ENGAGE - Winter 2008

Winter 2008

Feelings—Someone more than feelings

by CPYU President Walt Mueller

INSIDE Preparing your kids for college Page 6 Those who would be Christians Page 9 How’s your family changing?

Page 10 A theology of church Page 12 Resource reviews Page 14 Youth ethics Page 18 Three for 3-D Page 20 Hang 10 Page 24

Winter 2008

Last summer, I taught my buddy, Ian, how to water ski. Just like I’ve done with dozens of rookie skiers before him, I ran through a rote litany of instructions designed to prepare Ian for his first-time experience. After telling Ian how to position himself in the water and what to do to get out of the water, I issued this warning: “Once you’re up and out of the water, you will feel an overwhelming desire to pull your hands and the tow rope close to your chest. I guarantee it. But don’t do it!

Do it, and you’ll fall over backwards. Tell yourself right now, ‘No matter how much I feel like doing otherwise, I will keep my arms extended and not pull in.’”

Why was I so emphatic? Because I remember the first time I water-skied.

I pulled my hands into my chest several times over— which of course meant I fell over several times. Even after those falls and repeated warnings from my instructor, I continued to give in to my feelings, which meant that I was spending all my time in, rather than on, the water.

Guess what happened to Ian? Like most other rookie water-skiers, Ian trusted his feelings more than the truth of my instructions. He started off spending more time swimming, than skiing.

At the same time Ian was learning to water-ski, a young 20-something named Katy Perry sat atop the music charts thanks to

kissing another girl and liking it. This pastor’s daughter/former CCM singer turned mainstream pop star told her impressionable young listeners that she was conflicted about the experience, based not on any sort of enduring moral standards, but on her feelings: “If felt so wrong, it felt so right.” In the end, feeling “right” yielded to “like,” which turned

into alright, and Perry’s message came through loud and clear. The old ’60s counter-culture motto—“If it feels good, do it!”—is now embraced and embodied as a mainstream cultural mantra, so much so that if you choose not to adopt it and live your life under submission to some outside authority—let’s say Jesus Christ—you’re hopelessly old-fashioned, terribly out-of-date and downright ridiculous.

Feelings—Someone more than feelings For those of us who love, raise and work with kids, the word feel (and all its relatives) is the f-word that should concern us the most. Not because feelings are bad, but because the growing reliance on feelings as the guide for life is a challenge that cuts right to the core of everything we’re called to teach our students about life in the Kingdom of God. Our students are swimming in a culture where—increasingly—the authority most appealed to when faced with decisions of all kinds is my own feelings, which by the way, can change at any given point in time. Trust me, I know.

Any of you who’ve spent any amount of time around me when I’m talking about youth culture know that Jessica Simpson has had me scratching and shaking my head for a long, long time. As high-profile people go, she just might be the poster girl for the place feelings now play in determining the shape of our Christian faith. Just when I start to forget how confusing her strange mix of stated belief in God’s Word and embodied allegiance to whatever feels good really is, she goes and does something that puts her right back in the news.

This time it was the September issue of Elle magazine, where she talks about current boyfriend Tony Romo being “the first

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person I’ve spiritually connected with.” He takes her to church. They pray aloud together before meals. And—here’s the clincher—they pray together before going to bed.

If our goal is to lead our kids into a deep faith that informs and directs all of life for the rest of their lives, then we must endeavor to understand the realities of where they’re at so that we might effectively point them to where they are called to be.

Recent research from the Barna Group indicates that cultural icons like Katy Perry and Jessica Simpson are living and modeling values, attitudes and behaviors that already are deeply embedded in the fabric of who kids are. The Barna Group’s David Kinnaman and his team of researchers say the shape of faith for Christian kids is less and less orthodox in nature. Instead, they are embracing what’s called a “nouveau Christianity.” Christianity and the Christian life are being reformulated, with belief in absolute moral and spiritual truth now a sign of closed-mindedness. The good news is that faith is still an acceptable attribute and pursuit among students. But the fact is that while students still embrace values that may be consistent with Christian beliefs (goodness, kindness and tolerance), the research is showing that those values are not based on biblical foundations. Sadly, students are increasingly skeptical of the Bible.

As we look at the world around us, we must recognize, reckon with and earnestly address the cultural reality that our students are not embracing an Other-defined faith that’s built on the unmovable foundation of God’s Word (incarnate and written), but a personally defined fluid faith built more and more on their own feelings. Feelings rule. Being nurtured in this type of world means that it will be okay or even virtuous for our Christian students to kiss someone of the same sex and like it, or to love and serve God (or whoever/whatever they feel “God” is) by praying with their unmarried significant other at bedtime—simply because it feels right.

In order to effectively turn the tide on this shift from timeless foundations to in-the-moment feelings, it’s helpful to understand the unique forces converging in the lives of today’s kids. Why the shift?

First, feelings are part of their humanity. God has made us all to be emotional people. Emotions and feelings are not evil or bad in and of themselves. They are a God-ordained part of our makeup. The Scriptures are full of references to human emotion, running the gamut from happy and joyful, to grieving, down-trodden and sad. To be human is to feel. To try to squelch our emotive nature is to squelch our humanity. In sharing in our humanity, the God-man Jesus Christ emoted across the full spectrum, from laughter and joy, to sorrow and weeping. All humans emote, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We must recognize the temptation to overreact that could come with doing ministry in a feeling-oriented culture; that is, that we throw out the beautiful baby of human emotion with the bathwater of misplaced emotional function.

