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Youth pastors are dealing with an ever changing and diverse unchurch teenage population.  The forecast is that teenagers are becoming more and more unChristian.  Some regions across the US (west coast, pacific northwest, East coast) and already across the world (UK, Canada, China, Australia) are removed from Christianity/Christ/Church culture.

My proposed problem: There is not enough youth workers researching, studying and learning about the “other” types of students (who don’t attend our youth group/church).  In order to reach the “other” students, youth workers need to know everything about them.

My church employment theory:  The theory goes like this:  the longer you work in a church context the more removed and out of touch you become with the non-Christian teenage culture.  Remember teenage culture is always changing.  Once you think you have a pulse on what is happening in the life of the teen, it changes.  When a youth worker works at a church for more than a year, he/she will most likely get sucked into the church vortex so fast he/she will not even know what sucked him/her in.  The church vortex has it’s own culture, language, rules, values, rituals, people, clothes, and traditions.  Indirectly, the church vortex begins to dictate the youth pastor’s every decision, sermon, words, thoughts and even determines how he/she prioritizes their ministry time.

Youth pastors must know how NOT to be sucked into the church vortex.  One of the ways youth pastors avoid not getting sucked in the vortex—– is by getting out of the church office and studying the local student population.  The term that best describes this studying is: cultural anthropology.

Cultural anthropology is when a professional youth worker becomes a participant observer of the student societies and clusters that populate their community.  

I love the discipline of cultural anthropology because it requires immersion.  It forces a youth worker to immerse himself/herself in their local teen culture which will make him/her very uncomfortable. Unfortunately a youth pastor has to abandon their comfy air conditioned church office and post up somewhere else in the local community where teens are hanging out and just observe.  In order to learn, a youth pastor must immerse him/herself into the student culture.

For example, what is the fastest way people learn language? You practice it and insert yourself into the culture that speaks the language you are learning.

Youth pastors cannot be culturally clumsy.  Immersion is necessary.  As youth pastors ministering in a post-Christian context the best training is getting out there into the community and start learning first hand from the teens that don’t attend your youth group.

How To Conduct Cultural Anthropology In Your Local Community:  Youth Workers Exploring Teenage Land

-  select one place (in your local community) that is highly populated with teenagers.  (i.e. movie theaters, malls, skate parks, strip malls, beach, community center, coffee shops)

-  schedule 5- 4 hour hang out times where you observe, interact, interview, and hang with teens.  essentially you are studying the “other” teens for 20 hours in 5 different time frames.

-  it will be very awkward at first, but after a few rough goes it will get easier and students will start to warm up to you in their environment.

-  make sure to take a notebook and pen and record ALL observations.

-  you cannot police these students when you observe their bad behaviors.  you want them to talk to you about why they are doing what they are doing.  you need to stay very objective in your study.

-  don’t get all spiritual on the teens you interact with.  just be natural and blend into the crowd.  just listen and ask a lot of deep questions.

-  at the end of 20 hours, do a lab write up.  in the write up, reflect on what you saw and learned when you were interacting with the other students.

-  extrapolate 4 – 5 ideas from your lab write up that will make you a better youth worker in the town you minister in.  these 4-5 ideas should shed light on how to reach the “other” students.

The goal of cultural anthropology is getting “christian youth workers” to immerse themselves in unfamiliar teenage environments which will give them a better understanding of today’s teens and help them better contextualize Gospel centered environments for students to encounter and experience Jesus.

