My Educational Theology 8: Culturally Relevant Ministry

Finally, in regards to my theology of youth ministry in a Christian school, I believe that we must do all we can to be culturally knowledgeable and relevant as we work with the mid-adolescents at our school. To do so, I believe that it is important for those who teach the Scriptures to our students and those who are involved in the practical application side of ministry to be well studied and fluent in the current cultural trends of today’s mid-adolescents. Just as any missionary in preparation for their work in a foreign country goes through studies in the culture and language of their target audience, so to must our missionaries to our youth be engaged in knowing and understand the culture and language of our adolescents. In today’s youth culture, I believe that it is in fact more important for adults to understand and find areas of appreciation and acceptance of today’s youth culture rather than to look youthful. The best way to be culturally engaged today is to stay involved and in touch with youth culture as one increases in years. Once a person steps out of the ever changing youth culture it is difficult, but not impossible to re-submerge into their culture. It is not only important to be a student of today’s culture, but also to be immersed in it. Often today’s adults have stepped “out of youth culture” study and observe Buster and Mosaic culture[1] in order to criticize it rather than to become part of the culture in order to work with and understand and mentor today’s youth. I have observed this mostly of older Busters and Baby Boomers.

On the other hand, culture must always be filtered through the eternal and unchanging Truths of Scripture. This has been a balancing act that the church hasn’t always done well at. The tendency is to the extremes. the church has either completely pulled out of culture and been completely separate and aloof from that culture and not had an impact on that culture at all or it has completely immersed itself in the culture around it and has diluted the Truths of Scripture so that it may fit in to the culture and thereby lost it’s distinctiveness and the power of the Truth it has been entrusted with.

The Apostle Paul set an example of this when he entered into the discussion of religion and philosophy with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on Mars Hill[2]. Paul didn’t abandon the Truths of Scripture, but as a student of their culture and philosophy, he entered into a conversation with them using their reasoning and aspects of their beliefs to bring them to the Truth of God. In the same way, we need to acquaint ourselves with today’s youth culture—it’s influences and philosophies. We need to learn to understand things including the thought processes of this generation. Instead of complaining about the influence of media on this generation or bashing postmodernism, we must learn how to use the media to speak the Truth of God to this generation—whether it be using quotes from contemporary movies or songs that speak the Truth or understand the underlying assumptions of postmodernism well enough to use them to the advantage of the Gospel.

I believe that one of the best ways to do this is to continue to speak the Truth and to teach the Truth to our students, but also to give greater voice to the Busters who are entering the world of education and ministry. Busters have a greater understanding of today’s Mosaic generation in that Busters are the first “postmodern generation”. We also need to give full hearing to our students as they seek to live out their lives as Christians in a postmodern world. Our students think like and understand the thinking of today’s youth culture. We need to let them help us understand how to reach their own generation.

I also believe that we need to re-examine what we label as Truth. Truth is Truth and is everlasting; however, many of us and our decades or centuries old denominations and religious backgrounds have taken interpretations and preferences and moved them over into the category of “Truth”. We need to re-examine the Scriptures to re-discover “Truth”. We need to differentiate between Truth, interpretation of Truth and personal preference. Recent multi-denominational developments and movements (at least in our part of the country) has made this much easier as many churches have moved to define themselves more by what the Bible says rather than along man-made denominational settings. As this trend continues we need to encourage our students along these lines to continue the trend throughout their generation and not become imbedded in a way of doing things. Those of us who are Busters can model this as our maturing generation has tried to redefine traditional Christianity.

[1] My references to “Buster” and “Mosaic” and “Boomer” generations as based on David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons’ book unChristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters. (Kinnaman and Lyons)
[2] Acts 17: 18