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“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” Jesus Christ
One of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced in my four decades of youth ministry was to serve as a Pallbearer for the funeral of one of a 13-year-old boy in my youth group. Paul was the victim of repeated bullying by a large group of peers that tragically left Paul with the mistaken conclusion that his reality was too unbearable and he chose to end his own life. This happened nearly 30 years ago. Unfortunately, bullying has gotten much worse in the last ten years.
Right now the movie documentary Bully, along with several highly publicized cases involving tragic results because of bullying among teenagers, has created a heightened awareness of the frightening dynamic of this issue in our culture.
Working with adolescents, we regularly hear stories of young people who everyday have to deal with being bullied. Everyday, hundreds of thousands of young people have to deal with the fear of attending school where they know they will be bullied. It’s estimated that an average of more than 150,000 young people stay home from school everyday to avoid being bullied. Most of the time this occurs without parents being aware that it’s happening to their child.
Bullying involves acts of repetitive negative behavior of a person or persons toward another person or persons that is aggressive and intimidating in nature. Bullying can take the forms of emotional, verbal, and/or physical abuse. Bullying can be a one-on-one issue but most often it involves a collaborative group engaged in peer abuse directed at one or more individuals.
Research reveals that young people who are regularly bullied face an increased risk of mental health issues. Depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, despair, helplessness, and suicidal thoughts prevail among those who are dealing with being perpetually bullied. In addition to thinking about harming themselves, some begin to fanaticize about hurting their tormenters. According to a report by the Secret Service, two-thirds of students who participated in school shootings were victims of bullying at school that had reached the level of self-described “torment.”
Mona O’Moore of the Anti-Bullying Centre at Trinity College in Dublin, has written, "There is a growing body of research which indicates that individuals, whether child or adult, who are persistently subjected to abusive behavior are at risk of stress related illness which can sometimes lead to suicide."
In addition to aggressive and physical actions that intimidate and harm the victims of bullying there are new forms of bullying that have emerged through social media. This type of Cyber-bullying attempts to socially isolate the victim by spreading rumors, name calling, threatening, criticizing, manipulating, ostracizing, etc. through a variety of social medias, including Facebook, Twitter, and whatever new social media tools emerged last week, along with those that will surface this week.
According to the Cyberbullying Research Center, One in five teenagers are harassed regularly online. Almost one-half of all teenagers have experienced some form of online harassment. More than one-third (37%) of teens admit to using social networking sites to victimize and harass their peers.
Before we, as adults, rest in the idea that we have moved beyond the ability to bully, let me suggest that we may not engage in the overt bullying actions of adolescents but we must ask ourselves if we have not just adopted more sophisticated forms of bullying – gossip, character assassination, ostracizing, sabotaging, and exclusionary behavior toward others.
When Jesus was asked what it means to truly be his follower he says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself” Luke 10:27. He then tells one of the best-known stories called the parable of the Good Samaritan in order to explain and explore the heart of what it means to be a genuine follower of Christ. In this parable Jesus commends the man who comes to the rescue and takes care of a victim of extreme bullying. We must stand up for those who are being bullied. Christians must speak up. We have to take action concerning this issue
What is Youthfront doing about this issue?
What can parents do?
I believe that we have a window of opportunity created by this movie Bully and the media’s attention on this issue to double down our effort to radically alter the reality of bullying in our culture. This, I believe is something that the followers of Jesus and God’s church must passionately engage in. We must do this for our kids.
Resources The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, www.cpyu.org Wikipedia
Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean is Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of the recently released books, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (Intervarsity Press, 2011). Kenda serves as an Advisor for Immerse: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry. Recently, Youthfront staff member Erik Leafblad interviewed Kenda for the Immerse Journal Blog. Definitely worth a listen. Click here.
In David Kinnaman's new book You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church...and Rethinking Faith, he describes categories of young adults who have moved away from church involvement. Prodigals are those who have or are attempting to totally check out of a faith life that they had once embraced. Nomads are those who are wandering and have significantly reduced their involvement and connection with the church. Exiles are those young adults who haven't necessarily pitched their faith but are disillusioned with the churches inability to really matter in the world in which they live. The way their parents lived out a faith life is not working for Exiles.
In a current article on the Barna web site, Kinnaman examines Five Myths about Young Adult Church Dropouts.
Myth 1: Most people lose their faith when they leave high school.
Myth 2: Dropping out of church is just a natural part of young adults' maturation.
Myth 3: College experiences are the key factor that cause people to drop out.