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My Cultural Anthropology Experiment: What I Learned By Spending 20 Hours At A Local Mall

-  teenagers can persuade any homeless person to buy them cigarettes and alcohol. they simply tip them a few extra bucks when the homeless person delivers their goods

-  teenagers were extremely comfortable talking about their raging hormones in public

-  parents want to quickly get rid of their teen by dropping them off at the mall and parents hand their teen cash to blow at the mall

-  teens were quick to make fun of the clueless christian teens in the mall

-  teens did not like the mall cop/security and repeatedly made fun of him

-  teens have a very distorted view of God

-  if you ask the right questions, most teens will open up and tell you what they are thinking

-  teens need to witness more adults being an incarnational witness.  basically more students need to see more adults model (not talk about) the Christian life

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I invite you to engage in cultural anthropology by observing teens for 20 hours on their turf.   I would also love to hear your conclusions and observations if you do decide to conduct cultural anthropology in your community.    

The biggest problem Youth Ministry is experiencing is that after our high school senior graduates, he or she will most likely not attend church. Bottom line after a student graduates college they will never return back to Church. Given that some denominations, “estimate that over 50% of their youth group graduates fall away from either their faith or their faith communities upon entering college…” (Laurie Goodstein, “Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers,” The New York Times, October 6, 2006.) Troy Murphy argues that 80% of high school students walk away from their faith. (Not sure where he got this statistic? He did not provide a bibliography)

Why is this?

My suggestions:
• Students go to a public university and get blindside with philosophy and evolutionary biology that essentially undermines everything they were told at youth group. And the student does not know how to confront the intellectual intensity going against their system of belief.

• Students do not fully participate in “Big church”. It is essential students feel included and welcome. Also it is imperative a student learn how to respectfully sit in a service for a hour without their ipod or cell phone.
Jim Burns of Youthbuilders and Mark DeVries of Family-Based Youth Ministry stated: “The degree to which students will stay in the church, get involved, and make significant life decisions for Christ is directly dependent on their sense of belonging to the community. The goal of any youth ministry must be that students see and experience themselves as participants in God’s family of faith.”

• Parents hand down their faith to the student. The parents will force their Christian convictions on the student while giving them an ultimatum of they cannot drive or get allowance if they do not believe what they believe. Student need to own their faith. They need ownership to why they believe what they believe. Student need to land on their convictions for themselves, not their parents.

• Students do not know how to walk in their faith without youth group. Basically students do not know how to listen to God’s voice without the structure of youth group. Students do not know how to experience the spiritual disciplines by themselves.

At Fuller Theological Seminary, the notorious pop culture theologian  Barry Taylor offered a theology class titled:  Theology of U2.  I never had the privilege to take it, but I had a few friends who did and we had many conversations about the theology within U2.

Bottom line:  I am convinced (from my very brief studying and listening to U2), that U2 creates an emotional space for individuals to contemplate the spiritual life.  There is something just in the music and in the lyrics that takes you somewhere. And it should be the goal for youth ministries to have the ability to do the same as U2.

Bono rarely comes out and makes overt Christian messages in their songs, but at the same time their music is directly inspiring people to connect with God all across the world.  Inherently there is something spiritual in their songs. Bono has greatly achieved at getting Americans to do what Jesus taught us to do more so than all of the pastors in this country combined.

I think some times our youth ministries are overly direct in always trying to proclaim Jesus.  Obviously, our youth ministries reek Christianity every which way, which may be hurting us.  Seemingly, we are trying too hard to be spiritual in our teachings, YM philosophies, small groups, and programmatic structure.

I think some times it is safe and wise to adopt the U2 type of methodology in how we talk about the spiritual life with Jesus.  What if youth groups some times created spiritual spaces that facilitated a spiritual transformation and experience?  There would be no speaker directly giving a salvation talk.  There would simply be a space for students to emotionally and spiritually engage and reflect about the themes of God.

I think it is really interesting that Bono doesn’t explicitly state he is Christian, but yet he is a remarkable prophetic spiritual leader and voice for the American church.  U2 uniquely is spiritual and is contributing to the spiritual conversation of the world.  What if youth group functioned like this?  What if youth group created and facilitated such a sacred and emotional environment for students to align with God without directly broadcasting “WE ARE SPIRITUAL”?