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

Second, the advent of sin into the world undid everything good, including our emotions. Like us, our kids are depraved human beings. Sin and its results have infected every corner of the world and every nook and cranny of our lives— including our emotions. In a post-Genesis 3:6 world, sorrow and sadness visit every life, at times taking up residence in the lives of God’s people for years and years on end. Not only that, but God’s order and design has been turned upside down, including the functioning of our emotions. Like everything else that’s been broken by sin, our emotions have been thrown out of whack. Along with the rocks, trees, mountains and all humanity, our emotions groan and cry out for redemption. And, in the brokenness that is our world, we sometimes allow our emotions to be removed from their God-given place, allowing them to become idols that we follow and serve, rather than a gift to be used in service to God. We live our lives and understand truth based on our feelings, rather than filtering our changing emotions through the unchanging truth of God’s Word—and properly feeling good about that.

Third, adolescents are passing through a developmental stage that is, well, emotional! Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman bring a smile to my face every day. They’re the creators of the popular daily comic strip “Zits,” a hilariously funny and all-too-true peek into the life of an angst-ridden teenager by the name of Jeremy Duncan, his frustrated and clueless parents, and his interesting group of friends. Not a day goes by without Jeremy offering readers insight into the emotionally tumultuous and change-filled teenage years. And, not a day seems to go by without his confused parents looking at each other with befuddled looks as if to say, “What’s happening to our boy???” What’s happening is that Jeremy and his teenaged peers are growing through a short period of life that’s jam-packed with more confusing changes, growth and questioning than any other period of life they have faced or will have to face. As a group, teenagers are generally more feeling-oriented and emotionally vulnerable than any other age group. Remember middle school? Consequently, they’re especially vulnerable to falling into the trap of making and embracing an emotionally defined mutation of true Christianity.

Fourth, the postmodern world stresses feelings. Perhaps nothing in our culture reflects this more than the world of marketing. In the more modernist early days of television advertising, products were generally marketed using rational appeals to viewer reason. A product was visually compared to a leading competitor’s similar product. When, let’s say, one shirt came out of the washing machine cleaner than the other, there was “scientific” proof as to which product was the one to purchase. Generally speaking, that’s not so today. A classic example of how advertising reflects this shift from reason to feelings is the case of James J. Smith, a child psychologist who spent six years helping advertisers research how to sell to children. Children want love and acceptance, so, like adults, they are willing to spend their money to get it. The basic premise of advertising to children and teens involves “luring” them with a basic felt need and “cloaking the message.” Smith Winter 2008

About CPYU and ENGAGE This journal is produced quarterly by the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, a nonprofit organization recognized for taxdeductible giving by the federal government.

We depend on private donations for our funding.

We are a ministry working with churches, schools and community organizations to build strong families by equipping parents, pastors, youth workers and educators to understand the world of children and teens, by equipping teenagers to deal with the challenges of adolescence, and by equipping both parents and teens to live by the light of God’s Word.

Our resources include parent education seminars, youth worker training, printed and audio materials, a Web site, and a daily syndicated radio feature.

President Dr. Walt Mueller Vice President of Administration Cliff Frick

Associate Staff John Fischer Amy Flavin Marv Penner Paul Robertson Jason Soucinek

Research Specialist Director of College Doug West Transition Initiative Derek Melleby Research Assistant Chris Wagner Admin. Assistant Lisa Mueller Design Classic Editor Communications Randy Buckwalter ENGAGE December 2008 ©2008 All rights reserved To subscribe to this publication or for more information, contact us at: Center for Parent/Youth Understanding PO Box 414 Elizabethtown, PA 17022-0414 Voice: 717.361.8429 Fax: 717.361.8964 E-mail: cpyu@cpyu.org Web site: www.cpyu.org CPYU grants permission to copy any article, as long as the copies are distributed for free and they indicate the source as ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU.

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Feelings—Someone more than feelings cites an Oreo cookie ad as a perfect example. The ad flashes 30 images of happy children, but the product logo is shown only once. The intended result is to have children associate the cookie with feelings of love and happiness. Nothing is mentioned about the cookie’s taste or nutritional makeup. The appeal is entirely emotional.1 The postmodern world has rejected modernism’s rationality and reason, and it plays well to developmentally vulnerable kids. Kids choose to believe and live by “what I like” or what “feels good to me.” Ravi Zacharias says the postmodern generation “hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings.”2 Consequently, more and more of our kids construct their own spiritual reality and beliefs using personal subjective experience as their authority.

Fifth, our kids feel bad and they desperately want to feel good. I have a love/hate relationship with my friend Chap

Clark’s term “systemic abandonment.” Chap says it’s the defining characteristic of today’s emerging generations. In other words, all of the institutions that should be caring for and nurturing kids are ignoring and failing them. I agree. I love the term because it’s accurate. I hate the term for the same reason: it accurately captures the ugly reality of what’s happening with our kids. Because their God-given emotions are correctly telling them that something’s deeply wrong, they oftentimes compensate in dangerous and inappropriate ways in an effort to feel better. Sometimes the avenues pursued are simply cover-ups intended to temporarily anesthetize themselves to reality (drugs, alcohol, sex, disordered eating, materialism, etc.). At other times, they create and re-create false realities—including spiritual realities—that may feel good and work for the moment, helping them to deal with their difficult and broken lives.

Finally, they lack any compelling examples of an emotionally balanced life. Stated simply, there are very few adults in their lives who are modeling a lifestyle of balanced emotional management that brings honor and glory to God. Both inside and outside the church, kids see adults (many times their own parents) choosing and living distortions of orthodox Christian faith and life based on what feels good to them.

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What can we do in and through our homes and ministries to bring about a corrective shift that would lead to a balanced and biblically realistic knowledge of who God is and how to live in His world according to His Kingdom priorities? How can we teach our kids to embrace a faith that shapes and informs their emotions, rather than the other way around?