Myth 4: This generation of young Christians is increasingly "biblically illiterate."
Myth 5: Young people will come back to church like they always do.
Youth Workers AND all who love the church, work in the church and are committed to follow the scriptural mandate to pass on the Christian faith to the next generation must be engaged in the issues Kinnaman addressess.
Dave Kinnaman, backed by research from the Barna Group, has released his latest book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Church. The book deals with the reasons young people are disconnecting from church during late adolescence.
Kinnaman focuses on six-themes that encompasses the reasons young people are walking away from the church. It doesn't seem to include anything that will surprise those who have been invested in youth ministry for awhile and have had the courage to call a thing what it is. There is a group of us who have been saying these things passionately for at least seven years and many of us have paid a heavy price for challenging the church to awaken to these realities. I thank God that these issues are moving more into mainstream conversation. Research from the Barna Group has been helpful for many theologically thoughtful youth workers and church planters over these last several years. I hope the conversation that emerges around this set of data, Kinnaman's book, and other sources opening up space for more people to enter this conversation results in an explosion of imaginative dialogue concerning ecclesiology, mission, evangelism, Christian formation, cultural engagement, etc. I love it when people who are in ministry discover these conversations for the first time and enter into them with enthusiam. I hate it when those who have been making life miserable for those of us who have been in this conversation for many years finally wake up to these realities and begin to speak about these issues as if they are the first to discover them and are now some kind of guru (and I'm not talking about Dave Kinnaman). Watching many of my friends being hammered by other people in ministry for being prophetic voices about these issues has been painful. If you are now realizing that those early "heretics" weren't so heretical after all, no apology needed (in most cases). Let's work together. If you run into those who say, "I told you," well that's not right either. To those who have been hurt by others because you tried to raise these issues for the last several years, please don't respond to a broader openness to these issues now by feeling like you should get some kind of credit. If our motives have been pure and really for the glory of God and the sake of young people we must feel grateful and enthused about more and more conversation partners and ministry practioners who are coming to the table for this discussion. I just ask for humility for all of us so that we may nurture the kinds of environments for church communities to thrive in our lives with God through Jesus Christ in a way that passes on a vibrant, living faith to the emerging generations.
Thank you Dave Kinnaman for this book that will foster more conversation and theological reflection.
Here is a summary of the six reasons young people are walking away from the church.
Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective.
One of the defining characteristics of teens and young adults today is their unprecedented access to ideas, worldviews and their prodigious consumption of popular culture. As Christians, they express the desire for their faith in Christ to connect to the world they live in. However, much of their experience of Christianity feels stifling, fear-based and risk-averse. One-quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds said “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” (23% indicated this “completely” or “mostly” describes their experience). Other perceptions in this category include “church ignoring the problems of the real world” (22%) and “my church is too concerned that movies, music, and video games are harmful” (18%).
Reason #2 – Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
A second reason that young people depart church as young adults is that something is lacking in their experience of church. One-third said “church is boring” (31%). One-quarter of these young adults said that “faith is not relevant to my career or interests” (24%) or that “the Bible is not taught clearly or often enough” (23%). Sadly, one-fifth of these young adults who attended a church as a teenager said that “God seems missing from my experience of church” (20%).
Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.
Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
With unfettered access to digital pornography and immersed in a culture that values hyper-sexuality over wholeness, teen and twentysometing Christians are struggling with how to live meaningful lives in terms of sex and sexuality. One of the significant tensions for many young believers is how to live up to the church's expectations of chastity and sexual purity in this culture, especially as the age of first marriage is now commonly delayed to the late twenties. Research indicates that most young Christians are as sexually active as their non-Christian peers, even though they are more conservative in their attitudes about sexuality. One-sixth of young Christians (17%) said they “have made mistakes and feel judged in church because of them.” The issue of sexuality is particularly salient among 18- to 29-year-old Catholics, among whom two out of five (40%) said the church’s “teachings on sexuality and birth control are out of date.”
Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
Younger Americans have been shaped by a culture that esteems open-mindedness, tolerance and acceptance. Today’s youth and young adults also are the most eclectic generation in American history in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, technological tools and sources of authority. Most young adults want to find areas of common ground with each other, sometimes even if that means glossing over real differences. Three out of ten young Christians (29%) said “churches are afraid of the beliefs of other faiths” and an identical proportion felt they are “forced to choose between my faith and my friends.” One-fifth of young adults with a Christian background said “church is like a country club, only for insiders” (22%).
Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.
