In a rapidly changing world, Fuzz Kitto asks: how can we help prepare young people for lifelong faith in a future that none of us can fully anticipate?
The world is changing. In the last ten years we have seen such unprecedented movements of people, cultural shifts and changes in worldview that we are fighting to keep up. In schools we are preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist, where they’ll use technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t know are problems yet! The top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004 and the US Department of Labor estimate that young people in schools will have 10 to 14 jobs by the time they are 38.
The way we form relationships has shifted. One in eight couples in the USA met online, and across the West the internet is becoming the fastest growing way to meet people and form a relationship – inside and outside the church. The total number of text messages sent and received each day exceeds the population of the world. It took Facebook two years to reach 50 million people and if the users on MySpace were a country they would be the 5th largest country in the world. There are 31 billion searches on Google every month. It makes you wonder who we asked before Google.
We are bombarded with information. The English language has around 540,000 words but Shakespeare had only 100,000 to work with. It is estimated that the information in one week of The Times newspaper contains more information than a person in the 18th Century would have seen in a life time, and that new technical information doubles every two years. For students starting a four-year technical degree this means half of what they learnt in their first year will be out-dated by the third.
We are indeed on the cusp of a new reality. The shape of cultures and communities is changing rapidly and the implications are high. So there are many questions to ask as we develop priorities for how we invest our time and resources as youth leaders in this emerging reality.
How do we prepare them for the future? How much do we leave up to God and how much responsibility do we have in their formation? What do they need to learn and develop that will be integral to the future shape of youth ministry and Church?
Exploring the changes
There are five interconnected cultural shifts, which can be observed on a global scale:
A) Pluralism. In the majority of societies and communities there are many values, ideas, lifestyles, orientations. The Pluralism Project at Harvard University describes pluralism as not just diversity, but the ‘energetic engagement with diversity’. It is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Pluralism is not just relativism, but the encounter of commitments. They observe that pluralism is based on dialogue and dialogue does not mean everyone dialoguing will agree with one another. Pluralism is more about the commitment to being in the dialogue - while maintaining one’s own commitments. Young people are schooled, educated, brought up in and live in this as a reality.
B) Multi-Society. This means that Christianity and the ways of the Kingdom of God are not the only offering – or even the dominant offering – on our societies’ menu of values. It means that people have choices and that many people like those choices. Young people have adapted to this and many have known nothing but this ‘multi-society’ in their lifetime. Pluralism is a key contributor to multi-society.
C) Mistrust of institutions. Many people have given up on trusting institutions. In the BBC Reith Lectures, politician Onora O’Neill observes: ‘Bit by bit I concluded that the “crisis of trust” that supposedly grips us is better described as an attitude, indeed a culture, of suspicion.’ People are not just mistrusting, they often suspicious of institutions. The Church and its associated ministries are seen as institutions. Even the Pope is not quarantined. Almost every report on his activities in his recent visit to the UK included comments about the suspicions of sexual abuse and mistrust of the church.
D) Re-tribalism. When we have a reality of pluralism that leads to a multi-society and a mistrust of institutions, one of the results is tribalism. People gather with others of similar beliefs, values and worldview. They do this for their protection or the protection of their beliefs, cultures and customs. Churches can easily become tribal in this sense and youth ministry can become the forming, teaching and enforcing of ‘tribal’ beliefs.
E) Globalism > Localism. Tribalism exists in a world struggling with rising globalism. Globalisation is the tendency of businesses, technologies, or philosophies to spread throughout the world, or is the process of making this happen. The global economy is characterised by an interconnected marketplace, unhampered by time zones or national boundaries. The proliferation of McDonalds restaurants around the world is an example; the fact that they adapt their menus to suit local tastes is an example of ‘glocalism’ - a combination of globalism and localism. We did not expect, but have certainly seen, a rise in localism. As I travel around the world I see people wearing, watching, listening to and observing the same information - but it is interpreted locally. I recently ate a McArabia in Cairo – halal of course. Many youth ministries copy other ministries that can be in another country and another culture. The rise in technology and social media means ideas are easily found then used in local context, interpreted and adjusted to make; ‘fit’.
Shifting church culture
In the Church we see evidence of these massive changes. New expressions of church, youth ministry, mission, evangelism and justice and service are giving us new imaginations about what it means to be a church. We are seeing multiple expressions of youth ministry with different cultures, sub-cultures, ethnic groups and localities. In her book The Great Emergence, Sociologist of Religion, Phyllis Tickle quotes Bishop Mark Dyer’s idea that very 500 years Christianity has a great urge to have a ‘giant rummage sale.’ She suggests what we are now experiencing is what has gone on throughout church history.