First, always, always, always emphasize the authority of the Word. Most kids don’t realize that all of their decisions in life are made based on some authority. Usually it’s a combination of authorities adopted unconsciously, including peers, media, parents, self, etc. While it is worth seeking out and accepting wise advice from these people and things, the primary authority we’re called to consciously live under is the authority of the One who made us. We must teach our students to consciously recognize, understand and embrace God as the authority in their lives, looking to the incarnate Word Jesus (who said that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and God’s written revelation of Himself in the Scriptures, which is “God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”) to guide every step of our lives. But don’t stop there. Teach them how the authoritative Word speaks to every area of life, going to great lengths to speak God’s truth on the matters to which they are deferring to the authority of their feelings. In our postmodern world we can easily be tempted into feeling like we should downplay any truth claims, including those found in the Scriptures. It would be a shame for history to remember our era as the watershed moment when parents, pastors and youth workers didn’t do enough to help kids embrace the authority of the Word over the whims of their wind-blown emotions. Feelings should never eclipse truth.

Truth should always direct our understanding of our feelings as the only trustworthy feelings are those grounded in truth.

Second, teach them about the dangerous practice of trusting their feelings. I recently had a discussion with a college graduate about a major decision she had made. I didn’t know her well, but she asked my opinion. Before voicing my concern about what I saw as an obvious disconnect between her professed faith and her choice, I wanted to know more about how she came to her decision. She summed it up in four words: “It just felt right.” When I was kid, my dad picked up on the fact that I had a bent toward making impulsive decisions based on my emotions. He warned me that my feelings could play tricks on me, that they were unreliable and that, if trusted, they could lead me down the path of making many unwise, dangerous or even immoral choices. I’m not sure he “felt” I was listening at the time, but his warnings did sink in, albeit rather slowly. In fact, it took some hard lessons learned as the result of feeling-oriented choices to help me see just how tricky our emotions can be. I have learned to never, ever make choices when my emotions are especially high or especially low. If I do, I might give my ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

feelings the sway they shouldn’t have. Walk the kids you know and love through the Scriptures to see how dangerous emotions can be. The Old and New Testaments are full of examples of people who allowed their feelings to eclipse truth and suffered the consequences (David and Bathsheeba, Lot’s wife, Ananias and Sapphira, etc.). On the positive side, the Scriptures and the history of the church also are filled with stories of those who refused to equate the absence of good feelings with the absence of God (Noah, Abraham, Joseph, David, Job, Paul, etc.). They held on to the truth they knew even though their feelings led them down the road of being tempted to do otherwise. One of the best and most convincing tools in your arsenal is to become vulnerable with your kids, sharing the good, bad and ugly from your own life and feeling-based choices.

Third, make sure they know that following Jesus doesn’t always feel good. I have many fond memories of a childhood spent in Sunday school. Our teachers utilized all the high-tech tools of music, puppets, crafts and flannel graphs. What I remember the most is the music, particularly the songs that are still ingrained in my mind due to weekly repetition. But over the years I’ve come to regret a few of those songs because they were filled with lies and bad theology. I think some of those songs did more harm than good. Do you remember singing “Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy are the people whose God is the Lord?” I do. It messed me up. It wasn’t until later in life, when I thought that difficulty in life was a sign of the absence of God’s blessing and presence, that the words of

Winter 2008

Jesus—“take up your cross and follow me”—suddenly became real. I learned that the life of discipleship is costly, painful and usually quite difficult. Martyrs for the faith know grace, mercy and peace. I don’t believe that they really feel good—physically or emotionally—while dying for their faith. Chances are your kids won’t be martyred. But they will suffer in this life. Most of them are suffering already. They need to know that growth usually comes through suffering. In the words of one preacher, “God often puts his children to bed in the dark.” Rarely is it something that we like. We need to teach our kids to meet the unchanging God who is—rather than invent a god that makes sense at the moment—in the midst of their suffering.

Fourth, give them the knowledge and skill to utilize the “this I knows.” My wife teaches three-year-olds in Sunday school. Over the course of the year she leads them through the memorization of eight questions from the Children’s Catechism. She asks the questions and they recite the answers back—week, after week, after week. In our worship service, we recite the Apostle’s Creed—week, after week, after week.

Some might think we’re subjecting ourselves to brainwashing, or, at the very least, empty ritual. But I have to tell you that this has become one of the most valuable moments of my week. I pray it would be the same for the kids. Why? Because all during the week I face challenges to my faith—some of them quite attractive and compelling. Emotionally, I might even want to “go for it.” But then I remind myself of the “this I knows”—the truths that never waver or change—that serve to keep my emotions, and the dangerous choices that could result from trusting them, in check. I have learned to talk to myself, rather than listen to my emotions. We would serve our kids better if we would fill their wells full of “this I knows.”

So whatever happened with Ian? After pulling his hands into his chest a few times, Ian finally got it. When I swung around and picked him up after his first successful run, he looked up at us with a big smile on his face. “Now that felt good,” he said. And so it should. And from time to time, living a life in submission to the Way, the Truth and the Life will feel very, very good.

Dr. Walt Mueller is President of the Center for Parent/ Youth Understanding

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1 Susan Campbell, “Hidden Hooks in Children’s TV Ads,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 2, 1990.

2 Ravi Zacharias, “An Ancient Message, Through Modern Means, to a Postmodern Mind,” in Telling the Truth, ed. D.A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), p. 26.

College Transition Initiative Youth group gone wild: What you can do now to prepare kids for college

By Krista Kubiak Crotty

College is way tougher than I expected. I never imagined that going to college would challenge my faith like it did.

