Soul Searching by Christian Smith

I cannot speak more highly of Christian Smith's work within youth culture.  His book, Soul Searching, is a must read for anyone who is currently doing youth work if for no other reason that it helps identify that "spirituality" is not a notion naturally identified within Millennial culture and Moral Therapeutic Deism replaces religious expression when theology is not taken seriously by those raising the next generation of Christians.

But there is an added bonus.  There is a Soul Searching film that highlights some of the stories that are shared by this project and the movie is a great resource for youth workers to help describe the current challenges they are facing.  If you haven't already, you need to check it out.

Poem by Anonymous High School Student

I wish I could tell secrets

To someone who would listen,

To someone who wouldn’t tell.

I wish I could meet that special someone,

Someone who loves me, 

Someone who cares for me.

I wish I could talk to someone,

Someone who would understand,

Someone who wouldn’t laugh.

I wish I has a best friend,

Someone I can trust, 

Some I can tell secrets to.

Someone who understands me,

Someone who will grow with me,

Some I can talk to.

Adolescence: Stuck in the Middle

In the early 1920’s, an individuals life expectancy averaged at 42 years.  Since then, life expectancy has doubled and life has changed because of it.  Without a doubt, the causes for these increases have significant connections to the scientific advancements, however, not enough research has been done to chronicle the effect of prolonging life. 

That being said, the most resent research points to a significant shift in the transition from childhood to adulthood, a period referred to as adolescence.  Typically, an individuals transition through adolescence occurs in two stages: early and late.  

During early adolescence, an individual asks questions like who am I or why I am I growing hair in places I’m not comfortable talking about.  And often, but not necessarily, the psychological development of an individual mirrors the physical changes that occur during puberty.  

Late adolescence is indicated by the final stages of being recognized socially within a community.  At various points, you would be considered an adult when you married, had children, solidified proper employment, and so on and so forth.  These events marked your status within a community and validated your adulthood.

Yet, with the emergence of the Millennial Generation, another stage has been added to properly describe a new phenomena taking place: mid-adolescence.  

Mid-adolescence refers to the period after an individual begins to ask the question who am i and before they are recognized by their larger society as contributing members of it.  Chronologically, this period is often the time an individual would be in High School or College, but can extend well into a persons late 30s.  

Chap Clark, a leading scholar in identifying the concerns and problems of adolescents, describes this period as a world beneath the surface of the main stream.  In his book, Disconnected, he describes it as the following:

“The world beneath refers to the lone safe relational place mid-adolescents believe they have left – other kids. It is in this world where loyalty to each other is (usually) the greatest value they have.  It is their own world where they do not feel they will be hassled or judged.  It is the world where they have their own language, style, music, and for most kids at least during the mid-adolescent years, worldview.  No matter how ‘cool’ they are, adults are not welcome, because the reason the world beneath exists is for protection from the multiple agendas that control and manipulate mid-adolescents” (Disconnected, 69).

Recently, his claims have been strengthened by an increased awareness and research surrounding the effect of parents lying to their children.  This lying, regardless of how innocent the intensions can be, has created a divide between these two groups (parents and their children) and, as a result, a great deal of suspicion continues to effect the millennial worldview.   

Other trends that has formed the Millennial generation in terms of adolescent psychology are increases in divorce rates and the changes in defining family.  I suspect this too has something to do with honesty, or at least sentimentalism, but the basic premise cannot be denied - the increase in life expectancy has brought about a prolonged adolescence where the challenges of reaching adulthood have been made more difficult do to cultural shifts.  These shifts are not hard to identify.  But the Church needs to be more aware of the changes that are taking place and begin to address these challenges in more thoughtful and engaging ways, rather than abandoning them because the conversations that might take place might be uncomfortable.  

From One Generation to Another

Last spring, I was fortunate enough to teach a lecture series on the Millennial generation which highlighted current research on early, middle and late adolescents, technology, the effects of globalization, education, and religion in North America.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting short abstracts that distill those lectures here at Youthful Praxis.  As for taste of what is to come, here is an abridged list of resources I sited in preparation for the lectures:

• Chap Clark and Dee Clark, Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2007).
• David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity… and Why it Matters (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2007).
• Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
• Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005).
• Mark Noll and James Turner, The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic  Dialogue (Grand Rapids: BrazosPress, 2008).
• George Barna, Revolution (Carol Stream: Tyndale House, 2005).