Mike Yaconelli makes this beautiful statement in Messy Spirituality:  Spirituality rarely looks like what we think it looks like.

Unfortunately the label of “being Christian” has many negative connotations, which many American youth ministries and youth pastors only reinforce and add to.  In my experience I have found that an atheist student who starts to smells the Christian label, will immediate detach and not be open to Jesus.  So how do we be followers of Christ that lead youth ministries, without fueling or adding to the negative Christian label?

Because something is “Christian” doesn’t necessary mean it is good and true.  And it especially doesn’t not mean that all followers of Christ claim it as good and true.   There is a lot of cheesy and crappy Christian stuff out there.

My point:  Youth pastors–lets learn from U2 methods.  U2 has the amazing ability to use metaphors to tell a redemptive story and to create an emotional space for its participants to engage in the spiritual life.

Democracy Matters by Cornel West. West’s central thesis is that America has three reoccurring distortions.

First, the free-market fundamentalism has an overwhelming power and influence in the economy that puts fear and insecurity in the hearts of workers to meet the corporate goals of profit. The free market encourages sleep walking robots to see that the false prophets are handsomely rewarded with money, status, and access to more power.

Second, is that America is obsessed with aggressive militarism. West comments that “violence is deployed by those who cloak themselves in innocence–those unwilling to examine themselves and uninterested in counting the number of innocent victims they kill.” (6)

Third, America has an escalating authoritarianism problem. The authoritarianism is rooted in our understandable paranoia toward potential terrorists, our traditional fear of too many liberties, and our deep distrust of one another. West goes on to illustrate how these three distortions play out in the American identities of the Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and youth population.

In the youth chapter (ch. 6), West argues that many of the American youth have been the direct target by corporate America for consumption. This produces an adolescent to be fragile, which does not enable them to withstand the emotional trauma generated by the fast paced capitalist culture of consumption that confronts them. The youth of America are being bombarded by consumption, which leads to consumption addiction. Adolescents become addicts of alcohol, sex, video games, popularity, technology, success, and fashion. These addictions leave them with little room or time to become mature and to become concerned about others and or politically engaged in social change. Who knows a 20-something year old that is living at home and still leaving off of mom and dad’s money who is liberal?

I would argue that the late adolescent (19-24) population of America are extremely upset about how they were disillusioned by American adults who shoved consumerism, militarism, and authoritarianism down their young throats. I think this is why so many late adolescents are so anti-adult world, because all they know of the adult world is depravity of morality, egocentricity, and greedy tendencies.

West communicates that late adolescents long for energizing visions worthy of pursuit and sacrifice that will resurrect their old consumed souls in a story bigger than themselves and locate themselves in a narrative greater than themselves. So, it is imperative to engage the youth in something that is outside of themselves, but we must first break the consuming psychological strong holds. If they even sense a fake adult authoritative power, they are out of there.

For the last two months in youth group, I have been requiring that every single youth (jr and sr high) that walks through the door turn off and turn in his/her cell phone and ipod in the designated basket. At first, they hated me and gave me much resistance. Now, I have them trained like dogs. It was my small way to confront the distractions and consumption mentality in their life. Youth group is one hour and 30 minutes, students can easily go that long without music, text, or talking on their phone. And who knows God may get their attention since they are not glued to their cell phone? I have actually sensed an increase of attention and engagement since my cell phone/ipod policy. But seriously, that basket is like a mini earthquake. Every other second a cell phone is vibrating.

Last weekend our youth group was a part of the 30 Hour Famine. It was a major success! The students were deeply moved by the 29,000 kids that die a day of starvation and malnutrition. I was floored because some of my major party students showed up on both Friday and Saturday night. I asked them why they decided to skip out on the rager to come starve for the hungry in Africa? They first said that there is a real power in part taking in something much larger than their own private-self absorbed world. They also said if there is a great cause, they are willing to make great sacrifices.