In high school, I had been a good student (3.7 GPA), an athlete, a student leader and very involved in my church youth group. Most of my close friends went to youth group, I went on every retreat and mission trip, was a part of a small group, and attended the big youth program on Wednesday. I had always thought that my faith was strong and that I was a ‘mature Christian.’

I moved into my college dorm sure that I would fit in and not have a problem. I felt confident in who I was, what I believed and ready to take on the world. I met my roommate and we hit it off immediately. She was great, we had similar personalities, interests and tastes, and enjoyed the same kinds of people.

Initially, things seemed great.

After about two weeks, things started to change. Before going to college I was sure I would find some kind of college youth group, like I had in high school. What I didn’t know was how hard it was to find one and to feel like it was okay to go to one. I was fairly convinced that I would be kicked out of my social group if I let my faith and religion become something I was really involved with. I think not having someone help me and my faith was a big mistake.

My roommate and I were really social, and as a result we ended up at lots of parties. At first, it wasn’t hard to say ‘no’ to drinking and smoking pot. When people asked why not, I would tell them it was because of my faith, but sometimes I got funny looks or odd comments, so I stopped telling people that I was a Christian.

By the middle of the semester I started drinking some. By the end of the first semester, I was partying all the time. Looking back, it was at that point that I gave up trying to find a church or a college youth group. I felt like if I did start going to church again, I would lose my friends, and I wasn’t sure I’d fit in with the church people anymore. So I ended up drifting more and more away from my faith.

Now I’m a junior in college. I can’t say I go to church or even really know what I believe when it comes to my faith. Sometimes I crack open my Bible and read a few pages, in hopes of finding an answer to some question in life, but it’s pretty rare. Every once in a while I think about high school and my youth group.

Looking back, I’d say what I loved about youth group was hanging out and being with the people, but I don’t know if I really ever took what they taught and made it part of who I was or what I really believed. Sometimes I think I just learned the right answers to their questions, so I looked like I was this ‘good Christian kid.’ Maybe I’ll go back to my faith someday, but for now I’m happy trying out the world and I don’t know if I need a faith.

The above student graduated from a youth group at a church where I used to be involved in ministry. Like any high

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school youth program around the nation, we watched as seniors every year left high school friends and mentors, and dove into new groups of college friends and faculty.

Why is it that some youth group kids go wild after graduation while others don’t? What can youth workers do to prepare students as they leave the relative safety of our youth ministries and begin to emerge into adulthood.1 In order to better answer these and other questions related to youth group seniors’ transition to college, the Fuller Youth Institute’s (FYI)

College Transition Project is tracking youth group seniors nationwide as they cross the bridge into college. While the study will not be completed until 2010, we’ve already found some very interesting results pertaining to the very early stages of the transition as high school seniors graduate and enter their first year of college.

Research says…

In the midst of all of the students FYI is studying, one of the subgroups we’ve paid special attention to is a group of students we call the “teetotalers,” meaning those students who do not drink alcohol or engage in sex (specifically sexual intercourse or oral sex). We are especially interested in those who are not only teetotalers in high school, but also remain that way after they transition to college.

According to our research, students who remain teetotalers as college freshmen have higher levels of “intrinsic religiosity,” meaning a commitment to letting their spirituality guide their life and decisions. In addition, college teetotalers also show higher levels of “narrative faith,” meaning they view their own story as part of God’s story.

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

Implica tions: Inter naliza tion vs standing Implications: Internaliza nalization vs.. under understanding For many youth workers, the first response to this data about teetotalers would be to frantically prepare a great talk or small group study on “Ten Reasons to Stay Away from Sex and Alcohol.” We could even try tactics such as shame and guilt or fear and manipulation to help our message “really sink in.”

However, as a youth worker and researcher, my hope is that we think more deeply about these findings and their implications for our ministries.

As we saw in the story of the student at the opening of this article, even though she had spent plenty of time sitting through those types of sermons and small group discussions, there seemed to be a piece missing.

Based on my joint roles as a youth worker and a social science researcher, I believe that missing piece is internalization.

During high school, the student knew what might happen to her faith if she engaged in high-risk behaviors, and her high school youth community supported her abstinence from these activities. However, she had not internalized these values. These values had not become a part of her narrative faith, the story that reads God’s marks on all areas of her life. As a result, when she was introduced to these behaviors and realized friends around her were participating in such things and not openly suffering or dying, her understanding was shaken.

What’s the difference between internalizing and understanding? Understanding comes first, and is necessary and good. Internalization occurs when students understand what their faith calls them to and, rather than weigh risks, begin to see their identity as revolving around the overlap between their story and God’s story. This is a long and hard process, but as the following true story from another college student I know suggests, we as youth workers play an important role in that internalization process.

College has been awesome for me. I don’t think I ever expected it to be this good.

When I was getting ready to go to college I was terrified, super nervous and not sure that I would like it at all. In high school I had been really involved in my church youth group. Most of my close friends were from my church. It was a place where I felt like I could really figure out who I was and felt free to be me, something I didn’t always feel at school.

The summer before I left I spent a lot of time with my youth leader, someone who was and still is really important. We talked a lot about the upcoming transition, my fears and all the unknowns.

We talked a lot about my faith as well. Those were some of the most important conversations in my life. He challenged me a lot and invited me to think about how my faith and how my relationship with Christ fit into who I was as a man, and more importantly how it was going to, or if it was going to, affect who I was in college.

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Once I got to school, I met my roommate and we got along fine.

We both liked some of the same things and became pretty good friends. During my initial orientation, there were ads for different churches, which made it easy for me to go and check out a few of them. Eventually I found one I liked. I went a lot my freshman year. Since then, I have gotten busy and I don’t go every week, but I still try to go a few times a month.