Young adults with Christian experience say the church is not a place that allows them to express doubts. They do not feel safe admitting that sometimes Christianity does not make sense. In addition, many feel that the church’s response to doubt is trivial. Some of the perceptions in this regard include not being able “to ask my most pressing life questions in church” (36%) and having “significant intellectual doubts about my faith” (23%). In a related theme of how churches struggle to help young adults who feel marginalized, about one out of every six young adults with a Christian background said their faith “does not help with depression or other emotional problems” they experience (18%).
I was interviewed by the YouthWorker Journal, along with Kenda Creasy Dean, Heidi Hagstrom and Dick Hardel about church and young people.
Since I am in my 36th year of vocational youth ministry, I can respond to this question from the scope of my own experience. Evangelism was the primary focus of my early youth ministry efforts. To give more context to my evangelistic journey, see my September 7, 2010, Slant33 post. In the late ’70s and through the
’80s I gave little thought to any theological implications concerning the hard-hitting, strong-armed, manipulative, bait-and-switch, hellfire tactics I engaged in to get kids “saved.” Throughout the 1990s, this style of evangelism became increasingly disturbing, not
only to me but also to hundreds of youth workers in my social network.
There are many reasons the practice of evangelism and the posture toward evangelism have changed so much in the last three decades. I’d like to think the primary reason for the change in my thinking about evangelism has been driven by deeper theological reflection concerning soteriology and ecclesiology. What does it mean to experience salvation? What role does becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ play in evangelism and salvation? How is evangelism connected to church? How does our society view proselytizing? What role does apologetics play in evangelism? How do we define apologetics in our current culture? These questions are really important, and the answers to these questions have dramatically impacted the issue of how evangelism is taught and practiced.
I strongly believe that the gospel, which means “good news,” has been defined and communicated in ways that has led to the good news not being genuinely and intuitively perceived as good news by most people outside the church. One of the reasons for this negative reaction has been the framing of the proclamation of our story of the gospel around a primary emphasis on how wicked and sinful human beings are.
We mistakenly corrupt the good news by starting the story of humanity in Genesis 3, with the fall. Yes, human beings are broken, but the story of humanity begins in Genesis 1, with God creating human beings in the image of God. Let’s tell the whole story! The idea that we have to place a hyper focus on our sinfulness in order to get people to respond to our evangelistic techniques does not work in our culture.
Several months ago I was verbally assaulted in a coffee shop by a young man involved in a college ministry who wanted to evangelize me. He started by asking if he could ask me a few questions that wouldn’t take more than “a couple minutes” of my time. His first question was, “Are you a good person?” I knew immediately where this was going. I replied, “Yes, I think I’m a good person.” He asked me if I was married. “Yes, for 35 years to my best friend.” His next question was, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”
I told him that I found his question, 30 seconds into our conversation, to be quite inappropriate and personal. For the sake of the conversation, I explained to him that my wife is the only woman I have ever been intimate with. He then proceeded to find a variety of ways to prove that I really was a bad person who certainly had lusted after other women and was therefore an adulterer (based on Jesus’ Beatitudes) who had no hope unless I prayed a prayer that he had written up, ready for vile sinners to recite. This came with the promise that I wouldn’t have to spend eternity in hell.
Being the fatherly person I’ve become and because of my love for college-age young people, I spent more than an hour engaging in a theological and biblical discussion with him. His head was spinning, but I could tell that his heart was opening to imagine a more Christian way to share and live the good news. He had been assigned to travel a half hour away from his church to do evangelism. I explained to him that he was in the neighborhood of my church community and that we were engaged deeply with people on a regular basis. I asked him if he were to lead someone to Jesus Christ, would he come back to build a relationship and disciple the new convert, or would that be the last time he would see that person? He acknowledged that he was only focused on getting people to “pray the prayer.”
This zealous, well-intentioned young man wanted to get people to believe what he believed about salvation, sin, and Jesus Christ. This methodology focuses on the progression of Believe, behave, and belong. If we can just get people to believe the gospel, they will begin behaving properly, and eventually they can belong to our churches.
When I think about how evangelism has changed in the last three decades, I think that the progression of Believe-Behave-Belong has shifted to Belong-Behave-Believe. God has instituted the church to bear witness to the glory of God and (like Israel) be a blessing to the world. Evangelism happens quite naturally when we are entrenched in faith communities that are actively caught up in cooperating with God’s compelling work of restoration—restoration between people and God; between people and their own brokenness; between people and other people; and restoration of all creation.
