The Search for Transformative Relationships and Narrative: Youth, Young Adults and the Nature of the Church – by Cynthia Holder Rich
Read Jeff Foels’ Essay, “Two Prophetic Words: A Call to Tend to Content and Context”
Read Steven Germoso’s Essay, “All in the Family: Incorporating Youth and Young Adults into the Church Family”
First, two vignettes:
A young man who had struggled with learning disabilities throughout public school enrolled at a college known for an impressive array of academic supports offered to students. While some bright moments emerged in his first year, much of it was a train wreck – missed classes, forgotten assignments, and experimentation with alcohol and drugs took a significant toll. The student ended year one on academic probation, and planned to drop out.
A high school student active in sports and music became keenly aware of how race and poverty impacted student life and relationships. While she had known about these things in earlier times, they really seemed to make a difference in high school. They affected the way people related on teams; they impacted who had what clothes and shoes, and thus who was popular and who was not. In high school, some of her friends spent time in juvenile detention, and almost all of these were African-American or Hispanic, and all of them came from poorer families.
In 2010, practical theologian Kenda Creasy Dean commented on findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion. Dean’s volume, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Teenagers is Telling the American Church, brought “moralistic, therapeutic deism” into our vocabulary. Youth believing that being nice, and expecting God to be nice in return, is the content of Christianity– having been taught this (and modeled in belief in this) by adult believers – this is disturbing stuff.
The problem, as Dean demonstrates, is that being nice is pretty shallow. It isn’t compelling; it doesn’t carry people through crisis or joy, it doesn’t inspire imagination and it cannot serve as a foundation for growth, life, transformation and faith. Ultimately, being nice, which (it must be said) is nice (and a better option in many social situations than, say, being nasty), is not enough. Specifically, it isn’t enough for young people facing the significant challenges the world affords them, in a time of global economic crisis, political polarization, and resulting loss of opportunities for education or employment. It isn’t enough for youth trying to navigate evils like racism and classism, trying to understand and wondering whether God cares. It isn’t enough to present hope for the future, a future young people have a hard time conceiving.
I serve on a denominational committee exploring the nature of the church in the 21st century. The place of youth and young adults in church and society is key to the exploration, in part because many of these people aren’t in the church, and many congregations have no idea how to attract them into the building or the programs and ministries offered. The generational disconnect is deeper and wider than in past eras, a reality that can be attributed to historical and sociological shifts in parenting, family patterns, community life, and accepted ways of functioning in society. While there are fewer youth and young adults than there were in earlier times (particularly in the post WWII years), the assumptions that worked in previous times about young people taking a break from college and returning to church when they married and started a family are no longer coherent. Fewer people get married; fewer people have children; and fewer people see the church as a relevant or necessary part of a full and meaningful life.
Additionally, for youth and young adults who have not grown up going to church, discovering the riches of the faith is going to be difficult if we look to congregations to provide a way in. As Martha Grace Reese’s research (detailed in her books, starting with Unbinding the Gospel) shows, reaching out to people who have no experience in the church is the most difficult and complex form of evangelism – and it takes skills and passion for ministries that few congregations have formed. Bradley Hill reports research findings in a 2011 article that shows youth and young adults missing in action in most congregations. This does not suggest a lack of interest in faith – a majority of youth and young adults in the US claim belief in God. They just are not experiencing or have not experienced congregations as valid and meaningful venues to express and engage that belief.
Youth and young adults are generationally and sociologically different than those before and behind them chronologically, and this raises serious issues and challenges for evangelism and ministry. In two central areas, however, youth and young adults are like those older and younger than they – they are looking for authentic relationships (wherever they operate and engage) and compelling narrative in which to believe. Relationships with mature believers on whom youth and young adults can rely for truth, passion for the Gospel that is incarnated in a way of life and life choices, and mutual respect provide foundation for faith formation. Then, the experience of hearing mature believers share the narrative of the faith they live in ways both compelling and transformative, offers life to those who hear, facilitating response.
This week in this space, two who minister with youth and young adults offer perspectives on what it means to undertake this form of ministry at this time. Both conversation partners, like all others who engage this ministry, work with (and sometimes have to confront or negotiate) changes in society that transform the work itself. Both of them are using some traditional forms of ministry and some more edgy, out-of-the-box approaches.
Both are also negotiating changes in the church. Jeff Foels is in a position that appears normative in congregational ministry patterns – directing youth ministries at a large church. Steve Germoso has engaged a number of approaches, including house churches, hospitality, and some level of tentmaking ministry in his work to plant a congregation near a college campus. While it appears at first blush that one ministers in a traditional way and the other in a more emergent fashion, reading their essays makes clear the reality that both of them have to interface with change in church and society to effectively reach out and minister to and with youth and young adults. Further, both are dealing with the need to develop authentic, reliable relationships and to witness to the Gospel in compelling, coherent and receivable ways. Offering the good news to young people at this moment in history presents serious challenges, of which both Foels and Germoso are aware. The young people featured in the vignettes which open this piece face common challenges. As US society becomes more diverse and religiously pluralistic, the church has often been slow to respond. This can make congregations and their ministries appear ignorant or uncaring about real problems and issues emerging for young adults. I look forward to the insights our writers share this week, and to ensuing conversations.
Ultimately, young people are seeking the same things people of all eras have sought – relationships that matter, and narratives that transform. In our time, we who follow Jesus are called to find the ways to offer life-giving relationships and proclaim the life-changing story we have been graced to know for the good of the church and the world, and for the life of youth and young adults. May we find the courage to seek these out and the grace to ask the Spirit’s help in this crucial ministry.
Read Jeff Foels’ Essay, “Two Prophetic Words: A Call to Tend to Content and Context”
Read Steven Germoso’s Essay, “All in the Family: Incorporating Youth and Young Adults into the Church Family”