Unlike a lot of friends I see around me, I am still a Christian. I was able to avoid drinking and partying for the most part.

If it weren’t for my conversations with my youth leader and the way he challenged me to think about how my faith was important to me, and how it would impact my life after high school, I don’t know if I would have been able to avoid all that stuff. Partying would have been a way easier way to meet friends and girls. I think that in some ways the party route might have made my freshman year way easier and not so lonely, but I think it would have been something I regretted.

To help us tie together research and student stories with youth ministry practice, we invited Derek Melleby, director of the College Transition Initiative at the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, to share some of his insights on the importance of internalization and how we can foster that process in students. Below is a brief excerpt from that interview, which can be heard in its entirety at: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/ 2008/12/interview-with-derek-melleby.

FYI: What mistakes do youth workers tend to make in preparing high school seniors for college?

Derek: My experience has actually been that not enough things have been tried to have a long list of mistakes. Many youth workers are just now addressing this issue for the first time. But I do think sometimes there is a failure to offer a gospel that connects with life on the ground. The “God loves you and has a plan for your life” gospel is pretty abstract and doesn’t get you very far, especially in college.

The mistake that probably trumps all the others is that too much of youth work measures success with the amounts of activity and the numbers of youth that attend events. Instead, if we can shift our paradigm to think about where we want kids to be in 20 or 30 years and then focus on what might be the most valuable things during the four to five years we have them that can help shape them into those kinds of people down the road, we may be more successful.

FYI: What can youth workers do now to bring about faith internalization in the lives of high school students later?

Derek: There’s a lot of research now that points to the general reality that most of the time the faith of parents becomes the faith of the child. As youth workers, we can put a lot more time and energy into educating, helping and encouraging parents—not just in how to parent, but in understanding and internalizing the gospel themselves.

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College Transition Initiative Youth group gone wild For youth workers who aren’t sure about how to talk with parents, I think one of the things they can do is know the research that’s out there about the importance of parents in their children’s faith, and then tell parents that. Also, try to work with parents who have leadership gifts to involve them in ministry, and be sure the senior leadership of the church understands the importance of parents’ role in faith formation and reminds the congregation of that reality.

FYI: In our teaching, how can we help students move beyond mere understanding of what we teach and toward true internalization of faith?

Derek: This article makes the point that some students haven’t internalized how their faith navigates challenges. I would actually say that the internalization isn’t just about how faith meets challenges, but that students haven’t internalized the need and necessity of community in the Christian life.

This is a problem with American evangelicals in general, myself included. Community is often an add-on rather than an essential element of faith.

I recently met a college student from Nigeria. I had actually been reading about the persecution of the church in Nigeria, so my first question was, “It’s pretty easy being a Christian in America, isn’t it?” He looked me in the eyes and said, “Being a Christian in America is the hardest thing I’ve

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ever had to do. First of all, I don’t even know who the Christians are.” He’s been looking for them. In the United States we need to think more about how our faith is connected to our communal identity. Then when students go to college they understand the importance of getting plugged into a community that shares that identity and helps students navigate faithfulness in college.

FYI: What suggestions do you have for youth workers who are wrestling to find a balance between teaching and modeling “law” and “freedom” in their youth ministries? How can we avoid the pitfalls of either extreme, and really prepare students for making their own decisions in college?

Derek: First off, we really need to model the struggle in our own lives. I think it’s typical in the position of “Christian leader” to use perfection as the standard. So I’d start by not holding perfection as the standard in your own life and in the lives of youth.

This question of legalism versus relativism is why we have the majority of the New Testament. The gospel isn’t something between the two—it’s something altogether different. The gospel says we are all wrong, but we are all deeply loved, and in Christ we are all in process—often a painful process—of being changed from the inside out. So if you internalize this journey, and this gospel, it starts running through your veins.

The most important thing is to understand that the tension is the reality, and to be open and honest about how this applies in your own life.

FYI: As you think about youth workers you know who have done a good job mentoring students in what it takes to have a thriving faith in college, what did those youth workers do well?

Derek: I think youth workers can help paint a more realistic picture of what college culture is like. There should be no surprises in college. What I often hear is, “Nobody ever told me it would be like this.” On the flip side, we sometimes try to scare kids with how bad it is. I want to offer something in between. We need a model of living the kingdom on college campuses that understands the narrative of creation, fall and redemption, and to be able to articulate the place of things like alcohol, for instance, in the Christian life.

Krista Kubiak Crotty holds a masters in Marriage and Family Therapy from Fuller Theological Seminary, and has completed coursework for a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Azusa Pacific University. This article originally appeared on the Web site of Fuller Youth Institute (www.fulleryouthinstitute.org).

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Dr. Jeffrey Arnett, chair of the Special Interest Group on Emerging Adulthood sponsored by the Society for Research on Adolescence, argues that young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 make up a new, distinct developmental period known as emerging adulthood. Arnett suggests that this period of emerging adulthood is marked by increased risk-taking behaviors and self-exploration on multiple fronts, including spirituality.

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

Those who would be Christians Do you ever wish we had a new word for “Christian?”

I bet there are a lot of people out there who would be Christians if they didn’t have to become a “Christian” to be one. If that sounds confusing, it’s because I’m not talking about true Christianity but about how the word “Christian” has been translated into contemporary American life and culture. “Christian” has now become commonplace. But what we think of when we use the “C” word is rarely what the rest of the world is thinking.