As a youth pastor it is my dream to break through the adolescent consumption mentality and their misconception of unmoral adults. I want my students serving God and serving outside of themselves while feeling no desire to buy things. Lastly, I want them to feel that adults are safe and trustworthy and adults genuinely care for who they are.

Adolescents and alcohol–that is a bad mix. If a youth pastor is honest, probably 45% of his/her high school youth group is experimenting with liquor. Alcohol is a huge problem in America’s private (yes even “Christian” schools) and public high schools. Partying leads to drinking and drinking leads to sexing.

What does a youth pastor do? Obviously every great high school youth group student knows that drinking is not only illegal, but theologically wrong. The quit drinking sermon may not exactly work…..so what will work?

In Chap Clark’s book HURT, I learned that if there is a group of students (a student cluster), there will be at least a few students (if not all) drinking.

I realized that the desire to party goes beyond just getting drunk. “Drinking is not about drinking; it is about community” (164). Adolescents see being in the party scene not only as a social ritual, but also as a place where they can be involved and be accepted. At the core of every adolescent is the longing to belong.

The reality of the party scene, described in HURT, was not surprising, but affirming. It would be silly to deny the research, to not address the problem of adolescents and alcohol. The abuse of alcohol is a difficult problem without a simple solution.
How did I address the alcohol situation in my high school ministry? Honestly addressing the alcohol problem in a youth ministry is a step by step process. There is no perfect program, no overnight fix, or insightful teaching that will automatically get adolescents to stop drinking. It is imperative to remember (although I forget a lot) the transformative power that the Holy Spirit brings, not the youth worker! I handled this alcohol situation with three different techniques.

First, I needed to assess the alcohol usage in the high school ministry. I needed to know when the students were partying and who exactly was partying. I started by asking students a lot of questions both individually and collectively. I also spent time on their MySpace and Facebook pages. MySpace and Facebook are our friends! They give a firsthand perspective of what happens on Friday and Saturday night. At times I wonder if they add to the stories to glorify their alcohol consumption. I had access to the pictures, bulletins, and commentary that described the party from the night before. Oddly enough, my students did not have a problem sharing their alcohol experiences and party stories with me.

For the last segment of my alcohol assessment I gave a survey where each student anonymously answered questions (either in open ended or multiple choice format). Some of the questions were: Where do you get alcohol? How many parties are there in a week? How much are you likely to drink at a party? Why do you drink? Do your friends drink? Walking away from the assessment I realized that 65% of the kids in my group were “partiers” and they were partying on Friday and Saturday nights.

Second, I taught a series on the “Realities of Our Identity.” The goal was to communicate that who we are should not determine what we do to gain acceptance. We are the children of God; we already belong to the Heavenly Father. My students need to put value on their identity in Christ, rather than putting value on the identity imposed on them from the party scene. It is my desire that these students are authentic in who they are as followers of Christ.

Third, our high school ministry team orchestrated a variety of weekend activities that encouraged interaction and connection between the many student clusters. The students also had a chance to spend time with adult leaders. It was important to find adults who genuinely cared about the students; whom the students felt comfortable with. It was clear to me that student clusters party because they love social interaction, connection, and excitement; and these gatherings gave the students those outlets–without the alcohol. My amazing adult leaders were willing to open up their homes and their Friday and Saturday nights to be with the cluster that they were connected to. Whatever the clusters enjoyed doing, the adults would do it with them. For example, clusters could go paint balling, bowling, to the arcade, to a baseball game, to the movies, etc. The intention of these weekend nights was to demonstrate what authentic, sober connection looks like (with their friends and other adults who care for them outside of the church).

Above all, there are no overnight remedies to the alcohol problem. The problem lies not with the alcohol alone, but with a genuine longing for community. Assess your students’ alcohol consumption. Simply accept and lead the partying students from where they are at. Give them opportunities to find a place to belong apart from the party scene. Remember that the change must move from the inside out. We have to trust that God is at work inside of their hearts.