19.
Fankhauser joined Taylor Athletics after having served in a multitude of roles around campus since graduating from TU in 2010. Most recently, Fankauser had served within Taylor’s Career and Calling Office for four years.
In addition to her work within the TU Career and Calling Office, Fankauser also served as an assistant coach on the Taylor softball team and as an assistant residence hall director. Fankhauser earned a master’s degree in higher education and student development in 2012, a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2010 and was one of TU’s most heralded pitchers on the diamond during her time at Taylor.
During the past four years within the Career and Calling Office, Fankhauser held titles of Assistant Director, Director and Director of Vocation Formation, while excelling in data assessment, career counseling and program implementation. Fankhauser also worked with Spring Break Missions in international trip development training and taught or presented in over 25 courses.
Fankauser’s work within Student Development has also included Title IX training, serving as one of University investigators and working on the Student Development Leadership Team.
Fankauser has been heralded at nearly every stop of her career, including for her work as a graduate student. Fankhauser’s honors included the TU Department of Higher Education and Student Development Distinguished Thesis of the Year and TU Graduate School Thesis of the Year awards in 2012.
On the field, Fankauser still boasts the lowest single-season earned-run average in Taylor program history with a 1.60 ERA during the 2007 campaign. Fankhauser also ranks fourth in program history with 334 strikeouts and fifth with 397 innings pitched in the circle for the Trojans.
Jess Assistant Director of the Calling and Career Office at Taylor University, I am privileged to spend my days conversing with students as they choose majors, wrestle with questions of faith and vocation, plan and prepare for graduate school or jobs after college, and most importantly seek to live faithfully to God using the gifts and talents he has given them.
It is practical work, but also deeply formative as students seek to wrestle with not only what they will do but, more importantly, the type of people they will become. More often than not, I am learning from students as they explore and dream and ask hard questions about life and faith and how to live faithfully in this world.
I grew up in rural Michigan about two and a half hours from Taylor and love Upland’s small-town feel. I am a two-time Taylor graduate completing both my undergraduate degree in Psychology and my Master of Art in Higher Education and Student Development.
I’m a just turned thirtysomething who has spent her career thus far working with twentysomethings. I care deeply about being a present and active participant in my local community and helping others to do the same. Along the way, I research, study and write about my experiences and those of my fellow millennials.
Currently, I serve as the Assistant Director of Athletics at Taylor University and co-direct the Vocation in College Project.
Where I teach courses on vocation (calling) and professional development
Where I work with students as they explore what it means to live faithfully
Where I research and write on vocation (book forthcoming in 2018. Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties.
I co-wrote Ready or Not while still in my twenties, sharing what I learned along the way in the book. Vocation formation in my own life has deepened my desire to put down roots in my own local community by investing in my neighborhood, the foster care system and the local church.
I truly love hearing from others about the ways you are seeking to invest your own neighborhoods, workplaces, communities and families with hope, meaning and purpose. But please know that because of my own commitments to my work and local community I may not always have time to respond. Nevertheless, know that I’m cheering you on in your pursuit of living faithfully in all the places, opportunities and contexts in which you find yourself.
You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter (@jess_fankhauser) or email me at jess.fankhauser [at]gmail[dot]com
Taylor faculty write guide for millennials
Apr 10, 2018
BY Paige Conley - pconley@chronicle-tribune.com
Two Taylor University faculty members have released a new book aimed and helping millennials find their place in the world.
“Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties,” written by Dr. Drew Moser and Jess Fankhauser, is a resource for people in their twenties to examine the complexities of a vocation. According to Moser, Dean of Experiential Learning & Associate Professor of Higher Education, the book is designed to navigate God’s calling on young people’s lives.
“It was the book I wish I had when I was in my twenties,” Moser said.
The book is born out of a series of workbooks that Moser and Fankhauser created and designed for their courses at Taylor. It includes interactive exercises that are meant to help millennials take a step in the right direction when it comes to perceiving their calling.
According to Moser, he and Fankhauser have been gathering research on vocation for five years. The pair began their research when they were working in the Calling and Career office at Taylor. They noticed many of their meetings with students were leading to deeper conversations on calling.
However, when they went searching for good resource materials for their students, they couldn’t find any. This led them to create Vocation in College, a research study that explores the influences and perspectives of vocation formation in college experience.
Throughout their research, Moser and Fankhauser have collected thousands of essays, survey data points, and themes that eventually formed the book.
“This book is for anyone seeking to live faithfully in their 20s,” said Assistant Athletic Director, Fankhauser. “It is not a prescriptive five step plan to success, but rather a practical guide for readers to take concrete steps forward in living well without feeling like they have to have their whole life figured out by the end of the book.”
In their research, they’ve noticed several challenges millennials face during their twenties. One is not having significant time to reflect on their life. According to Moser, this reflective time helps young people make progress in their understanding of vocation. However, since they are always connected to some form of entertainment it’s hard for their minds to wander and reflect, Moser said.