When they hear the word “Christian,” the average nonChristian doesn’t think of the church at large or of followers of Christ in all cultures, classes, denominations, races and nationalities. They are more likely to have in mind a kind of American cultural Christianity that is a composite of what has surfaced in the media in this country in the last 15-20 years—a stilted stereotype at best. Whether we like it or not, we have been branded, and the image is not a good one.

My wife is a marketing executive. She knows that selling products has to do with consciously branding them. For instance, LL Bean has come to represent Yankee honesty and value; Volvo has a worldwide reputation for building the safest cars; Disney is the undisputed expert at entertaining children (of all ages).

These associations are no accident.

They are designed by marketers to tie a personality or identity to a product or company aimed at a targeted market. Though the Christian brand may not have been the brainchild of a conscious marketing strategy, we are branded nonetheless by a stereotype that has little to do with truly following Christ. In short, Christians have been branded into an image that most nonChristians reject, even those who would be Christians.

Truthfully, many Christians reject it, too, but few nonChristians know this unless they get close enough to our lives to see the difference.

The world hears “Christian” and sees a white, middleclass conservative on a political soapbox with an American flag in one hand and a Bible in the other. It doesn’t imagine a kid with dread locks and bones in his nose singing about Jesus. It doesn’t imagine an African-American pastor helping neighborhood kids get off drugs. It doesn’t imagine a body of Vietnamese Christians sharing a church with Hispanic believers in the middle of rural California. And, saddest of all, it doesn’t imagine non-judgmental people with compassion who are Winter 2008

By John Fischer

marked by their kindness to others and generous spirit of service and unconditional love. It is truly a tragedy that a merciful gospel that welcomes everyone is branded by an image that speaks for only a few.

I think as Christians, we have put too much into our media-based efforts to spread the gospel and not enough into our own lives and relationships. It has been these mass-market efforts that, to a large extent, are responsible for this branding of Christianity—one that is counter-productive to the gospel, driving away those who would be Christians because they can’t get past the brand.

As Christians, we are all bearers of Christ, and our lives become the proving ground of faith in the world.

If the world rejects the Christian brand, it may not be such a bad thing, as long as real Christians give people something tangible to put in its place. That kind of witness can’t be found in a song or a TV show or a film series or even a seekersensitive church service. It comes over coffee or at the ball game, or while car pooling to work or working out at the gym. Personally, I think the world is full of people who would be Christians if they could just meet and get to know a real one in a natural, normal setting.

Christians need to be shaken from these stereotypes as much as the world needs to encounter the message free of them. To a certain extent we have cooperated with this branding effort because it has given us a false sense of power and influence, and it has enabled us to hide in a subculture, safe from a hostile world. Letting a brand dictate the gospel to the world seems potent, but, at the end of the day, no one is closer to the truth, ourselves included.

There is a place for a public representation of a Christian and the Christian point of view, but it will be in the relationships of our private lives where the reality of faith lives or dies. Those who would be Christians may not think they like Christians, but it’s only because they haven’t really met one yet. They’ve only seen and heard the brand. This is where you and I come in.

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John Fischer lives in California and serves as Associate Staff for the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.

He is an award-winning singer, songwriter and author.

Adolescent development How’s your family changing?

If your home is at all like mine, you’re currently buried in preparations for Christmas. At our house, Christmas is a time for our family to celebrate the life-giving coming of the Savior into the world. On Christmas day, our little family of six— dad, mom and four kids—will spend quality time together as we’ve now done for several years. Being a sentimental type of guy, I always spend some time on Christmas Day sitting back watching my kids while quietly evaluating who we are as a family, who I am as a Dad, the joys and sorrows of the last year, and my hopes and prayers for the year to come.

In the midst of a rapidly changing culture, I’ve found this annual exercise to be a healthy way to consider how our family can better reflect the Kingdom of God that entered into the

world through the birth of Christ. Perhaps the exercise is urgent for me because of what I regularly see and hear as I study the emerging youth culture. When I began to ask my high-school-aged audiences about their family situations, their first-person descriptions, combined with several shows of hand, led me to the conclusion that family meant something different to many of these kids. Some lived with dad and mom. Others lived with mom. Some with dad. Some with neither. A few didn’t know either one or both of their parents.

The words divorce, separation, abandonment and abuse came up over and over again.

Sadly, those responses are becoming more and more typical. You and I are living in a period of unprecedented and historic change in family composition, family life and family experience. This radical shift in family patterns can’t help but affect our kids, creating more stress and confusion. This shift is both the result and cause of a growing amount of childhood heartache, pain and difficulty.

As you prepare to celebrate the coming of the Kingdom of God into our broken world, take time to consider some of the

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By Walt Mueller

disruptive and destructive changes taking place in the American family. Then, prayerfully consider what you can do to prevent these trends from rearing their ugly head in your home.

The first change is the increase and acceptance of divorce.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s combined with a changing moral climate, rising individualism and other factors to lower our collective view of marriage, thus leading to a rise in divorce. In 2004, there were 7.8 marriages per 1,000 people (2,279,000) and 3.7 divorces per 1,000 people.1 “The American divorce rate today is nearly twice that of 1960, but has declined slightly since hitting the highest point in our history in the early 1980s.”2 It is estimated that up to 60 percent of the children born in the ’90s—today’s children and teens—will live in a single-parent home for part of their childhood.3 All of these statistics add up to this sad fact: The United States has the highest divorce rate and the highest proportion of children affected by divorce in the developed world!4 My one-on-one conversations with and observation of children of divorce have led me to a deeper understanding of the toll that divorce takes on our kids. The family was created

by God as the basic unit and building block of society. It is the unit into which we are born and where we find our identity, are socialized and are nurtured. The increased incidence and acceptance of divorce indicates that, in many cases, the building block is falling apart. As our society changes, husbands and wives are becoming more committed to being uncommitted. The result is that more and more children suffer.