As our God invites us into the divine fellowship of the Trinity, so we should invite people to join us in community. In my church, we are intentional about being actively engaged in our community and inviting people to come join us, even before they believe or really know what to believe. In fact, they often actually begin behaving like Christians before they really grasp (believe) what it means to be a Christian. We engage in activities of justice that people want to participate in. We also embody hospitality. We throw parties and tell stories of love, life, transformation, and hope. Evangelism happens naturally when God’s people live astonishing lives as people of crucifixion and resurrection. We must recapture the essence of the gospel story that is truly good news for all who hear and see it.
Recently I have seen the following quote used frequently in blogs and books. This description of Christians, written in the late second or early third century, is found in the Epistle to Diognetus.
“For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life, which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct, which they follow, has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive people; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking way of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.”1
This quote is consistent with the narrative in the book of Acts that describes Christians as a community of people who do astonishing things. The citizens of Jerusalem viewed Christians favorably because they were generous people who demonstrated love and concern for their neighbors along with proclaiming the great good news. As a result, people were being added to the church every day. Christians who are lovers of people and bearers of a story that is perceived as good news by those outside Christianity create a compelling environment for evangelism. Embodied Christianity creates a portal to salvation and the church.
1 Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Church Library, Edinburgh 1867, Volume 1, pg. 307.
My post originally appeared in Slant33, republished here by permission.
This is a critical question. I could easily use all my words just to scratch the surface of the complexity involved with trying to define the meaning of culture. For example, in the book Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, by Kroeber and Kluckhohn, the authors flesh out more than 150 definitions of culture. On the other hand, poet T.S. Eliot, who wrote a book entitled Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, stated that culture could be described simply as “that which makes life worth living.”
The issue of what posture to take toward culture (even the posture toward defining culture) has been one of the most dominant and important conversations of the church for 2,000 years and will be for the next 2,000 years. How the church throughout history has defined and reacted to culture (in whatever particular context it finds herself in) has significantly determined the course of history in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Tragic periods of church history involving inquisitions, pogroms, and political abuse were linked to cultural ideals. Beautiful periods of church history involving the creation of art,
architectural advancement, and care for the sick, poor, and marginalized were fueled by the church’s posture toward cultural engagement.
Often, the desire to “change the world” has fueled unhealthy behavior from Christians through attempts to gain political influence and efforts to “redeem” the culture. James Hunter, the Labrosse-Levinson distinguished professor of religion, culture, and social theory at the University of Virginia and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, has a new book called To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. In the book, Hunter critiques all the misguided attempts that Christians and churches engage in to change the world. According to Hunter, the various strategies to impact culture and ultimately change the world are driven by tragically ill-conceived concepts of culture and cultural influence. Hunter examines the political, sociological, and theological paradigms of the Christian right and left, along with the Anabaptist approach of Hauerwas and Yoder, showing them all to fall far short of anything resembling broad culture-changing realities.
Andy Crouch, senior editor of Christianity Today and author of the book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, recently reviewed Hunter’s book. Crouch writes, “Christianity in America, as Hunter sees it, is very much on the periphery, for all its numerical strength. Its institutions, such as they are, tend to be weak, they tend not to be in culturally central locations, and they tend to address the "lower and peripheral areas" of culture—secondary education rather than university research, popular culture rather than high art, ministries of mercy rather than public policy. At their worst they glory in their marginal status, feeding a subculture that churns out substandard cultural products for consumption by other Christians, simultaneously the most energetic and the least effective culture-makers you could imagine.”
I have spent years (literally—years), I mean in real time—years, talking about church and culture and gospel, and yet I still find the question this week perplexing and challenging. Even though some declare that I have a good intuitive understanding of how to engage culture, I will acknowledge that this question is so important that I must adamantly admit that I don’t have an answer. But I’m committed, as all youth workers should be, to immersing myself in deep theological, sociological, economic, and political reflection and dialogue about what it means to engage meaningfully with and in culture. This conversation is so important for discovering what T.S. Eliot describes as “that which makes life worth living.”
Promoting To Change the World on James Hunter’s website is this paragraph: “What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls ‘faithful presence’—an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of ‘faithful presence.’”
Crouch declares that this important work by James Hunter will “be provoking better Christian conversations about culture for years to come.” I hope this is true because—God help us—we need more healthy conversations and behavior vis-à-vis the relationship between church and culture.
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Alan E. Lewis: Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday
Kenda Creasy Dean: Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church
Dirk Hayhurst: The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran
Philip Sheldrake: Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity
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