Youth Culture Today

The following post is a gathering of notes prepared for a presentation in India:

"They long to be meaningfully connected to life."
This is the underlying theme of today's youth culture.
- The church must listen to this!

Young people are finding it increasingly difficult to make sense of the world and their place in it. God's design is to use families and the larger body of Christ to point young people to their divine purpose.

Young people have little experience in how to effectively communicate what's on their mind, but are painfully aware when we fail to hear what they have to say.
- They want to be certain about how to live and to understand why things happen as they do, and the popular arts help them navigate through life. Pop culture gives them purpose.

They desire to fit in and belong.

3 Steps for the leaders:
- Know the unchanging Word
- Know young people and their rapidly changing world
- Take the Word to them

Worldview - The sum total of our beliefs about the world, and the 'big picture' that directs our daily decisions. Otherwise put: The one thing everyone has, but most people don't know what it is!

Young people use feelings not reason.
"They hear with their eyes and think with their feelings." - Ravi Zacharias

Emotions are the final judge of what makes something good, true and right, for young people. The self is the source of truth and reality. They want to experience community and connectedness that offer them peace, love, unity, and respect. "Spirituality" is becoming more widely accepted.

Many young people are not turned off by Jesus, rather those that call themselves "Jesus followers", yet don't act like it.

Marks of this young generation:
- Without a moral compass
- Culturally diverse
- Tolerance
- Broken relationships
- Media saturated
- Experience and feeling-driven
- Suspicious of truth
- Overwhelming options
- Violent examples
- Pushed and Hurried
- Materialistic
- Concerned with appearance
- Crying out for redemption

Culture
- What we believe, do, and how we live day to day
- The measuring stick of how we define and live in God's world
- A collection of ideals and beliefs, values, and assumptions, that makes up an overall plan for living and interpreting life
- It is universal, learned, shared integrated whole, and not static

Questions to consider:
1) How does culture shape our youth?
2) How is it forming their worldview?

*Teach young people that coming to faith in Christ is not just about going to heaven, but about living the kingdom of God here on earth and integrating that faith consistently into every area of life.

*We must look closely at how Jesus teaches us to live as his followers and to be his hands and feet to them (AKA - "Incarnational living")

*Keep our hearts and minds on Christ. Jesus teaches:
- "To be the salt of the earth." (Matt. 5:13)
- "To be the light of the world." (Matt. 5:14)
- "To be sheep among wolves." (Matt 10:16)
- He is always with us. (Jn. 10:1-18)

The Great Commission:
"Go and make disciples of all nations..."

LOVE without conditions or limits!

(Notes primarily from "Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture", by Walt Mueller)