They have begun to forge the personality of their own generation – - confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.  They are more ethnically and racially diverse than those who have gone before them. They re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history. Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own economic futures as well as about the overall state of the nation.

They are the millennial generation.

The Pew Research  Center has been looking into what makes who are the millennials?  You should,too!

There was a (MTV sponsored) Youthtopia study conducted among 16-34 year-olds in seven European countries of the hopes and dreams that inspire youth today.  (h/t Marko and ypulse) Part of the study asked 100 European youths to “challenge, criticise and collectively re-write ‘The 10 Commandments’” as a way of illustrating generational shifts in values.

Now an automatic response might to review these and criticize how young people are not living up to their aspirations, but (as you remove the plank from your own eye) you might consider how well as a culture we are doing with the original ten.

Anyway, this list of ten promotes accountability, positivity and passion above all else. They reflect the declining impact of churches on young people in Europe, but each of these “commandments” can by quickly drawn into the Christian message:

1. Have faith in yourself.
2. Respect your parents.
3. Be honest.
4. Take responsibility for your own life.
5. Live life to the fullest and be passionate.
6. Keep your promises.
7. Work hard to succeed but not to the detriment of others.
8. Be tolerant of others’ differences.
9. Be happy and optimistic, even in adversity.
10. Create, don’t destroy

Is there one or more of these that you found surprising?

I Know, I know, I have pretty much beaten the Nation Catholic Youth Conference drum long and very hard.  Well, in a maybe last but certainly not least effort, here is one more.

Christopher Stefanick, Director of Youth, Young Adult and Campus Ministry for the Denver Archdiocese, wrote about the experience of Catholic subculture at NCYC in Denver Catholic Register. He wrote:

“The Gospel isn’t communicated in a vacuum.  It’s communicated through culture.  When a Catholic culture is lacking, the Church organically creates subcultures, drawing in and redeeming aspects of the culture it’s in.  This is happening among our youth today.  Youth ministry has formed a redeemed culture born out of generation MTV with its own stages, its own rock stars and its own brand of rebellion.”

Wikipedia identifies a subculture as a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. If a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be described as a counterculture.  And, Church…  Is this what discipleship is all about?

Stefanick concludes his article: “Generation MTV teens want to rebel and make a name for themselves.  What better way to do that than by being holy!  There’s no more profound rebellion than the one given by the saints and martyrs.  As I looked at the sea of teens, joyful to be standing for Jesus Christ and celebrating our ancient faith, I wondered, ‘If our Lord can change the world with 12, what can he do with 22,000?”

Watch next week. . . it happens all again at the March for Life.

Kelly Babcock of the Archdiocese of Dubuque will be serving as one of the many MyCatholicVoice.com youth reporters at NCYC.  You can find all of them here.

MyCatholicVoice will also be live-casting all the General Sessions of NCYC.

The schedule of these broadcasts can be found here. You should consider forwarding these along, not only to NCYC parents, but to the many young people not traveling to NCYC

Eight days to go.

John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter recently reflected upon the next generation of catholic leaders at a conference in Dallas and he spoke to the issue of spiritual bipartisanship.  He indicated:

I reflected on the next generation of Catholic leaders. Most empirical data has pegged this cohort of young priests, religious and lay activists as more “conservative,” and there’s a good deal of truth to that claim. In general, they’re more attracted to traditional modes of devotion and prayer, less resistant to ecclesiastical authority, and less inclined to challenge church teaching and discipline.

Yet, I argued, slapping the label “conservative” on all this is potentially misleading, because it assumes an ideological frame of reference, as if younger Catholics are picking one side or the other in the church’s version of the culture wars. My sense is that these young people are not so much reacting to (or against) anything in the church, but rather secular culture. In a nutshell, they’re seeking identity and stability in a world that seems to offer neither.

Proof of the point comes when you drill with these young Catholics. You’ll find they often hold views on a wide variety of issues — such as the environment, war and peace, the defense of the poor and of immigrants, and the death penalty — which don’t really fit the ideological stereotype.

This new generation seems ideally positioned to address the lamentable tendency in American Catholic life to drive a wedge between the church’s pro-life message and its peace-and-justice commitments. More generally, they can help us find the sane middle between two extremes: What George Weigel correctly calls “Catholicism lite,” meaning a form of the faith sold out to secularism; and what I’ve termed “Taliban Catholicism,” meaning an angry expression of Catholicism that knows only how to excoriate and condemn. Both are real dangers, and the next generation seems well-equipped to steer a middle course, embracing a robust sense of Catholic identity without carrying a chip on their shoulder.  Read the whole article.