A second change is the rise in cohabitation and out-ofwedlock births. A lower view of marriage has combined with changing morals and the experiences of so many adults having grown up in families where marriages fell apart, to leave a growing number of people ready to live together and have families, and without the willingness to commit. In 2004, 35.7 percent of all births were to unmarried women.5 Since 1970, the number of people living together outside of marriage has increased by over 1,000 percent.6 Not only do these trends affect children’s well-being as they grow through childhood and adolescence, but they also influence the growing child’s own view of marriage. The 2003 Gallup Youth Survey specifically asked teens about their views on cohabitation. A significant majority (70 percent) of teens say they approve of couples living together prior to marriage. As might be expected, 85 percent of teens who do not attend church approve of premarital cohabitation. But alarmingly, 50 percent of teens who regularly attend church approve of couples living together before marriage.7 Clearly, the culture is influencing our kids’ values and attitudes.

A third change is the crisis of fatherlessness. Tonight, approximately 34 percent of our nation’s children and teens will go to bed in a home where their biological father does not live.8 Some estimate that almost 60 percent of the children ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

born in the 1990s will spend some part of their childhood in a fatherless home.9 Sadly, more and more children don’t even know who their fathers are. Millions of other children are growing up in homes where their fathers may be physically present but are spiritually or emotionally detached. The consequences are grave. We now know that father absence is the number one variable in the present and future well-being of teens. Children who grow through the difficult, challenging and formative years of adolescence without their dads have a greater risk of suffering from emotional and behavioral problems such as sexual promiscuity, premarital teen pregnancy, substance abuse, depression, suicide, lower academic performance, dropping out of school, intimacy dysfunction, divorce, and poverty.

A fourth change is the decreasing amount of time that parents are spending with their children. Men and women in high-pressure careers often work more than 40 hours a week and bring home work pressures and economic worries.

Children are the ones who get shortchanged. The ongoing myth of “quality time vs. quantity time” is often invoked to justify absence from the kids. When asked about their wishes for a better life, 27 percent of high school students wanted “more money to buy items such as televisions and cars,” and 14 percent wished for “a bigger house.” But the overwhelming majority of high school students—46 percent—wished for “more time spent together with family.”10 Fifth, more and more children and teens are victims of family violence. It’s frightening to think that much of our nation’s child abuse and sexual abuse goes unreported. The statistics that are available are frightening enough. It’s believed that one out of every four girls11 in the United States and one out of every six boys is sexually abused by the time they reach the age of 16.12 Most of the abuse is perpetrated by a parent, sibling or close relative. In addition, studies indicate that between 3.3 million and 10 million children are exposed to domestic violence annually.13 Some of that violence is the direct result of alcoholism in the family. Children who are exposed to or victims of family and sexual violence are more likely to become perpetrators of violence themselves. They’re also more likely to exhibit a variety of health and behavioral problems as they grow up, including depression, anxiety, suicide, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Home used to be a place of refuge and a source of muchneeded resiliency for kids growing through the normal difficulties of the adolescent years. I remember how great I felt entering the warmth of my house after battling the pressures and expectations of my peers at the war zone known as school. While my family was by no means perfect, I at least knew that when I got home, I could open the door and walk into never-ending encouragement, acceptance and love.

But many teens don’t share my experience. Some time ago, after being away with a group of kids on an exciting Winter 2008

senior high retreat, I noticed that every kid on the bus was asleep—except for Meg. She was staring out the window. The tears running down her cheeks told me she was thinking about more than the passing scenery. I thought she might be disappointed that the weekend had come to an end. “Sure, I’m sad the weekend is over,” she said. “But that’s not what I’m crying about. My dad hasn’t talked to me or my mom in weeks. He just sits in his chair and watches TV. My mom’s an emotional basket case. Sometimes I feel like I’m her mother. And my brother, he yells at all of us. I don’t want to go back home.”

Meg’s home had become a war zone.

Meg’s sad story is only one example of how the changing face of the family is taking its toll on kids. The result is a hunger for genuine and meaningful relationships so pervasive among teenagers and young adults today that experts cite “relational deprivation” as one of the marks of today’s emerging generations. Our children and teens were created to be in relationship. Humanly speaking, the primary relationship for which they were made is one with dad and mom. Today’s teenagers desire real relationships that are characterized by depth, vulnerability, openness, listening and love—connectedness in their disconnected, confusing and alienated world. As your family gathers together this Christmas, bring honor and glory to the Savior whose birth we celebrate by evaluating how well you’re doing to bring the Kingdom that’s come—to come and live under the roof of your home.

1

“Marriage and Divorce,” National Center for Health Statistics, 28 February, 2006, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm (19 April 2006).

2 “The State Of Our Unions: The Social Health Of Marriage In America” (Piscataway, N.J.: The National Marriage Project, 2005), 18.

3 Frank F. Furstenburg Jr., and Andrew J. Cherlin, Divided Families: What Happens to Children When Parents Part (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 11.

4 www.divorcereform.org/gul.html, 2002 (20 April 2006).

5 “Preliminary Births for 2004,” (National Center for Health Statistics, 19 January 2006), www.cdc.gov.nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/ prelim_births/prelim_births04.htm (20 April 2006).

6 Popenoe, “Marriage Decline in America.”

7 “Moving In: Teen Views on Cohabitation” (Princeton, N.J.: The Gallup Poll, 8 April 2003), http://poll.gallup.com/content/ default.aspx?ci=8128&pg=1 (20 April 2006).

