Although 86% of young people in South Africa would align themselves with Christianity, and 83% of young people consider spirituality to be important in their lives, only 52% were able to indicate the basis of their beliefs, and just less than half of those young people claiming to be Christians attended church youth groups more than once a month. The usual metaphors used in understanding the character of God may no longer be accessible to Generation 21. Baby boomers, like most Americans ,are regularly on the go. Notably, Americans get caught up in the cultural process of upward social mobility which often results in physically moving great distances away from families, communities, and parishes. Here are some basic ways to meet the challenges outlined above. Specialist service agencies, existing solely for the purpose of pursuing youth evangelism objectives, are notoriously underfunded. The distance between us will quickly begin to thin out our relationship. Disciplinary actions against school violence: The schools should set up a disciplinary measure which would see that defaulters of the rules of the school and students/ teachers who promote violence be punished. 13.The difficulties and the questioning which religious life is experiencing today can give rise to a new kairos, a time of grace. The study of young adults focused on those who were regular churchgoers Christian church during their teen years and explored their reasons for disconnection from church life after age 15. Your email address will not be published. In this book, he argues that the last Reformation (which helped usher modernism into the church) was a re-formation of theology. (31) 3351-3382 | 3351-3272 | 3351-3141 | 3351-3371. umaine career center staff associe-se. I still have eyes and ears, so I still am able to recognize what young Christians face today. In our society today, youth are seen in the streets abusing drugs while it has lead to the mental disability of many. 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The key to solving this problem, according to well-known South African forecaster, Clem Sunter14, is to develop small businesses and encourage entrepreneurs. Recommended: Differences between the first and second creation stories in the bible. Postmodernism is not right or wrong it just is! What did he do if not his Sunday School homework and school work? For this purpose, we shall use a scheme taken from Jrgen Habermas'3 theory of knowledge. The youth of today are in need of guides, and even more than this, they are in need of spiritual fathers, whether clergy or lay, monastics or non-monastics, men or women. Ironically, this whole process of familial, social, and spiritual disconnection and dispersion sets one on an unconscious quest for exactly what one has walked away fromfamily, parish community, tradition, ritual practices, a place to belong. Family needs to be redefined and modelled in the church and people helped to learn Godly principles of family life both inside the church and in their own homes and partnerships. Christian alternative kids tend to clean up their act in terms of drugs, music, partying, anarchy, degradation, escapism, alcohol-abuse, occult involvement, rebellion, anti-social behaviours, anti-authoritarianism, hatred, defiance, misery, self-pity, terror, selfishness, suicidal tendencies, depression, destruction and condemnation. Public enlightenment and education: The solution to drug abuse is really in the hands of the people. More details available at: http://www.youth.co.za/census. Modernism required that everything be rational, observable and repeatable. 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? They have always been able to fax. All statistics of the United Nations is based on this definition. On the other hand, why should one spend time memorising, when hand held computers contain easy-reference word-search Bible concordances in a multitude of versions. It must find its roots again in a truly Biblical approach to ministry. 10. This is not entirely true, as they are able to concentrate for much longer than many adults but they cannot focus on one topic for very long. Sociologically, however, all of this is more likely to occur if youth take up the challenge and opportunity to stay put familially (moving out of ones own nuclear home but staying within the local area), communally, and ecclesially (local parish). To carry on the Catholic faith, the family name, business, or parish, is honorable and should be applauded, for it is not only within ones community that one finds identity, purpose, honor, and self-worth but also in continuing that tradition for the next generation. 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. Churches should be involved in this process, to ensure that minimum levels of care are set up to include spiritual input as well. 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. As the document states: In this first step, we should focus on grasping concrete realities: social sciences provide an essential contribution which, incidentally, is well represented in the sources that are being used, but what they have to say is looked at and re-read in the light of faith and the experience of the Church (p. 8). Samuel is bent on changing the legal profession by building Web and Mobile Apps that will make legal research a lot easier. The only growing group is that of the Independent Churches, which doubled their membership5. 1.Honouring your non-Christian parents: Having a hard time at home because of your faith? Individual church members with business influence should seek ways to channel funds into community youth ministry programmes. Postmodern young people dont need to be convinced of the fact that there is a higher power nor of the existence of the supernatural. One of the downsides of this information overload is that these new generation info-crats appear to have an ever decreasing attention span. Do I have obligations to the family, community, or parish where I have spent my life up until this point? The situation is thankfully not yet this bad in South Africa, but current research into South African youth culture by Bill Price and Associates is showing that it is most certainly going to be true fairly soon3. rather than a bus stop while waiting to move on to more mature pursuits. Many young people who become Christians who are part of the Alternative11 youth culture still continue to wear black clothes, look anorexic and have more body piercings than we are comfortable with. 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). 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. The twentieth century church has a way to go to achieve this. The impact of social media in the lives of young people cannot be understated (#34). The rules have changed big business and government are no longer the employers of last resort. 4. Often to the uninitiated, different is equated with sinful, but culture has both sinful and amoral elements to it. Steven Lottering. 18. Recent research by Jurgens Hendriks4 indicates that in 1980, 77% of South Africas population associated themselves with a Christian Church. Thats why drugging, New Age, experience, smart drugs, raving, identity in music, experiential learning are currently in vogue, at the close of the twentieth century. Consider that it may be more honorable to stay in the family and community you were raised in. Great article and good to use for Youth and church leaders. Notice: Function is_feed was called incorrectly.Conditional query tags do not work before the query is run. Modernism is basically the world view which drew the line between science and religion, faith and superstition, truth and veracity. So what does it mean? Please see ooredoo . 