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A church which has no input into the social life and welfare of the community is a church that is out of touch, and perceived to be out of touch, with the very people it claims to serve. What will happen to a generation that has become violence saturated? 2, Page 18. http://www.christianity.net/ct/7T2/7T218a.html. Just think who is most capable of programming the household VCR if you dont believe that today it is the young people who are more geared up for the next century than their parents ever will be. A Social Conscience for the Church. These concepts have been adopted by the New Age Movement, and in conjunction with secular humanism have taken on a specific form and meaning. 1. In the nineteenth century there was a golden age of mission as new frontiers were opened, difficult languages learnt and Scriptures translated. What is really needed is not memorisation of proof-texts, but rather a more expansive overview of Gods plan as shown in the Scriptures, providing a much needed moral and theological framework for todays information-overloaded young people. Staylessed man of God. As such, it reaches out to people at the point of their need, allowing the material and physical response to bear testimony to a spiritual solution. God has created each one of us as unique and special individuals, with a unique and special purpose, this is what makes up our self, and it is this that we seek to discover in Christian self-actualisation and self-realisation. Those ten years old and younger cannot remember institutionalised apartheid. Because it is the world view that is defining next centurys generation of young people (to whom we will refer as Generation 21) young people who are going to be. I might text or phone him but that is completely different than seeing him in person. It has gained a firm foothold since the late 1960s. The article is stimulating and very useful for christian leaders. I have argued before about how the parish can help in this post-modern liquid society by providing community (Mosaic, 2014). Lets face it, how many of us can do that already? Specialist service agencies, existing solely for the purpose of pursuing youth evangelism objectives, are notoriously underfunded. Which means they will be less likely to accept authoritative and definitive answers. Wrong and sinful elements of culture become transformed and replaced with a vertical relationship with God and a horizontal relationship with people: Love God, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, love your neighbour, forget the rest! should be the exhortation to young people converted out of a specific sub-culture. Youth work must be recognised as a profession (a vocation!) And them this neighbour takes two forms: the rest of the Christian family and others generally. Such a culture requires a considerable infra-structure; and more importantly, such an infra-structure needs to be informed and influenced by thinkers whose ideas and writings maintain a sharp edge. 4. challenges of youth in the church today pdf Sacred Heart Major Seminary is a Christ-centered Catholic community of faith and higher learning committed to forming leaders who will proclaim the good news of Christ to the people of our time. For this purpose, we shall use a scheme taken from Jrgen Habermas'3 theory of knowledge. Sexual purity in a society where pressure and temptation exists. Can youth today, therefore, see and understand this ingrained and often insidious cultural process of mobility for what it often is and then resist it? Initially, Durkheims question motivated many sociologists to study immigrants as most experience a severe rupture of their social bonds. defining a youth (was challenging as many people had different opinions as to who a youth is), they could not be classified within a specific age range. Some scenarios are too frightening to contemplate. They are in need of models, of examples in their life, not just words. Furthermore, Christian principles and biblical lessons were taught in schools. rather than a bus stop while waiting to move on to more mature pursuits. However, given their cynicism and pessimism, they have lowered their expectations vis-a-vis relationships: their potential duration, the number of significant bonds, and their fervor to create a wide pool of contacts. Faith development skills are about making faith work, answering questions, helping young people understand why Gods word says what it says, and how to apply the obvious and work out the implied. on. For this program to have a lasting effect, an ecosystem around the youths work should be built. The church in South Africa needs to envision a youth ministry culture in which qualified men and women in significant numbers make a career out of youth ministry, either in the context of the local church or through para-church agencies (specialist service agencies). I will not see him every week at Church or in our golf league or at other local community events. They need to be taught honesty and integrity when for the last sixteen years theyve survived the streets through shrewdness and movie ethics. 12. Not so on the eve of the third millennium how much more so for Generation 21? Their lifetime has always included AIDS. The result is broken marriages, broken politics, broken cities, a broken culture, and broken human beings. Therefore, anyone who it is in his power to affect the solutions should see that it is done in other to create positive change in the society. Alternative youth culture is a counter-culture, which rejects mainstream trends, and is characterised by (amongst others) a music style that is neither rock nor metal but has a mixture of both elements with a melancholic and dark dress style. Violence in schools: Violence is defined by the world health organization as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting to injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. Bauman, in other words, interprets the present cultural context as a sociological and cultural liquefaction where it is now the facility with which things can be turned upside down, disposed of and abandoned that is valued most . In 1998, Bill Price and Associates completed a Profile of South African Youth and Family, using a statistical base of over 3,000 South African young people between the ages of 13 and 27. Recommended: Countries with the most beautiful women in the world. 