Last Monday, while on his visit to the Czech Republic, Pope Benedict offered greetings to young people following a Mass in Prague:

Dear friends, it is not hard to see that in every young person there is an aspiration towards happiness, sometimes tinged with anxiety: an aspiration that is often exploited, however, by present-day consumerist society in false and alienating ways. Instead, that longing for happiness must be taken seriously, it demands a true and comprehensive response. At your age, the first major choices are made, choices that can set your lives on a particular course, for better or worse. Unfortunately, many of your contemporaries allow themselves to be led astray by illusory visions of spurious happiness, and then they find themselves sad and alone. Yet there are also many young men and women who seek to transform doctrine into action, as your representative said, so as to give the fullness of meaning to their lives. I invite you all to consider the experience of Saint Augustine, who said that the heart of every person is restless until it finds what it truly seeks. And he discovered that Jesus Christ alone is the answer that can satisfy his and every person’s desire for a life of happiness, filled with meaning and value (cf. Confessions, I.1.1).

Read the full text of his comments.

Our second round of offering the Youth Contact meeting is today.  Big crowd. Your prayers would be welcomed throughout the morning.

Die to budget constraints, we’ve shortened the day and opted to go light on “the commercials” announcing upcoming events.

Nonetheless, this is the event where we have “premiered” the promotional video for the Annual Pilgrimage for Youth and Young Adult Ministry.

While I have become reasonably adept at editing video, we asked a young man to edit.  It took an hour to download all the footage onto his portable hard drive and he was asked to have it back within a week and to call with any problems. 

He called three hours later.  He was done.

Christian Smith’s Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers rocked the youth ministry work back onto its heels. Presenting the data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, the largest and most detailed such study ever undertaken, we discovered that young people are not hostile towards faith, just indifferent as they echo their parents’ religiosity, which, it turns out, is hardly a formula for vibrant faith.

And, now, here’s comes the “second wave” of this longitudinal study- Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults.  I’m just cracking open the book, but already have discovered the authors’ classification of six major religious types amongst 18-24 years olds:

> Committed Traditionalists who embrace a strong religious faith, who believes they can reasonably well articulate and which they actively practice. They are probably no more than 15% of the emerging adult population.

> Selective Adherents believe and perform certain aspects of religious traditions but neglect and ignore others.  They are less serious that Committed Traditionalists but are more grounded about what they believe and/or should be believe than the Spiritually Open. They are about 30% of those in their late teens- early twenties.

> Spiritually Open: While not personally very committed to a religious faith, they are receptive to or mildly interested in some spiritual or religious matters.  They may be skeptical or critical but are willing to acknowledge a “higher power.”  They are about 15% of the young adults.

> Religiously Indifferent are too distracted with and invested in other things in life and are sufficiently  unconcerned with matters of faith to pay any real attention to religion. They are about 25% of the emerging adult population.

> Religiously Disconnected Due to their family upbringing and their present social connections, these folks have little to no experience to religious people, ideas, or  organizations. As evidence that we still are a “religious” culture, this group is likely no more than 5% of 18-24 years olds.

> The Irreligious claim that “Religion just makes no sense.”  This is an attitude that may have been nurtured in an option for secularism, or anger, or mystery as to foolish nature or practices of believers. They would be part of the final 10% of the young adults.

Learn more here.

About a month ago, we published our Technology Procedural Recommendations. Yet, there are still so many in youth ministry that don’t “get” it and wonder if investing in social media is worth our their the church’s time or attention. Next time you hear that, perhaps you could share a few of these statistics with them:

YouTube
> If YouTube were a country, it would be the third most-populated place in the world.
 > 20 hours-worth of video is uploaded to the site every single minute.

Facebook

 > The site has more than 250m active users globally
 > More than 120m users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day. Combined, more than 5bn minutes are spent on the site on a daily basis.

MySpace
> Although now overtaken by Facebook, MySpace is the second largest social network, experiencing in excess of 60m unique users each month.

Twitter

> Over the past twelve months, Twitter’s year-on-year growth rate has broken the 1000% barrier.
 > Not really a stat, but still quite a cool piece of info: Twitter is now officially a term in the English Dictionary.

(h/t to ChurchMarketingSucks.com)

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college.  It is used around the world as the school year begins, as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation. Some examples include:

> The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
> They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
> Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
> McDonald’s has always been serving Happy Meals in China.
> They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
> They have never been Saved by the Bell
> The NBC Today Show has always been seen on weekends.
> Nobody has ever responded to “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Read it all here.