A Dose of (Youthful) Perspective

When you think of teenagers what images come to mind?  Does your mind take you to images of goofy, silly, irresponsible youth, or do you envision young adults preparing to enter the culture? When someone mentions college students, do you imagine frat parties or sporting events, or do you picture young men and women who will change America?

I spend a lot of time with teens, college students, with those who minister to those groups, and parents.  I am also a parent of two youth, one about to enter college. Overwhelmingly in my experience when youth are mentioned adults comment with statements like, “Oh, your child is a teenager?  Good luck!”  Or, “Boys will be boys,” or some other nonsense. I would submit that the average parent in the church looks at his or her teenager from the world view of MTV more than that of Scripture, which knows nothing of a period of time in adolescence where a “time out” occurs, excusing a life of silliness for a span of several years.  I am not opposed to having fun.  I don’t want to limit that to the teen years!  But I would submit that in the Bible teens are young adults entering adulthood, not children finishing childhood.

Recently several books examining the younger generation converge with similar evaluations of today’s youth and college students. Here are some comments from researchers who have spent considerable time examining the current generation in the United States.

First, the observation of scholars who study modern generations:

“As a group, Millennials [those born after 1982] are unlike any other youth generation in living memory.  They are more numerous, more affluent, better educated, and more ethnically diverse.  More important, they are beginning to manifest a wide array of positive social habits that older Americans no longer associate with youth, . . . Only a few years from now, this can-do youth revolution will overwhelm the cynics and the pessimists.  Over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged–with potentially seismic consequences for America.”

Neil Howe and William Strauss, Millennials Rising: the Next Great Generation (New York: Vintage, 2000).  They wrote this in 2000.  What have others observed since?

Note the findings of a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard who writes for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and The New York Times among others:

“ Call them the ‘missionary generation.’ The 1.3 million graduates of the more than seven hundred religious colleges are quite distinctive from their secular counterparts.  And the stronger the religious affiliation of the school, the more distinctive they are.”

“In practical terms these students challenge what has become, since the sixties, the typical model of college behavior. They don’t spend their college years experimenting with sex or drugs.  They marry early and plan ahead for family life.”

“They are becoming lawyers, doctors, politicians, college professors, businessmen, psychologists, accountants, and philanthropists in the cultural and political centers of the country.”

Naomi Schaffer Riley, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2005)5-6.  Riley looks not only at Christian students but at all religiously committed collegians.

Finally, read the words of Lauren Sandler, who spent over a year living among various groups of Christian young people:

“I call this population of fierce young Evangelicals the Disciple Generation.”

“The Disciple Generation is an ever-growing population of people ages fifteen to thirty-five who are equally obsessed with Christ and with culture as a means to an Evangelical end.” (p. 5)

“It seems to me that the growth of the Disciple Generation, a movement of staggering demographic diversity united by an intensely shared faith, suggests we’ve arrived at a significant precipice.  We are poised before the next Great Awakening in American history.” (p. 10-11)

“[Young people] want to reverse the flow of a river, not change its course. To reach a nation, a population needs to be redirected away from old institutions toward a radical new culture. An awakening entails young people reinventing traditional rituals, making the faith of their forefathers their own.  This isn’t just an observation on the MTV age—it’s been the final stage of every awakening before a national transformation is complete. To hit critical mass, it takes a youth movement.” (p. 12)

These researchers share two themes.  First, they all look at the current generation of youth and younger adults.  Second, none of them write from the perspective of Evangelical Christians.  Yet they all note the role of Christian faith in the lives of this group.  They have no religious ax to grind.  They are not trying to hype a Christian movement they hope will happen.  In fact, the last author, Lauren Sandler, wrote her book to complain about what she sees happening among evangelical youth.  Her book aims to wake up America (in particular the American Left) to the dangers of these passionate followers of Christ.  Ironically, what these books show me is that God is stirring the current generation, so much so that even secular writers cannot miss it.  But I fear the church may.

I recently wrote a book entitled Raising the Bar: Ministry to Youth in the New Millennium (Kregel) to note how contemporary youth ministry has failed to captivated a generation and push them toward changing their world.  I am currently finishing a sequel of sorts called Youth in the Bible, which is a further attempt to help the church today rethink how she sees youth.  In between I have a book coming out in March called Join the Movement, written for young adults to challenge them to see how God has used people like them (young people) in some of the greatest movements of God in history.  In other words, I am pouring my academic life into what I believe God is doing with my children’s generation.

What these researchers above see, the Bible already affirms. I believe we have one of the greatest opportunities to see God move among a younger generation than any time in decades.  In 2006 and the years following we are witnessing the largest number of teenagers in American history.  I may be a voice crying in the wilderness, but I believe God may be stirring a coming generation.  Watch the youth.  Challenge them to radical discipleship.  Let’s see what God does.