23. The aims include to redefine marriage and. S.J. Never Mind the Millennium. It is time for middle class congregations to consider their privileged position seriously in the light of the story of the rich young ruler. What one consistently notices is that while it takes different strategies to reach different kids (unchurched, churched, urban , rural, leaders, followers etc), most of them can be reached if one person whom they trust builds tight community (close relationships) with them. Challenges Facing Youth by Edward P. Mulvey, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine With the increased attention on the rates of serious juvenile crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, legislatures around the country passed new laws making it easier to transfer youth to adult courts. It is extremely unhelpful to say Do this because God says so. Young people who come to faith need help recognising the current world view for what it is not wrong, not always helpful, but definitely there. People are showing all the symptoms mentioned above, because they do not know who they are, they have been made into orderly, predictable, individualistic, anonymous, nihilistic, driven things that simply exist with no meaning and purpose. It turns out she thought is was part of Greek mythology. They have, in a sense, thrown the baby out with the bath-water. Challenges Facing Youth Ministry in the 21st Century Relationship-centred evangelism recognizes the need of young people to interact with both the message and the messenger. The disciples faced challenges that we cannot relate to today. The youth constantly looks up to the Church for directions, support and encouragement while the Church needs the Youth for continuity and effective movement. It happens time after time on camp, through contact at a school, in a youth group or on the street. Youth unemployment: As the name implies, it means the state where youths cannot find work to do in their communities or nation or there are no job placements available for the youths. (PDF) Youth and Development - ResearchGate The youth of today is confronting many serious challenges than their previous generations used to do. And its pretty close to the truth. They will have lots more information at their finger tips than those teaching them. Your email address will not be published. And if staying put means continuing your father or mothers occupation or business all the more should accolades be showered on you for maintaining the tradition. Often to the uninitiated, different is equated with sinful, but culture has both sinful and amoral elements to it. An example going to movies and wearing make-up in the early part of the century were thought to be sinful, unchristian behaviour. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The church of the twenty-first century needs to be a warm, welcoming and loving family. Physically moving only means starting all over again. Challenges facing youth today in church Therefore, school violence may be explained as physical attacks which occur between students or by students to teachers or teachers to students. Thus, the greatest commandment is reborn in our churches. In my mind, there is no doubt, the greatest challenge to youth ministers today is time! It means taking seriously the experiential and the cognitive not merely answering Its in the Bible and so its true but rather Its in the Bible because its true (and best and it works). With an estimated 17 million South Africans below the age of 18, any serious attempt to launch youth ministry programmes must address itself to the vast numerical challenges: How many youth workers do we need in South Africa? rather than the more parochial Where can we find a youth worker for our church? SAQA (the South African Qualifications Authority) has already begun setting up guidelines for minimum qualifications for various industries, including youth work. Indeed, in such a cultural context the anthropologist Bradd Shore makes the bold claim that the developmental trajectory of the middle-class American family is about to self-destruct. What is different today is the ubiquity of social media that tends to increase the liquefaction of society. But not impossible. All rights reserved. Imagine Charles Spurgeon as a twelve year old. The challenges facing youth How do we sort out this vast group of impressions about youth today? 3. As the liturgist Timothy OMalley recently wrote: liquid modernity reveals not a multiplicity of meta-narratives, opening up a space for religiosity. Walsh. 