SPACE FOOD
There has been much speculation about what ‘future food’ will look and (more importantly) taste like. Remarkably, some of Back to the Future 2’s food dreams have been realised – who wouldn’t want to conduct their youth group amid ‘Pepsi Perfect,’ large boxes of Graham Crackers (effectively a funny-shaped Digestive) and dehydrated-pizza-flavoured crisps?
Large quantities of (often) sub-standard junk food are consumed on a regular basis by swarms of hungry teenagers but what if youth workers had alternative food at their disposal? Wouldn’t it be marvellous if a cheap, tasty morsel was created, which emitted such an irresistible smell that it drew young people from far and wide through the open church doors? Or perhaps a biscuit which filled up even the largest rugby lad while simultaneously providing a super-human alertness, ensuring the entire youth group was listening and learning. What about ‘fruit of the Spirit’ flavoured Tango?
The only problem here is that so many of our favourite games are food-based. Chubby bunnies doesn’t really work with shrunken, dehydrated scotch eggs.
ROBOT YOUTH WORKERS
Anyone with a basic understanding of Isaac Asimov will know his three laws of robotics:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
I’d hope that these guiding principles would also apply to youth workers. This begs the question: could youth workers be replaced by robots? In the 80s, people thought everything was going to be replaced by robots: doctors, lawyers, teachers, supermarket staff (THE FUTURE IS HERE!), so youth workers fitted in nicely. If programmed correctly, why not? Simply add in the four key principles of youth ministry (voluntary participation, equality of opportunity, informal education and empowerment) and you’ve got a ready-made, culturally relevant, impervious to burnout, youth worker.
HOVER PARKS
Research * suggests that 87 per cent of all youth work in the 80s and 90s took place in skate parks. It’s where ‘the youth’ were and as Richard Passmore told us to ‘meet them where they’re at’, that’s where youth work went. But unfortunately, this cannot last. Soon, very soon, these out dated skate parks will be replaced as surely we are nearing the era of… THE HOVERBOARD.
Just about every depiction of the future (dystopian or otherwise) includes hoverboards, and while they haven’t arrived yet, we are seeing more and more of those weird hoverboard-type things with wheels. We’re getting there.
This means one thing: youth ministry will be moving to hover parks.
(*Not real research)
Youth work in 25 years will be out of this world. Not only will we be hanging out in hover parks and consuming invisible space food alongside robot youth workers, we will all be doing it from the safety of our floating sofa. But then again, some things never change, so there’s one thing we can definitely rely on: all of our drop-ins will have the latest copy of FIFA 2041.
