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Rick Bartlett, in a paper titled Future Trends in Youth Ministry,
points out that today's Western generation will never know life
without satellite TV, CD-ROM, CDs, the Internet, personal stereos,
digital surround sound or computers. Surfing the Net, e-mail and
chat rooms mean increased potential for contact with people, but not
necessarily improved relationships. Virtual Reality, including
virtual sex, is a development the church must deal with, and how
these will lead to breakdowns in "real life" relationships and
communication.
Josh McDowell says that today's youth define tolerance to mean that
every opinion of other people is valid. No view is "the truth," but
each individual's experience and view is "truth." The only
intolerance is for anyone who ways that someone else's actions are
right or wrong. "Postmodernism" becomes, then, a marketplace
mentality where everyone's experience, worldview and belief has
equal value.
Some young people, in a global society, look for identity and
belonging to tribalism. Young British people look into Celtic roots,
neo-Nazism is rising, and many gangs now are more geographic than
ethnic. Some Christian circles in the U.K., like Soul Survivor, the
World Wide Message Tribe, and Why? all contribute to a tribalism
that helps young people find their place in the world. (This, of
course, has nothing to do with primitive tribalism, except in the
sense of providing a group larger than a clique, but smaller than a
nation, to which people can belong and with which they can
identify.)
Youth workers who model a relational approach to ministry seek to
learn to be part of the culture, to live as Jesus did among the
people to whom they minister, modeling and teaching the Christian
life.
One very good sign: many young people are interested in the
supernatural. They are aware that spiritual realms exist, and
interested in them. |
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