7. Youth Discussion: Challenges Youth Face Today - itskev.com 4. Inherently the youths are an important cog of the . God does not exist until proven otherwise could be a foundational principle for its atheists, although Christianity too flourished in the modernist milieu. Sociologically, an ominous challenge youth face today is living in a cultural context of liquidity (explained soon) which deemphasizes tradition(s) and, moreover, promotes a social media that further undermines communal traditions. This article focuses on two themes found in this first section of the document, tradition and social media, both of which challenge youth and provide opportunities. Local authorities endorsed these laws. Youth have the opportunity to form a youth group in the parish and to become part of the liturgical, catechetical, evangelical, devotional, and recreational dimensions of the parishto infuse all aspects of parish life which challenge all of us to conform more completely to Jesus Christ. Signs of the Times: The future of the Catholic Church is with the young, which is why Pope Francis has called bishops from all over the world to meet in Rome Oct. 3-28 for a synod on young people. And then once that culture has been penetrated and youth come to know Christ, lets not demand that young people lose their culture. Ministry in a postmodern context requires us to once again find the Biblically mandated community/relational approach to ministry. A Primer on Postmodernism. Challenges and Lessons Learned from Mentoring | Youth.gov 9. What does it mean to be radically different? They flit from one TV channel to the next, watching three or more shows simultaneously. This definition came into being as a result of the preparation of the International Youth Year in 1985. The Bible is not directive and/or silent on may of the social and ethical issues with which we are confronted today. Dr Jay Kesler, quoted in Dean Borgman. Petrol has always been sold 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In a 1997 questionnaire sent to Dutch Reformed mega-churches4, positive signs of vitality were overwhelmingly related to two issues: the involvement of laity in ministries and the existence of intentional processes of transformation taking place in their congregations. It demanded technical, scientific answers to questions of faith and science. The AIDS epidemic has not begun to take its toll. Young people in the twenty-first century will know more and have access to vastly greater quantities of information than ever before. challenges of youth in the church today pdf A serious debate of thirteenth century Scholasticism. 5. Unintended consequences: teen pregnancy and abstinence campaigns, The role of women leaders in the local church. Postmodern young people dont need to be convinced of the fact that there is a higher power nor of the existence of the supernatural. St. Rita Catholic Church. One of the problems of youth work in general and South African youth work in particular is that statistics of these sort are not available. However, more and more young people are being drawn into the web of violent crime, as both perpetrators and victims. These are people who have not heard the Gospel message even once they are going to be young people who live in a plethora of virgin cultures, for the most part un-accessed or inaccessible to adult missionaries. The only growing group is that of the Independent Churches, which doubled their membership5. Do I have obligations to the family, community, or parish where I have spent my life up until this point? We are seeing a surge in the cases of depression and other mental illnesses, which are mainly linked with high stress. Churches routinely dole out their scraps to youth ministry, although there are some notable exceptions. Being a youth is an experience which would shape the persons level of understanding to life and his or her level of dependency on others. But How can a Christian person want to remain in a culture that appears sinful? is a frequently asked question. Specifically, he believed physically moving away from ones tribe was a laceration to the social bodymoving leaves the communal body bleeding. And where there is familial or social or religious solidity it soon vanquishes in wave after wave of cultural liquidity until we forget what was given us as giftfaith, family, and community (see also #63). We have grandparents who had a Christian belief, parents who have a memory of that belief, and now kids who have nothing2. This paper was originally published in 2003 in the Baptist Journal of Theology (South Africa). A total of 54% of the population (some 21,929,512 young people) is under the age of 25 years. Why do we do it then? challenges of youth in the church today pdf. As a baby boomer, the question I would like to ask todays youth: What is so bad about staying put? Thats a big job which needs great skill. 41, No. Downers Grove: IVP, 1995. A church which has no input into the social life and welfare of the community is a church that is out of touch, and perceived to be out of touch, with the very people it claims to serve. Ultimately there is nothing sacrosanct about our worship services. Why? In the nineteenth century bar room tunes were retained and excellent hymns written to the same tunes. The use of drugs is constantly promoted in movies and in music productions making it look appealing to the youths. Political and social issues: Irrespective of the fact that the youths make up the most population in a country, they are the most marginalized when it comes to politics and decision making. There are a number of excellent introductions to postmodernism from a Christian perspective. Recent research by Jurgens Hendriks4 indicates that in 1980, 77% of South Africas population associated themselves with a Christian Church. And when we talk of averages, it should be noticed that the cyber-elite are all young and making lots of money on the Internet and in new IT-related growth industries. With the birth increase and poor economic planning, the rate of unemployment of the youths would increase in the future if care is not taken. For modernists, the truth exists objectively; things must be explainable, we must be able to demonstrate and understand it. Note: This syllabus is in the process of being further developed by the author. Joint appointments between churches, or between churches and youth agencies are