Comments on: youth ministry 3.0, part 3

By: dave miers dot com » Youth Ministry 3.0

dave miers dot com » Youth Ministry 3.0 — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:47:02 +0000

[...] youth ministry 3.0, part 2 [...]

By: Jeff Jaekley

Jeff Jaekley — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:47:20 +0000

I think this could be a very fruitful exploration for youth ministry. Some ways to broaden and deepen the project and increase its fruitfulness (imho) would be:
1)Examine differences in adolescence among different ethnic groups. I believe this could be particularly fruitful as we will soon have no true ethnic majority, only ethnic minorities in our country.
2)Examine differences in adolescence among different economic and geographic groups. Again, this could be very fruitful for people ministering with youth in different places.
Of course, I’m assuming that such differences exist.

By: Joy Garman

Joy Garman — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:38:35 +0000

My first thought when I read this is that if there really are “tasks” to adolescence, maybe a big thing we need to do as youth workers is let our teens know what these tasks are. They probably already sense that there’s something they need to achieve, but if they don’t have anyone to clarify what that is or how to get there, should we be surprised that they experience stress and confusion?

By: James

James — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:00:27 +0000

So if adolesence is a cultural phenomenon (to an extent) isn’t it entirely possible that we are embarking on a new cultural development, where everyone becomes adolesent-like? (We could call it post-adolesence if we wanted to sell books)

Perhaps, this rapid culture change is going to demand new words as we frame change in youth ministry…perhaps even the words “youth ministry”, “youth group” and “youth pastor” need to be pahsed out.

By: marko

marko — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:17:57 +0000

i haven’t read epstein’s book, but i’ve read articles and interviews with him. he’s gotten a lot of press, because he’s been disagreeable with most of the popular thinking and research. i think he has a point in general (a “which is the chicken, which is the egg?” point about youth culture and development), but i think he overstates his case quite a bit — or, at least, is guilty of assuming his suggestions are actually scientific.

By: Isaac

Isaac — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:14:24 +0000

There’s a book out right now called “The Case Against Adolescence” by Robert Epstein that proposes that adolescents are really just young adults and need to be treated as such. I haven’t made it through the book yet but his perspective might be interesting for this project too, Marko.

By: Tony Myles

Tony Myles — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:04:22 +0000

What’s intriguing to me about trying to understand adolescence is the reactive way kids try to resist whatever categorizations we place on them. I found this to be true when at a parent’s night where teens were present I tried to help parents understand that we were presenting “basic Christianity” to middle school students, “complex Christianity” to high school students, and “theological Christianity” to college students. I’ve since rethought those categorizations (so don’t hold me to them), mainly because afterward every age group came up and told me they were more mature than the category I’d put on them. I wonder if the greatest thing we can do in our attempt to understand young people is to keep a question mark at the end of every “conclusion” – it helps them to feel less generalized and helps us to stay on a journey.

By: Jeff Greathouse

Jeff Greathouse — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:42:23 +0000

Have you read his book he wrote a few years later ?

Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene

I think some educators may roll their eyes or flip the pages of the book when they see “Hall”. Most people would say that it is outdated and even discredited.

HOWEVER, I think that this is the key that still remains (foundational):

conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risky behavior.

These are three elements that we need to take a look at and maybe even “embrace”. If we can allow families to journey through these areas and be there for support and encouragement; we can help them “ride the storm” and when the adolescence becomes an adult, they will be stronger as an individual and able to “function” in society better.

By: Jake Bouma

Jake Bouma — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:46:03 +0000

I know you’ll probably address this, but not until we had the term “adolescence” did youth ministry, in ways recognizable to us today, really take off. Similarly, when society realized that “20-somethings” became a popular category (thanks to “Friends” and other pop culture phenomena), the church took notice and started forming “young adult” ministries and the like.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:40:40 +0000

Ironically, this coincides with the increase popularity of fathers leaving home to work with the shift from the agrarian economy to the factory laden economy and the World Wars. There came a decreased influence of the father on the home (the parent that is naturally more challenging), allowing Mom to nurture children for longer and thus causing a state of arrested development known as teenagers today. It is an oversimplification but fairly accurate.