All Powerful, All Knowing and Everywhere?

I once had a friend ask me point blank, “If God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere, then how can you serve a God that permits evil?”

I’m sure my response was clumsy and awkward and having something to do with free will, but the question stuck with me. At first, I thought it was one of those questions we would learn when we got to heaven (more on heaven later). But the more I read holy scripture, the more wrestled with the premise of the question.

Why do we think God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere? Or rather, why do we think that God is defined by these markers? At the center of God’s being, what makes us think that God isn’t defined by something else?

In An Unsettling God, Walter Brueggemann observes that the character that defines God in the Old Testament is relationship. Over and over again, God creates partnerships. God partners with Creation. God partners with Israel. God parters with humanity, nations, and drama. At God’s heart, our God is a God who is in relationship with the things around godself. And these relationships are not superficial. These relationships are deep. Just look at Exodus 32, or Genesis 32, or Genesis 18. In each story, Moses, Jacob, and Abraham (respectively) each negotiate with God, challenge God, and ask God to do something. And God responds.

This is why prayer is so significant. Because when we pray, God listens.

As for God’s power, or God’s knowing, or God’s presence, sure, you could use these observations to describe God, but they don’t really describe God. They don’t get to what God really is. When Christians talk about God, we are not talking about the Greek or Roman gods. We are talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And this God is different from all our expectations. This God became incarnate, and was born in cave with the poorest of the poor and said it was good. This God is with us and for us. This God cannot be contained. And before we get into philosophical debates, we need to make sure that which god we are talking about - the God of the Bible or some other distorted image of God.

an introduction of sorts

On one hand, youth ministries have failed the Church. They have created sub-pockets of Christian culture that have not been christian. They have been entertaining. They have been formative. They have tried to be faithful and have at least established some form of moral therapeutic deism. But often, this American experiment has failed. We only need to look at the decline of participation within churches to warrant this claim.

On the other hand, the Church has also failed its youth. Or rather, mainstream Christianity has set aside the role of forming the next generation and handed its responsibility to education systems that have not been trained to cultivate curiosity, critical thinking, or respect for religious perspectives.



In other words, youth ministries are a mess, but no more so than our churches. And contemporary culture has not given much helping.



So what are we supposed to do?



This blog is an attempt to help wade through the mess and reconstruct a way of looking at the world that will help youth understand Christianity and hopefully teach what it means to be faithful. This blog is primarily for youth workers, parents, grand parents, and others that deeply care for our next generation of Christians. And it is my hope that it will help. It might, however, sound more like deconstruction than construction at times. And I think this process is necessary to some extent because we all have to unlearn some bad habits.



However, if you are looking for a blog that will help your church find things that are engaging for people going through adolescence, there will be some of that too. It won't always. But there are some great resources out there that I hope to bring them to your attention.

As a foretaste of what is to come, the first resource I would suggest is the Fuller Theological Seminary Podcasts found on iTunes U. There is a lecture by Dr. Ellen Charry entitled "Psychological Theology" (it can be found in the Faith & Psychology Integration Symposium). And it describes the tension present between the Church and Psychotherapy. This is an important relationship that needs careful attention by youth workers, since youth ministry does deal, intentionally or unintentionally, with the psychological health of our students. Formal train would obviously be preferred, but that has not been a realistic expectation for youth workers in the field.

Going back to Charry's work, what I find most helpful is way she challenges the very foundation of the way I think about things. She states, “The entire individuation moment practiced in youth ministries are completely antithetical to Christian Theology.” And I think she's right. If youth ministries are about helping people independently find who they are, then youth workers are not doing the work of Jesus. Because it is our responsibility to help our students to realize that they are God's chosen people, created and loved eternally and unconditionally.



Who that God is will be the subject of the next post.