On top of that, millennials are faced with competing and contradictory messages from society. There’s one side where society is telling them to live it up while the other side is telling them that if they don’t have their life figured out now they are failing, Moser said.
Millennials are the most transient and mobile generation in the workforce that the world’s ever seen, Moser said. It’s difficult for them to plant roots into one place and feel grounded when they are always changing.
“We’ve had students describe their twenties as a tightrope, or riding in a car with everything outside being blurry while they speed on past to who knows where. There is a sense of rushing everywhere and the noise is constant,” Fankhauser said.
Moser doesn’t guarantee anyone will have their 10-year plan figured out after they read the book, but he does think the book helps young people set healthy goals for their life especially those who are having a hard time navigating their twenties.
“I think it will provide just enough guidance to help millennials who feel stuck to help them move in their life, specifically, with hope, purpose, and meaning,” Moser said.
According to Moser, vocation is a process and not a destination. It is about more than just your job and includes important aspects like your family, spiritual life, church life, and community.
“It is possible to live your life with hope, purpose, and meaning and the way in which you do that is through the lens of vocation and that is something you can experience here and now,” Moser said.
Similar to her colleague, Fankhauser hopes that individuals who read the book will walk away with the desire to live in the present while preparing for the future. As well as, actively and positively contribute to their family, community, and workplace.
“That they will live with a sense of responsibility for those around them and choose to use their gifts and talents for the betterment of others,” Fankhauser said. “That they will live with a sense of freedom rather than fear.”
Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties
Publishers Weekly. 265.9 (Feb. 26, 2018): p83.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties
Drew Moserand Jess Fankhauser. NavPress, $15.99 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-63146796-7
Moser and Fankhauser, academics who research the lives of college students, build on their professional experience in this readable, relevant book for new adults. They encourage 20-somethings to discover their vocations (expanded here beyond religious overtones to mean the meeting of the world's needs and one's passions) and live lives influenced by more meaningful concerns through asking serious questions of themselves. The authors exhibit a genuine understanding and concern for the turmoil of the first decade of adulthood as they cover topics including embarking on careers, finding places in church, making sense of childhood experiences, and growing into new family roles. The authors also take fresh approaches to conventional self-help notions, such as encouraging self-improvement through the development of strengths rather than the reduction of faults. Each chapter ends with thoughtful exercises for readers to apply to their lives. Though the tone is light throughout, Moser and Fankhauser provide many jumping-off points for deep contemplation about a wide range of fraught areas for those starting adulthood. Christian readers setting out into the wilds of adulthood will find this a helpful guide. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 83. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637493/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5db0a4e0. Accessed 31 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530637493
Book Review 22: “Ready Or Not: Leaning Into Life In Our Twenties” by Drew Moser & Jess Fankhauser
Posted on April 14, 2018 by C.T. Adams
***DISCLAIMER***I received a complimentary copy of this book for free from Tyndale House for review purposes.
Drew Moser and Jess Fankhauser’s Ready Or Not: Leaning Into Life In Our Twenties attempts to answer the question, “What are my twenties for, anyway?” (p. xiii). Moser and Fankhauser (who are co-directors of the Vocation In College Project) make the bold claim that the reader “won’t find another book that will challenge you to lean into this question quite the way this does” (p. xiii). While I am not sure one can literally “lean into” a question, I am sure that the authors’ goal (to equip one to live one’s twenties “with hope, purpose and meaning”) is off-mission compared to what the Scriptures say (p. xviii). Early and often, the authors place much emphasis on things such as the “good life” and the “here and now.” Unfortunately, they place little to no emphasis on the Great Commission, said Commission involving making disciples of all nations, preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His name (Matthew 28:18-20; Luke 24:36-49).
As for my opinion of the book, I definitely would not recommend it to anyone. While it should be noted that the authors claim to be “new authors” (p. 201), that does not excuse them from producing a book that shows very little to no discernment, emphasis on sound doctrine, and reverence for Jesus Christ (the Savior of the world, mind you), among other things (1 Timothy 1:15; Matthew 1:21; John 1:29). Specifically, the book’s narcigesis (p. 20), prooftexting (p. 21), dishonest citation of verses (p. 22 in the case of 2 Peter 3:9), promotion of the unbiblical dream-destiny thingy (pp. 36-37), endorsement of the unbiblical practice of contemplative prayer (p. 73), heretical concept of the Holy Spirit (p. 117) and citation of occultists/false teachers (such as Carl Jung and Eugene Peterson, respectively; pp. 33, 70, 108, 153) are all awful and inexcusable. How this book got the label of “Christian Life/Personal Growth” despite its obvious problems is beyond me. This book does not help me grow at all. Furthermore, given its being off-mission, there is no way this book will help me in my “Christian Life.” The only thing this book is good for is research purposes. Aside from that, stay away.