strategic. There is a cost to be born to meet the challenge of ushering Generation 21 into the kingdom. . Arguably, more than non-Western peoples are facing this unravelling. Time has changed the pace at which we live life has accelerated terrifically. Adults forging friendships with young people, entering their world and earning the right to model the life of Christ to them is what youth ministry is all about. .Paul writes in But what is sinful about any of these elements? Hendriks states that we must realise that before 1994 the state was responsible for upholding Christian values. There is no agreed data, but estimates of AIDS infection range from 30% of young people to as high as 75% of young people in certain areas (in particular, young girls in rural KwaZulu Natal). Challenges and Opportunities for Youth in the Church Today Most times, it is being influenced by some factors which could include intake of hard substance, personality problems (disorders), physiological deficiencies, and violent media. Dr. H. Jurgens Hendriks. The order then becomes Love God, bear fruit, love your neighbour. We seldom ask ourselves, young or old, what do I owe the family and community who raised me? South Africa is a violent country, but until recently violence was not seen as a direct youth issue. Postmodernism demands less rigid and definitely less judgmental answers. 221. To reduce the increase of drug abuse in the society, the youth should be sensitized on the effects of drug abuse to their body and the society. But since its beginning, a new approach has been gathering momentum, and as this century ends, it claims dominant position, not only in the intellectual corridors of power, but is pervasive throughout society in all corners of the globe. The Word and the Spirit. Personal identity and self-image issues. In postmodern ministry, the primary role of the pastor will look more like the one under the Apostolic paradigm. Taking Africa for an example, there are nearly 200 million people in Africa who are within the ages of 15 24, and this number would increase by 2045, it goes to show that the youth unemployment rate will cause a serious problem in the society if appropriate measures are not taken to eradicate or reduce it. This is once again following a trend first seen in America, as evidenced by the spate of recent school shootings. Pastors, youth workers, parents, teachers all complain of the same malaise young people are functionally biblically illiterate. April 27, 2020. Todays young people are nervous about the future, as they see themselves following their American counterparts in becoming the first generation in modern history to earn less on average than their parents15. Ultimately, funding for mission work comes primarily through Gods people, and sacrificial giving remains the predominant Biblical pattern. Cain and Kendall6 speak of a post Charismatic generation, rather than merely a meeting in the middle of the evangelical and Pentecostal/charismatic traditions a new tradition that has both Word and Spirit, power and truth, spontaneity and orthodoxy. Methods like Groomes7 shared Christian praxis and Cooperative Learning8 are the way of the future. Challenges faced by Christian youth in this modern world Michael Jackson has always been white.10. Social media is a tool and we have used it to separate instead of unite us. It is reasonable to assume that social medias ability to create loneliness would only exacerbate the loneliness of physically moving. You wait for this to come from the . There is room for debate and argument. An Accepting and Nurturing Environment. Unfortunately, more recent figures are not yet readily available. One of the clearest books on the issue is Greg Ogdens The New Reformation: Returning the Ministry to the People of God. Teens reaching other teens create an atmosphere of trust and affirmation that enables young people who might not otherwise hear a gospel message to hear, and relate, and find release18. At churches where youth ministry attendance is one to 10 students, pastors are more likely than average to say youth ministry is somewhat (42%) or not too much of a priority (7%). We therefore offer some answers to the issues we have raised. Paragraph #56 elaborates: today we have to realize that the way digital media work, and the need to choose which information sources to access amongst endless offerings, are leading people to increasingly make contact only with like-minded individuals. A friend, ministering at a small church in KwaZulu-Natal, recently spoke to one of his congregation, letting her know that his sermon topic for the coming Sunday was on Samson and Delilah. The drop off is due to a considerable decline in church attendance by the white and coloured population groups. Throughout the world, the gap between rich and poor is growing steadily. I remember the challenges I faced as a young Christian. Christians everywhere must be prepared to give an answer for their faith in a gracious and humble manner. They dont know the difference between a tenet from the Bible and a sonnet from Shakespeare. Lets not fall victim to the oldest disease on the planet, the eight words that always seem to announce the demise of effective work WNDITWB We never did it this way before!. The Priorities, Challenges, and Trends in Youth Ministry 13.The difficulties and the questioning which religious life is experiencing today can give rise to a new kairos, a time of grace. Although the web has the potential to unite people across geographical distances, the web can also be a place of loneliness, manipulation, exploitation, and violence, up to the extreme case of the dark web. Young people are aware that risks are out there: the duplicity of technology, however, becomes evident when it leads to the development of certain vices.