Generally speaking, you are correct in saying that youth typically do not allow adults to enter into their lairs of unseen reality. But I’m afraid many of us would use our students’ shut-off facade as a cop-out for not trying.

I have had the privilege (not sure if that is a good word to use here, as the hidden world can be quite dark and oppressive) of entering the sub-world of several of my students. Is it dark? You bet. Scary? Yeah, I’ll admit that it is. Beyond the redeeming work of God? Absolutely not. As agents of change, we need to be ready to enter into the darkness of our teens’ lives and walk them out of it, into the light of God’s glory.

How else could a slightly (ok, more than slightly) geeky classical music lover from rural England work and minister with New York city’s hip hop loving, urban youth? Only Christ.

I think that one other thing that this generation has in common, no matter what subgroup they are in, is that they are ready to rally around a cause like being more “green”(Earth conservation), “red”(AIDs awarness and research), social injustice, livestrong, etc.

This generation knows that there is something more worth living for than themselves, but they are struggling with actually defining it…and everything else in our culture tells them it is all about them. This is where the church can step in and say this feeling of knowing there has to be more than me is because we are created to glorify God in everything we are: our relationships, our jobs, our attitudes, our LIVES!

These are some great insights, and some awesome questions being asked in the comments!

Can we really effectively handle this question: “How can we unite all of these very purposefully divided youth subcultures with the ultimate TRUTH and AUTONOMY of Christ?”

What we have is a very compartmentalized youth group. As the youth pastor you are trying to tailor the group to 7 different cluster identities while hoping and praying EVERYONE could just get along.

Ohh yea by the way during youth group you have to talk about Jesus after dealing with the drama and diversity. Can there really be unity in the midst of diversity? And how do we model this to the students who hate the skate punk kids who make fun of them at the lunch table?

:)

Autonomy IS the thing that these youth are struggling with and also trying to embrace. I believe that it is due to the adult culture that has developted. The “Be who whoever you are around wants you to be” mentality. This is what has really made this generation say, “I don’t want that, I would rather be ME, whatever they think that is, and make people not like me then play someone fake and never be true to myself.”

These students understand the deep need for truth not only in words but in identity.

They see the adult culture of being who others want to get what I want as weak, and ultimatly non-truth.

In all of this they has taken this idea of being true to who they think they are, and they have taken it to the point where they feel like they MUST avoid any chance of being seen as something they are not, which is why they stay in thier own groups most of the time.

Some of these “sub groups” have even gotten to the point that they are not being true to self unless they are offending everyone else.

As a youth minister, and I know I am not alone, it has gotten to a point where no matter what you think they want or would like, you will miss it because they see it as us making them be the same group, which is exactly what they are NOT going for.

The question becomes: “How can we unite all of these very purposefully divided youth subcultures with the ultimate TRUTH and AUTONOMY of Christ?”

For me, I have noticed that one on one attention is helping developt youth faith without making them feel like I am building a cookie cutter Christian.

We are acctually in the process of developing a mentoring program for our church in which each youth is paired with a member of our church in which they meet one on one for an hour each week. This happens seperate from anything youth.

Within this time, our vision is to have each mentor, the adult, using the same questions and same Christian truths, and adapting them to the individual need. So that when these youth come together in youth group and here they same thing thier mentors are saying, they might realize that it is not us trying to make them the same thing, but us trying to give them the same Spirit in which they are doing it.

I have no idea if this will work, and I know there is much more to be worked out, but I really feel that this might be a way to LOVE each of these youth right where they are.