Posts Tagged ‘Hurt’

Students are surrounded by endless activities and under pressure from every angle to perform flawlessly, constantly.

What really works me up is when the institutions that provide all these activities are so focused on themselves, they don’t have the time, energy or focus to give students what they really need.

And youth groups aren’t immune to this institutional selfishness.

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This post is part of a series I’m writing as I read the book, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers by Chap Clark. You can view the entire series here.

Yesterday, I posted a lot of questions about the impact of lengthening adolescence. Here are the reasons Chap gives for why this is important for us to understand.

1. The freedoms designed for late adolescence now occur during midadolescence. The best example is driving. Originally, this freedom was purposefully given to lateadolescents, those who were almost adults and therefore had a higher level of maturity and responsibility. 

   Now our young drivers are still midadolescents, and, as Chap says, they “retain the residue of self-centered childhood and may not have the developmental acumen to make the kind of choices that make driving, to use this one example, safe” (p. 36). What about the drinking age? Oh my…

2. Because high school students are only midadolescents (as opposed the lateadolescents as they used to be), it’s harder for them to see college and career as a secure and fulfilling future. They’re more concerned about what’s in it for them than making a difference in the world, and appeals to the future from adults are often dismissed.
3. Midadolescents are able to engage in abstract thought. However, this level of thinking is limited to the immediate context. There are “pillars” of deep thought and life context but they do not connect and principles from one do not transfer to others.

   The example Chap gives is a student who will go into great detail describing the love they have for their parents, and the next minute plan to do something which he or she knows will hurt his or her parents deeply.

That third point is huge!

It means that, as it stands today, the majority of your students probably lack the skills of (or they’re just in the habit of not) connecting the biblical principles we teach them to real life.

And the real-life examples we give them probably don’t transfer in their minds to other life circumstances.

Wow.

This post is part of a series I’m writing as I read the book, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers by Chap Clark. You can view the entire series here.

What Chap writes about the lengthening of adolescence has really struck a chord with me.

So what exactly is adolescence? According to Chap, it is a drive for uniqueness or separateness, a quest for personal autonomy or self-assertion, and a desire for community, belonging, and interdependence.

“Adolescence, then, is a psychosocial, independent search for a unique identity or separateness, with the end goals being a certain knowledge of who one is in relation to others, a willingness to take responsibility for who one is becoming, and a realized commitment to live with others in community” (p. 28).

As I discussed in my last post about the book, this process of adolescence in our society is lengthening. What used to be a 2-4 year journey that concluded with entrance into adulthood around age 16 (as was the case around 1900) has turned into a process that begins with children as young as ten and does not finish until college or even the “young adult” years.

In other words, our students are “kids” longer and becoming adults later.

This development has huge implications for youth pastors. Youth ministry used to serve as part of the bridge from childhood to adulthood. We used to take in adolescents and graduate them basically as full-fledged adults.

Now, the youth ministry years (for round numbers sake, lets call them ages 12-18) are only a “piece of the pie” of adolescence. Young people are starting this pivotal adolescent journey before they enter youth group, and they aren’t finishing it until sometime many years later.

Youth ministries aren’t really producing Christian adults anymore because the “norm” is for adolescence to last much longer than it used to.

This brings up dozens of questions:

• How do youth pastors respond to this cultural and societal shift?
• Do today’s youth  ministry resources effectively prepare us for these new challenges?
• Do our youth ministries meet the needs of this lengthening adolescence?
• Do we understand what it even means to minister to students in “mid-adolescence”?
• Should the Church’s view of “young people” now expand beyond just children and teens/youth? Does this make college ministry a “must have” for effective churches? Should youth pastors begin to view college ministry as part of their responsibility to young people, or is that for another “department”?

Consider a time years ago when adolescence was shorter, children’s ministry did not go beyond Sunday school and teens’ entrance into adulthood was celebrated by all even without a special “youth service.” Then there came children’s ministry, which is now a staple in most churches. Then there was youth ministry, which is becoming more and more of a necessity for churches. Now there is a growing number of college ministries in churches.

Are these budding church programs meeting the needs of an expanding adolescence? Or are these programs actually contributing to the lengthening of adolescence? If they are, is that a bad thing?

Hopefully there are answers waiting for me in the next couple of chapters.

In his book, Chap does share three specific reasons why the study of “mid-adolescence” is so important, and I believe these begin to answer some of my above questions. I’ll write about those tomorrow.

I began reading Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers by Chap Clark this weekend have been absolutely blown away so far. I decided to blog about what I’m reading as I read it, and after only 15 pages I think I have enough for a dozen posts!

Needless to say, it’s an amazing book. I’m taking it slow so I can soak it all in.

In chapter one, Chap makes the case that the common adult view of adolescents is fundamentally flawed. Most adults see “kids” today as pretty much the same kids they’ve always been, just different on the surface. They’re more selfish, more spoiled, or lazier than ever before, but those surface issues are not the only difference between this generation and previous generations.

In reality, adolescents today are completely different than any other generation before them, and the nature of adolescents in our culture is rapidly changing.

How exactly is adolescence changing?

• Adolescence is an invention of Western culture that did not exist before 1900.
• Prior to 1900, “kids” assumed adult roles in society around age 16.
• Children used to be treated as society’s most valuable treasure.
• The cultural revolution of the 1960’s marked the death of adult-led institutions focus on youth.
• The cultural shifts between 1960 and the late 1990’s left adults scrambling for their own safety, security and rest.
• Society continues to stretch out and lengthen adolescence.
• It is difficult to even find an accepted definition of adolescence. We can’t figure out what we can’t even define.

“No longer was there energy and health available for giving to others. Instead, adults waged a fight for emotional and relational survival, and this in turn spilled over into the developmental longings of adolescents…

“As society in general moved from being a relatively stable and cohesive adult community intent on caring for the needs of the young to a free-for-all of independent and fragmented adults seeking their own survival, individual adolescents found themselves in a deepening hole of systemic rejection.” (p. 33, emphasis mine)

That rejection, Chap argues, has become the foundation for the unique struggles our youth face today.

I’m looking forward to reading more and will keep you posted. If this caught your attention, pick up a copy and join me.