"How do we get young people involved in the church?" is the wrong question. It perpetuates a mindset that is really not that helpful. "How can the church be involved with young people?" is a better question.
Youth ministries is not about nurturing potential adult believers, but rather about enabling the continued growth of adolescent believers. A "banking model" of children's and youth ministries has been the practice for many years. We "deposit" a life time's worth of instruction in the childhood years so that the individual and the community can "draw" on it later in life.
The shift towards lifelong learning communities is perhaps the key to changing this finish-line mentality. Within a lifelong approach, we approach people in the context of their developmental ages and stages, while they are still in them. The physical, social and intellectual changes of adolescence provide the starting point for youth ministries efforts.
The totality of a ministry with adolescents is not captured by a youth group or a religious education program. Youth ministries is not limited to the programs and activities sponsored within the church community. It is also directed outward to the needs, concerns and issues of youth in society.
One author has suggested three dimensions towards a more comprehensive youth ministries approach: becoming, belonging, and transforming. 8
Becoming
Becoming works to foster the total personal and spiritual growth of each young person. Our understanding of the unique life tasks and social-cultural context of adolescence provides direction for fostering their growth. We need to encourage growth in their heads, hearts and hands, simultaneously.
However, any efforts to foster personal growth must take into consideration the developmental diversity that is characteristic of this age group. Inconsistency is consistent. They differ from group to group. They differ from one to another within a group. They differ even within themselves as unique individuals.
Early in adolescence, new cognitive abilities make possible mutual, interpersonal perspective-taking. Adolescents begin to see themselves as others see them. It is entirely normal for them to take seriously the opinions of others. Adolescent believing is a collective process. They need opportunities to sort out the variety of beliefs, values and ideas with significant adults and peers.
They are beginning to construct the interiority of themselves and others. A new step towards interpersonal intimacy and relationship emerges. A new self-consciousness is on the rise.
Similarly, they are beginning to construct their faith interpersonally. They recompense their childhood image of God. God becomes a personal God. They are open to learning more personal forms of prayer and becoming more reflective in entering into liturgy and sacrament. (Young adolescents need opportunities to connect religious traditions with varied opportunities for self-discovery and self-definition.)
Adolescents tend to find God (or God finds them) more in their own present experience than in their faith community's tradition. They experience God in terms of how they experience other human persons. Where their bounds are wide, so their imaging of God will be more encompassing.
In ministering with adolescents, we should be especially alert to their personal experience for God's active presence. It does not mean that we abandon the tradition of the faith community. Rather, we need to make an effort to connect the young adolescent's experience with the community's understanding of God as parent, Jesus as friend, the church as supporting community, the sacraments as life, strength and nourishment.
The most powerful human influence on the forming faith of young people is that exerted by families and significant others who are living and expressing their own faith. To a large extent, they make their moral judgments in keeping with what is expected of them by family, peers and other significant others in their lives.
Young adolescence is a time to encourage affiliation to one's faith community through knowledge of its tradition and through participation in its present life and vitality. It is a time for active participation in the life of the faith community, with its symbols, rituals, history and traditions. It is a time for allegiance and alliance.
Belonging
Belonging seeks to draw young people to responsible participation in the life, mission and work of the faith community. Active engagement of young people in the life of the Christian community provides an important context for growth. As it is, young people are often segregated from the real centers of power, responsibility and commitment in community life. There is a very definite link between believing and belonging. Adolescents believe where they belong. Young adolescents seek their faith and identity in the authority of a community's understandings and ways. They work to establish a firm set of beliefs, attitudes and values. They want to know who shares their same beliefs.
They need opportunities to experience a sense of belonging, of membership in the Christian community; to experience the Christian story: its understandings, rituals, actions. Nurturing faith is not another program task, but it is encouragement into a life of relationships
Young adolescents are seeking personal commitment. Commitment includes reaching out
towards people, ideas, beliefs, causes and work choices. The church can assist young adolescents as they begin this formation process of building commitment and purpose in their lives.
Participation in religious services provides an outlet for the curiosity, idealism and desire for accomplishment that is characteristic of young adolescents. Involvement in worship events and community service can be a source of affirmation when they are actively involved in decision-making.