It started with the upheaval of the great transformation - the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the beginning of the Christian Church at Pentecost. Then 500 years on came the age of Gregory the Great, the Council of Chalcedon and the fall of Rome. Half a millennium was the great schism with the split between the Eastern and Western churches. Then after another 500 years, the Reformation saw the split between Catholicism and the emerging Protestant churches. Tickle argues what we are seeing now with these new expressions of church is typical of this cycle. It is an evocative thought and one which encourages explorations of the implications.
Why young people stay
Despite this burst of creativity, continues to haemorrhage young people during the transition stages between youth and adulthood. The Faith Factors Project in the US has researched the factors that influence young people to stay in the life of the church into their young adult life stage. What they have found so far as they have interviewed young adults is that there are key Faith Building Factors. They include:
• faith integrated into families • adult mentors with vital faith • service opportunities in the name of Jesus • early integration and training into leadership of the Church • experiences of church where young people are respected and cherished • an excellence in senior youth and young adult ministries • strong Christian friends to encourage them • the support of the Christian Community while going through a personal crisis
The key discovery was that the single greatest contributing factor in young people going on in a long-term expression of following Jesus, was the faith of the congregation. These ideas are explored in more depth in a new book by Roland Martinson et al, called The Spirit and Culture of Youth Ministry (out early 2011).
Preparing for a future unknown
All this change – which shows no sign of slowing down – leads us to a fundamental question regarding spiritual formation: for what reality should we form young people, when we’re not certain what the future world and church will look like? This we do know; that the young people that we are developing will be the future leaders of the Church; and they will take it into this new reality.
So what should we do? I would suggest there are five key dimensions to preparing young people for the emerging realities.
1. Connect them deeply with God through the community of church
It’s really all about God. Jesus said: ‘The most important [commandment] is this: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”’ (Mark 12:29-30). Connecting young people with God allows all of God’s resources to be available to them. As we read in 1 Thessalonians 5:24 ‘The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.’ And in 2 Thessalonians 1:11, ‘Because we know that this extraordinary day is just ahead, we pray for you all the time—pray that our God will make you fit for what he’s called you to be, pray that he’ll fill your good ideas and acts of faith with his own energy so that it all amounts to something.’ (Message paraphrase).
Generation Y long for experiences of God that will help them to do significant things. It is the great boredom buster. They love to do things together. Forming them into the Church wherever possible is key, or if this is not possible, then we need to create church around and through them. We need to help them develop a deep relationship with God that develops a confidence in Him and a confidence in what He can do through them.
2. Help them dig deep into the scriptures
We need to help young people read, remember, interpret, and relate to God through the Bible. The Bible is not the end though, only the vehicle. God is the end! Helping them to love and relate to God through the gift of the scriptures will help them to flesh out (incarnate) the reality of God to those around them and their churches and communities. We recently did an overview of the whole Bible with our young adult church. It brought their faith alive as they saw for the first time how the grand story of the scriptures related to the great themes of life.
3. Help them to discern the culture and realities around them
We will be equipping them well if we are able to help them read, remember, interpret and relate to the cultures around them. The leaders of the future who lead in a pluralistic, multi, suspicious, tribally-glocal reality are going to need to understand their culture and the entry points for the Gospel within it.
Paul models this so well in his encounter with the Athenians in Acts 17:28: ‘“For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”’ He is quoting their own philosophers and poets and interprets their artists back to them. He mentions that among all the idols was an idol with an inscription – To the unknown God. Paul is before the Areopagus. It was like the cultural council to determine if something was Athenian or foreign (local or global).
4. Develop Character
Strong character that produces the fruit of the Spirit, is going to be key to not only surviving but thriving in the emerging realities. Development of capacity, emotional intelligence and resilience will prepare them to lead in an unsure pioneering church.
Paul alludes to this in Romans 5:3-5: ‘We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.’
5. Release them to mission, minister and lead
We must exercise the courage to pass on power to this next generation. Giving them responsibilities to start putting their gifts into action and giving them space to fail - with safety nets - will empower them to be leaders and gain wisdom. As they reflect on these experiences and experiment in being Church - all under the grace of God – they will be response-able to lead the Church in a new reality.
These pointers probably come as no surprise, but in a world of flux, some things remain the same: the need to know God and make Him known. As we seek to guide our young people into this brave new world, our priority must be their discipleship. We must help them to know God, and know the world in light of God. In so doing we are investing in a generation of Christians who speak not only to God but to culture, whatever direction it takes.
