I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
This is an interesting article which I’m not sure what to do with. If this is the case, then the church has some serious work to do in training up its leaders, or place more emphasis on “youth ministry.”
The youth market has always been defined as tweens, teens, and sometimes college students, but Viacom’s recent “Golden Age of Youth” study reveals that marketers should begin including the 25-34 age group as part of their youth target. Call it the Peter Pan syndrome if you will, but the survey found that contemporary twentysomethings prolong their youth and delay “the onset of adult responsibilities and stay emotionally and physically younger for longer.”HT: ypulse.com
The hat tip goes to ysmarko with this. Although, I read the article from the youth marketing site called Ypulse. It brings about a good point that behavior doesn’t always follow attitude, especially with teens.
here’s an extremely key sentence:
Regnerus argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical.
(ht to ypulse)
I was listening to Brian Zahnd at the Word of Life church podcast from a couple of weeks ago and he was doing a series about showing mercy. Pastor Brian had pointed out any interesting thing, that the Pharisees said to get your act cleaned up and then come to the table to eat.
However, Jesus says come to the table to eat and I will help you get
cleaned up.
I guess I am wondering aloud, how do you reach out to show mercy? If you have read Mary’s Rock Band Post then you know that there has been a little thing about Rock Band and using it as an evangelistic tool. The thing I see is that most kids that walk into our church come from families that don’t know love and aren’t clean in one way or another. So if we can show them that we aren’t that different, that a lot of us like to play Rock Band or on the Wii or any other video games, won’t that let them open up so that maybe they will see that they can sit at the table and we will help them get clean?
One other point that I need to say as well. One of the objections was that there is a screen that shows skulls with wings coming out of them. I thought about it a bit, and this is what I realized…Didn’t God create the skull? wings? How did these things get associated with evil? I think that while God creates, we as humans use them to worship them for other purposes. Well, I remember that God had Ezekiel prophesy over the bones and they came to life. Didn’t the apostle Paul use the altar to the “unknown god” and quote poems from Greek poets while preaching at Mars Hill?
So if we can invite some kids to come into our midst, to show them mercy, compassion, and love, then do you think that maybe we can use Rock Band for a good purpose?
I saw this as a video that a church is using to set up their mission trip to the Dominican Republic, but it has some great thoughts on outreach and youth ministry.
Brandon Heath – Give Me Your Eyes from Brandon Heath on Vimeo.
I like youth worker conferences and conventions. I have been following the NYWC that YS puts on each year. I would love to go back to one. Well, Group publishing and SYM have teamed to put together a conference in Columbus, OH. It sounds like NYWC but on a somewhat smaller scale. It would be cool to go, but funding will be the problem.
apophenia: teens, dating, friendship, and school dances
Danah Boyd starts out with:
When I read the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of why teens have eschewed dates for school dances, I wanted to scream.
I did too, well maybe not scream, but the conclusions of the article she writes about to me are wrong. There has been a slow movement toward not coupling in high school for a long time. The only thing that I would add to Danah’s article is that what I notice is that even though there is a movement away from the mating ritual as far as dances are concerned, the pressure to have a significant other in high school is still just as strong as anytime. I see this in the youth at church. I may do security duty, but the main thing with us is to be relational. The kids tell me a lot and most of their dramas is do to trying to find a someone to be boy/girl friend with.
Actually, if there is another reason for the non-couple of school dances it is partly from my previous post about girls self-esteem. However, that is only part of it. The guys have to be more encouraging so that the girls aren’t more prone to have low self esteem. Anyway, read the whole thing.
HT: Ypulse
New National Report Reveals the High Price of Low Self-Esteem
Being an adult youth leader, I am always looking at youth culture articles and studies so that I can get a glimpse of what is going on in the culture. This was an interesting article with some interesting statistics:
— 67 percent of girls ages 13 – 17 turn to their mother as a resource when feeling badly about themselves compared to 91 percent of girls ages 8 -12
— Only 27 percent of girls ages 13 – 17 will turn to their father for help when feeling badly about themselves compared to 54 percent of girls ages8-12. Interestingly, at 16, girls become more likely to seek support from male peers than from their own dads.
We are seeing this in the girls in the youth group, and as much as we try to encourage communication with their parents, most still think that their parents don’t know what they are experiencing. Read the whole thing.
HT:Ypulse
I posted a late night thought several years ago, but the allergy meds I took tonight are keeping me awake. Anyway, Mary and I have been discussing generational curses. She got a new book that talks about the spiritual root of disease and such. I have read about generational curses in the Bible, and listened to a sermon on the subject that showed me that as alcoholism can be passed from one generation to the next, that is a generational curse. It wasn’t till tonight as I tossed and turned that I put it all together.
From a scientific view, the psychological articles that I have read, show that there are addictions and abuse that are passed to one generation to the next.
From a theological view, these things have a spiritual aspect like in Deuteronomy 5(NIV):
[8] “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. * [9] You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers * to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, * [10] but showing love to a thousand * [ generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Now, the reason I bring this up is because as I have been working with youth and in my own family there are some of these things going on. Recently Mary and some of the other adult leaders were working through the names of the kids and saw problems that they were working through and in a lot of cases they were in families that their parents were working through the same things.
Working from a perspective that God wants you to be whole and your family whole, we work to share one another’s burdens to help bear up the strain that these things bring. In so showing love, and since God is love and Christ the manifestation of God’s love on earth paying the ultimate sacrifice in his death, we are trying to bring the spirit and body into wholeness.
The problem is, especially with teens, is that once they “get saved,” they often fall back into the problems as they aren’t necessarily cured from the addiction, yet, but they go against the counsel of others, and try to save their friends. Often falling back into the addiction. We have been encouraging the kids to talk to the adult staff and help us hold them accountable, so that they don’t stray, but with recent events with one kid we see that it is a long journey.
Not sure why I had to share this, but I needed to let this out. There is probably more to this that will come to light, but I think that this is a good place to stop.
I read Josh Griffins blog from Saddleback church. I looked at the statistics and they look about the same as we get for our large group. We are trying to do small group, but have had very limited success.
These are the Saddleback stats.
I saw this on my C. S. Lewis Quote Google gadget the other day:
“In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Lucifer] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
I think about that with our youth group kids as they struggle with things. A lot of them just want to be popular, when there is so much more to experience. In my experience, you will become popular if you learn, listen, and experience the things that God has for you. Experience life, don’t be interested in your own prestige!