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. D. Johncon, R. Johnson & E. Holubec. There have always been VCRs, but they have no idea what Beta is. 3. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1999. The United Nations defines youth as a person who is between the ages of 15 to age 24. According to this theory the whole human group must face four fundamental challenges: survival, living together in a group, internal government of the group Most people who have rejected Christianity have at least known what they were rejecting. Ultimately there is nothing sacrosanct about our worship services. All rights reserved. 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. The result is broken marriages, broken politics, broken cities, a broken culture, and broken human beings. But we are not simply talking of money the churchs responsibility extends to issues such as environmental concern, community crisis response, disaster alleviation, justice, community law enforcement and a host of other issues that will require time and sacrifice. 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. Computer technology, narrative theology, non-didactic teaching methods and popular media like The Prince of Egypt should all be harnessed creatively. Some scenarios are too frightening to contemplate. Aliens to Traditional Family Structures. Although that may be true, most parishes are places of connection especially if they have a full complement of clerical and lay ecclesial ministers who can make prayer and devotional opportunities available to youth as well as Christian service opportunities and other types of communal gatherings. Durkheim spent a lifetime arguing that the social or communal is a SALVE to the traumas of liquid modernity and a place of solace in which individuals could feel themselves protected and morally unified. What are the future youth ministry challenges for the Adventist Church? 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. Quoted by A. Allan Martin in The ABCs of Ministry to Generations X, Y, & Z, available on-line: http://www.tagnet.org/dvm/ABCs.html. Pg. 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. If you are planning to teach this course, and would like the latest version, contact May-Ellen Colon . This discussion will help show that even though the challenges we face are different from back then, we still have pressing challenges to face and we need to be willing to overcome them by any means necessary. Young people in the twenty-first century will know more and have access to vastly greater quantities of information than ever before. They will have lots more information at their finger tips than those teaching them. They are capable of doing their homework with both TV and radio blaring in the background. To judge the vast gulf between you and them, consider the following: They have only known one Germany. But most of us cant concisely describe it. It's the philosophy of the age which follows modernism. 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. There were laws forbidding abortion, gambling, pornography, certain activities on a Sunday, etc. The Need for Leaders in Christian Youth Ministry Youth need guidance and support as they navigate through the most challenging part of their development and seek to grow in their walk with Christ. Lets not make native Americans and Africans dress like Europeans in order to be acceptable worshippers. Indeed, Durkheim found a correlation between mobility and suicide: those who are more mobile experience less robust social connections (loss of community) and are hence more likely to commit suicide. Menu. Church was never meant to be a showcase for saints - rather it is a hospital for hopeless sinners. I love it. South Africa is a violent country, but until recently violence was not seen as a direct youth issue. A whole new mind set needs to be adopted if the necessary youth ministry programmes are to be adequately funded. They're divided about public health measures in relation to the pandemic. Most young people today already have experienced the life of the Spirit as a normal every day part of their Christianity no longer is speaking in tongues an issue, or accepting a word of knowledge or laying on of hands to heal the sick. This decline is in spite of the tremendous growth of so called mega-churches in most of these denominations. veneer. And not only are the quantities of youth workers significant but their levels of expertise and training is sorely lacking. There is no other institution or local community like the parish that has the message of mercy and reconciliation at its core. Dr Jurgens Hendriks is chairman of the DRC mega-church research group, investigating the reasons that some 80 DRC churches have been able to successfully expand in size when the denomination itself declined significantly between 1985 and 1996. This strategy can work in drawing numbers, but remains faceless, and in itself is unlikely to result in a lasting impact in the life of a young person. In the past the church, in particular the Reformed school, has rejected the concept of self, and especially self-actualisation, and self-realisation. The census results are available on-line at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/census96/HTML/default.htm. 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. 1. The next question to be asked is: Do we say to new converts simply Love God and forget all else? No, because thats not the complete picture of Christian discipleship, but it is a great place to start. 2. 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. 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. The Battle for a Generation: Capturing the Hearts of Our Youth. 2. He is calling for a new re-formation of praxis. The Truth is Stranger Than It Used To be: Biblical Truth in a Post Modern Age. Challenges and Opportunities for Youth in the Church Today In the fall of 2016, Pope Francis announced the theme of the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops: "Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment," which recently ended. But the world has changed. The iron rod orthodoxy of the past is over. Ministry in a postmodern context requires us to once again find the Biblically mandated community/relational approach to ministry. This does not mean that they are seeking after the God of the Bible rather they realise that there is a higher reality, that there is something beyond the purely natural world we live in. So you modify your behaviour, temper, hurtful behaviour, then only do you go on to do things which avoid every appearance of evil, come out and be separate (inwardly at first, not necessarily outwardly as well) and avoiding things which does not cause a brother to stumble. These form of violence could happen anywhere ranging from the school environment, school sponsored events and outside the school premises. The profile covers 28 key attitudinal areas, including areas referred to in this article such as spirituality, home & family, leadership, money and education.