If adolescents are in fact prone to be involved in faith communities, where are they? Obviously, with one look at the demography of almost any "typical" Episcopal congregation there is something quite amiss. Virginia Hoffman comments:
I have noticed lately that the median age of those attending religious gatherings is much higher than my own 46 years. This is a sobering reality we need to face - we are missing a whole generation and are on our way to missing another. 9
Contemporary denominations have bought into the story that it is a natural movement for young people to leave the congregation. They anxiously await their return following this "phase of rebellion." Our acceptance, however reluctant, of this "trend" prevents us, or perhaps more aptly protects us, from looking seriously at the issues of belonging for young people in faith communities.
There are no mysterious reasons as to why young people do not participate in churches. For the most part, they are not welcome. There are not opportunities for meaningful participation. Their absence speaks as powerful evidence.
This pattern will only be reversed when congregations seriously take on the issues of inclusiveness and participation in all aspects of its life.
According to Peter Benson, the five areas of congregational life that help youth to mature in faith are: 10
• a thinking climate (challenging and questioning);
• a warm climate (welcoming);
• a caring church (among church leaders);
• service to others (beyond the church);
• worship (uplifting worship services).
This pattern will only be reversed when congregations seriously take on the issues of inclusiveness and participation in all aspects of its life.
Effective ministries for adolescents will provide regularly for development and practice of new forms of prayer and spirituality. These should deepen the youth's understanding of the presence of God in their lives, and provide opportunities for them to live out their faith.
How can we express the adolescent journey in ritual?
James Fowler speaks of grounding youth in a creative orthodoxy:
The congregation's goal should be to provide youth people with a coherent, persuasive version o f the Christian story, one that constitutes a viable faith ethos... the emphasis should be on transmitting a lively and authentic Christian orthodoxy, coupled with truly challenging opportunities for service....11
Transforming
Transforming empowers young people to transform the world as followers of Jesus by living and working for justice and peace. Youth ministries empowers young people with the knowledge and skills to serve others and to learn how to transform the structures of society.
Effective youth ministries encourages young people to examine their culture in the light of their faith and their faith in the light of their culture. Contemporary young people need
to be engaged by the dialogue between faith and culture. Virginia Hoffman describes the resistance to face the world as follows:
Some church professionals would rather not be born. Instead, they are trying to devise ways to lengthen the umbilical cord, or to enlarge the womb so that it is big enough for adult children to stand in. They are working from the inside out to keep the walls intact, to mend the holes, to keep out light and air. The womb is stretched so far beyond its ability to function that it is now in need o f constant maintenance. We do no one service by pretending that things are fine the way they are. I f we are going to teach our young companions to live by the Gospel of Jesus, we cannot do that by living the gospel of the divine right of kings or the gospel of dominant/submissive gender roles. It does not work to continue to act those same conventional roles ourselves, to ask them to participate in those roles with us, and balance our deeds with occasional disclaimers. 12
It is often in and through the cultural context that young people will give birth to their personal faith and adopt our communal faith. This cultural context is not a peripheral concern in our ministry, but a foundational principle. As members of the Anglican Communion, Episcopalians are connected through faith with 70 million persons, living in 164 countries, in 31 self-governing churches throughout the world. Part of the challenge of ministries with young people in our ethos is to open the door to this diversity, so both we and the young people can become transformed by it.
Communities that foster becoming, belonging and transforming will be led into the future by the vision and creative energy of young people.
8. John Roberto, Early Adolescent Ministry. Don Bosco, 1991.
9. Virginia Hoffman, "Birthing the Church of the Nineties," Network Papers, #43. Don Bosco, 1991.
10. Peter Benson, et al., The Quicksilver Years. Harper and Row, 1987.
11. James Fowler, Stages of Faith. Harper and Row, 1981.
12. Hoffman, "Birthing the Church in the Nineties."
© 1996 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society PECUSA
This article is from Handbook for Ministries with Young Adolescents, a publication of the Ministries with Young People Cluster of the Episcopal Church Center, New York, NY. Permission is granted for congregational use and use by diocesan youth coordinators. You may order this resource from Episcopal Parish Services.
