A little under a year ago, I suggested that our field might be quickly approaching a state of hysteresis.  This is where we might be finding Catholic youth ministry bending to such a point where it snaps and we will never be able to put it back together as it was before. . . and that this might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Yesterday, my buddy Marko blogged about Youth Ministry in Decline referencing an USA Today article entitled ‘Forget Pizza Parties,’ Teens Tell Church which starts with this attention grabbing opening line:

“’Bye-bye church. We’re busy.’ That’s the message teens are giving churches today.”  (more…)

I’m been hounding our local Catholic newspaper reporter lately with stories and articles like this one from the New York Times. I’ve sweated the economy before while noting the relentless optimism of millennials while also singing along to we are all in this together.

That all being said, there must be an impact of the economy of youth and young adults today. My youngest daughter recently celebrated getting her first “real job” at 18 – -  a position that she had applied for months and months in advance.  There was joy and hope for her, but this is not an experience overwhelming shared within her peer group.  Louis Uchitelle of the NYTimes reports:

For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, as Scott Nicholson is, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.

The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level (although some are in graduate school). The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession, in 2007, and the highest level — by almost two percentage points — since the bureau started to keep records in 1994 for those with at least four years of college.

For catholic youth ministry, this is a matter of advocacy and pastoral care as well as fostering the total personal and spiritual growth of each young person. This is something towards which we need to “stay tuned.”

We’ve got some research reports for you for the next few days…

A recent study conducted by the Barna Group offers a look as to how much adults “take” from from their religious experiences as a young person, as a teenager. They report that those who frequently attended religious programs as teenagers were more likely (58% actually) to have also found themselves attending a worship service in the last week.  Likewise, if you were not going to church growing up, it was less likely that you are participating as an adult now.

Of course, that makes sense, but how often do we report the same to parents to encourage them to share the gift of a lifelong faith?

I’m thinking that there are so many summer workcamps and that this recent news item demands our attention:

College students today are less likely to “get” the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a new review study suggests. Specifically, today’s students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did.

In engaging students, we must not fall into the trap of making it about them and encouraging their own “feel good” interpretation of the moment. It’s too easy.  Service is about the other (their needs and the systematic choices made within society that cause the needs.)  More importantly, service is about the Other as in the One who suggested “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”

Karen Sue Smith recently posted about Young People and Politics for the “in All Things” blog for America magazine.

In the last presidential election, the rate of young people’s participation nearly matched the 1972 record (at 55.5 percent) for turnout. The results in Indiana and North Carolina where significantly influenced towards Barack Obama by an increased youth turnout. Smith reports that “it is not too simplistic to say that whoever can draw the youth vote has a shot at winning the day.”

Yet, so far there does not seem to be a real groundswell of visible interest in political involvement by young people. They remained silent during the health care debates, perhaps because they are young and healthy and, to them, it does not seem to matter… yet.

But Smith points to two recent protests (related to education and immigration) that demonstrate an activist spark among the young, although not has transformed into a firestorm.

Youth can be an incredible force for change, yet politics with all it’s power and finances has yet to capitalize on that….  It sorts of lays out the similar challenge for us as Church, doesn’t it?

USA Today recently ran a story on millennials and the church.

They reported that most young adults today don’t pray, don’t worship and don’t read the Bible. If the trends continue, “the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships,” says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources. In the group’s survey of 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds, 72% say they’re “really more spiritual than religious.”

Among the 65% who call themselves Christian, “many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only,” Rainer says. “Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.”

Key findings in the phone survey, conducted in August and released today:
• 65% rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.
• 65% rarely or never attend worship services.
• 67% don’t read the Bible or sacred texts.

Although the relative number of Christians in this generation is small, those who are Christians are more likely to have a radical commitment to the gospel than Christians in previous American generations.

Millennial Christians will not settle for business as usual in our churches. They will not be content with going through the motions, programs without a purpose, and spectator Christianity. They take their faith seriously, and they have little patience with churches that focus most of their resources on the members. (h/t to Ed Sstetzer)

The folks at Student Life just put together this great video regarding youth culture and our response as church.

The video helps us take a momentary pause in the hurried-up world of young people and reminds us not to just blindly judge where the kids are at:

They respond: “You would say that I am a rebel, seeking out anything but the religion I grew up in…  but you would be wrong.

Because you don’t know me.”

And, after eight minutes, the momentary pause has passed and the fast paced world of today’s adolescents returns.

The implications… No time to waste. Let’s get going, church!

Twelve years old Adora Svitak recently spoke at TED for a brief eight minutes and encourage more “childish thinking.”

“Kids grow up and become adults just like you. The goal is not to turn kids into your kind of adult but rather better adults than you have been. 

No matter your position or place in life it is imperative to create opportunities for children so we can grow up to blow you away.

You need to listen and learn from kids, and trust us and expect more from us.

The world needs opportunities for new leaders and new ideas. Kids need opportunities to lead and succeed.  Are you ready to make the match?  Because the world’s problems shouldn’t be the human family’s heirloom.”

We are returning to the subject of hacking and considering what if we re-thunk teenagers. (h/t to Adam McLane.)

Robert Epstein, a psychologist in San Diego, has a new book, Teen 2.0, which challenges the presumption that teenagers are immature and irresponsible.

From an interview in US News & World Report, Epstein indicates that he “started looking at the research done on teenagers in this country, which is very, very misleading. The researchers are just trying to confirm the cultural stereotypes [originated] by G. Stanley Hall 100 years ago, who said that the teen years are necessarily a time of storm and stress. That stuck, and that’s been the model used by psychologists and social workers ever since. [Back in Hall's time], there was massive immigration, and lots of young people on the streets making trouble. By the 1930s, biologists had discredited the notion that the teenage years were a time of turmoil, but the people in the mental health field never got the message.”

Another quote, from his book, indicates “Through most of human history, young people were integrated into adult society early on, but beginning in the late 1800s, new laws and cultural practices began to isolate teens from adults, imposing on them an increasingly large set of restrictions and artificially extending childhood well past puberty. New research suggests that teens today are subjected to more than ten times as many restrictions as are most adults, and adulthood is delayed until well into the twenties or thirties. It’s likely that the turmoil we see among teens is an unintended result of the artificial extension of childhood.”

Epstein encourages us to
> Bring out the adult in their teenager.
> Give teenagers real responsibility that is meaningful to them as adults.
> Don’t be an adversary; be a guide.

Does a youth ministry that segregates youth people (youth group, youth room, youth mass) treat young people as adults?

UPDATED: In Malta, the Pope said to young people, “To all of you who wish to follow Christ… bringing the message of the Gospel to the world, I say, do not be afraid! You may well encounter opposition to the Gospel message. Today’s culture, like every culture, promotes ideas and values that are sometimes at variance with those lived and preached by our Lord Jesus Christ. … I say to you: do not be afraid, but rejoice in his love for you; trust him, answer his call to discipleship, and find nourishment and spiritual healing in the sacraments of the Church.” (See more here.)

On a side note, what is with this Pope and boats – Cologne, Sydney and now Malta!  (In Malta. it makes sense as that’s how Saint Paul arrived…)

The Apostleship of Prayer recently posted the video below regarding the Pope’s visit to Malta and his recent World Youth Day letter.

If you find a video like this and want to download it for use within your programming, grab the hyperlink for the video (in this case http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqZykjkLsD4) and load it into a media converter such as the subtly named www.mediaconverter.org/.  Take care to remember to where you save it,  I always aim it towards my desktop first so I can easily find it.