Douglas Wilson on Youth Ministry

Douglas Wilson offers a great perspective on youth ministry in this short video interview.  Often, youth group is disdained by those who emphasize family-based ministries because it supposedly diminishes/displaces the role the father ought to take.  On the other end of the spectrum, youth ministry can become a place where students are catered to rather than shepherded and trained to be better disciples of Jesus.  I think Doug's perspective is both wise and balanced.

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The Juvenilization of American Christianity

In his new book, The Juvenilization of American Christianity, religious historian Thomas Bergler traces how over the past 75 years American Christianity has become juvenilized by the influence of youth ministries. Bergler shows how this juvenilization has breathed new vitality into the American church, but at the cost of widespread spiritual immaturity, consumerism, and self-centeredness, by popularizing a feel-good faith with neither intergenerational community nor theological literacy. He concludes the book by offering some constructive suggestions about how juvenilization can be tamed. This is an important study with some serious take-aways for doing ministry, especially youth ministry. Below are a few excerpts of his Christianity Today article which introduces his study:

Juvenilization tends to create a self-centered, emotionally driven, and intellectually empty faith.

Today many Americans of all ages not only accept a Christianized version of adolescent narcissism, they often celebrate it as authentic spirituality. God, faith, and the church all exist to help me with my problems. Religious institutions are bad; only my personal relationship with Jesus matters. If we believe that a mature faith involves more than good feelings, vague beliefs, and living however we want, we must conclude that juvenilization has revitalized American Christianity at the cost of leaving many individuals mired in spiritual immaturity.

As the line between adolescence and adulthood continues to blur, eliminating youth ministries would only weaken religious formation of youth without doing much to counter spiritual immaturity among adults. And instead of naively thinking we can eliminate juvenilization, we should instead work to tame it by helping local congregations build an intergenerational way of life that fosters spiritual maturity.

Pastors and youth leaders can begin by teaching what the Bible says about spiritual maturity, with a special emphasis on those elements that are neglected by juvenilized Christians. Church leaders also need to ask hard questions about the music they sing, the curriculum materials they use, and the ways they structure activities.

We need to ditch the false belief that cultural forms are neutral. Every enculturation of Christianity highlights some elements of the faith and obscures others. We must be vigilant and creatively compensate for what gets lost in translation when we use the language of youth culture. For example, if we sing songs that highlight the emotional consolations of the faith, what can we do to help young people also embrace the sufferings that come with following Jesus?

I believe one key is to renew our commitment to the church as an intergenerational family, in which each person has a unique role in helping the others toward our shared goal of maturity in Christ (Titus 2:1-15; Eph. 5:21-6:4; Col. 3:18-4:1; 1 John 2:12-14). Adults need children and adolescents to draw out their committed love and provide concrete opportunities to care for others. Adolescents help adults reconnect with the passion of a life devoted to Christ, what he called the first love of the Christians at Ephesus (Rev. 2:4). Young people need adults in their lives who are modeling a vibrant spiritual maturity. One reason no one wants to grow up in America is that many adults don't make their life stage look very attractive.

Teenagers can legitimately follow Christ in adolescent ways, including participating in age-appropriate youth ministries. But those ministries must also help youth catch a vision for growing up spiritually. Churches full of people who are building each other up toward spiritual maturity are not only the best antidote to the juvenilization of American Christianity, but also a powerful countercultural witness in a juvenilized society.

The Cult of Youth

The following is from Dr. John Mark Reynolds' blog a few years ago. I thought it was an excellent commentary on the culture of youth in which we live, and so I saved it. Reynolds is responding to an article which describes how a teenager advocated abortion and argued that the voice of teenagers ought to be heard. It is amazing how counter-cultural it is to say that the opinions children ought not to be heard!

[Teen abortion] Advocate travels to raise her voice about her beliefs:

"'Kids need to be concerned about more than themselves,' she said. 'They have valid viewpoints, and they need help from adults to implement their passions and concerns.' "

Here is a thought:

Kids do need to be concerned about more than themselves. Unlike Miss Abortion 2004, this altruism does not consist of making everyone else share your puerile concerns, but getting new ones. This remarkable process is called "growing up." Given their age, the young usually have foolish viewpoints. They need help from adults in gaining proper perspective, passions, and concerns.

The Cult of Youth marches on in our culture. We worship the mostly facile opinions of the ill prepared. I would say that almost everything I thought before I was twenty-two was not worth hearing. I needed to sit in tutorials and do hard work, not have people take me seriously. Of course, critics think this still true, but they can trust me that I was even worse as a young man than I am now.

There is a reason minors are not allowed to do many, many things. The reason: they cannot make informed decisions. Period. By the way, this applies equally to conservative groups who parade teens out mouthing conservative opinions they have hardly digested. Liberals since the sixties have been the worst at this. Even an aging hippie wants to be young, because they fantasize that there is some great purity and wisdom in the young. Well, no. Youth are to be protected and educated, not put in positions of power.

Ignatius, the Ultimate Youth Pastor