8 Wade F. Horn and Tom Sylvester, Father Facts, 4th ed. (National Fatherhood Initiative, 2002), 15.

9 Wade F. Horn, Father Facts (Lancaster, Pa.: National Fatherhood Initiative, 1995), ii.

10 The State Of Our Nation’s Youth: 2005-2006, 32.

11 Tamar Lewin, “Sexual Abuse Tied to 1 in 4 Girls in Teens,” The New York Times on the Web Women’s Health, 1 October 1997, http:// www.nytimes.com/specials/women/warchive/971001_758.html (20 April 2006).

12 “Fact Sheet: Sexual Abuse of Boys,” Prevent Child Abuse America, www.preventchildabuse.org (20 April 2006).

13 “The Facts on Children and Domestic Violence,” Family Violence Prevention Fund, www.endabuse.org (20 April 2006).

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Faith and culture Who are we? A theology of church I make no apology for beginning with theology. Many churches are sick because they have a false self-image. They have grasped neither who they are (their identity) nor what they are called to be (their vocation). We all know the importance for mental health of having an accurate self-image.

What is true of people is equally true of churches.

At least two false images of the church are prevalent today.

The first false image is the religious club (or introverted Christianity). According to this view, the local church somewhat resembles the local golf club, except that the common interest of its members happens to be God rather than golf. They see themselves as religious people who enjoy doing religious things together. They pay their subscription and reckon that they are entitled to certain privileges. In fact, they concentrate on the status and advantages of being club members. They have evidently forgotten (or never known) the perceptive dictum attributed to Archbishop William Temple that “the church is the only cooperative society in the world which exists for the benefit of its non-members.”

Instead, they are completely introverted, like an ingrown toenail! To be sure, Temple was guilty of a slight exaggeration, for church members do have a responsibility to each other, as the many “one another” of the New Testament indicates (“love one another,” “encourage one another,” “bear one another’s burdens,” etc.). Nevertheless, our primary responsibilities are our worship of God and our mission in the world.

At the opposite extreme to the religious club is the secular mission (or religionless Christianity). It was in the 1960s that some Christian thinkers became understandably exasperated by what they saw as the ecclesiastical self-centeredness of the church. The church seemed to them so incorrigibly absorbed in its own petty domestic affairs that they resolved to abandon it and drop out. For the arena of divine service they exchanged the church for the secular city. They were no longer interested

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by John Stott

in “worship services,” they said, but only in “worship service.”

So they tried to develop a “religionless Christianity” in which they reinterpreted worship as mission, love for God as love for neighbor, and prayer to God as encounter with people.

How, some 40 years later, should we evaluate this movement? We must surely agree that their distaste for selfish religion was right. Since it is nauseating to God, it ought to sicken us also. But the concept of a “religionless Christianity” was an unbalanced overreaction. We have no liberty to confuse worship and mission, even though each involves the other. There is always an element of mission in worship and of worship in mission, but they are not synonymous.

There is a third way to understand the church, which combines what is true in both false images, and which recognizes that we have a responsibility both to worship God and to serve the world.

This is the double identity of the church (or incarnational Christianity). By its “double identity” I mean that the church is a people who have been both called out of the world to worship God and sent back into the world to witness and serve. These are, in fact, two of the classical “marks” of the church.

According to the first, the church is “holy,” called out to belong to God and to worship him. According to the second, the church is “apostolic,” sent out into the world on its mission. Alternatively, we may say that the church is summoned by God to be simultaneously “holy” (distinct from the world) and “worldly” (not in the sense of assimilating the world’s values and standards, but in the sense of renouncing other-worldliness and becoming instead immersed in the life of the world). It was Dr. Alec Vidler who admirably captured the church’s double identity by referring to its “holy worldliness.”

Nobody has ever exhibited the meaning of “holy worldliness” better than our Lord Jesus Christ himself. His incarnation is the perfect embodiment of it. On the one hand he ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

came to us in our world, and assumed the full reality of our humanness. He made himself one with us in our frailty, and exposed himself to our temptations. He fraternized with the common people, and they flocked around him eagerly. He welcomed everybody and shunned nobody. He identified himself with our sorrows, our sins and our death. On the other hand, in mixing freely with people like us, he never sacrificed—or even for one moment compromised—his own unique identity. His was the perfection of “holy worldliness.”

And now he sends us into the world as he was sent into the world (John 17:18; 20:21). We have to penetrate other people’s worlds, as he penetrated ours: the world of their thinking (as we struggle to understand their misunderstandings of the gospel), the world of their feeling (as we try to empathize with their pain), and the world of their living (as we sense the humiliation of their social situation, whether poverty, homelessness, unemployment or discrimination).

Archbishop Michael Ramsey put it well when he wrote in his critique of secular theology: “We state and commend the faith only in so far as we go out and put ourselves with loving sympathy inside the doubts of the doubter, the questions of the questioner, and the loneliness of those who have lost the way.” Yet this costly entry into other people’s worlds is not to be undertaken at the cost of our own Christian integrity. We are called to maintain the standards of Jesus Christ untarnished.

Seldom in its long history has the church managed to preserve its God-given double identity of holy worldliness.

Instead, it has tended to oscillate between the two extremes.

Sometimes (in an over-emphasis on its holiness) the church has withdrawn from the world and so has neglected its mission. At other times (in an over-emphasis on its worldliness) it has conformed to the world, assimilating its views and values, and so has neglected its holiness. But in order to fulfill its mission, the church must faithfully respond to both its calling and preserve both parts of its identity.

“Mission” arises, then, from the biblical doctrine of the church in the world. If we are not “the church,” the holy and distinct people of God, we have nothing to say because we are compromised. If, on the other hand, we are not “in the world,” deeply involved in its life and suffering, we have no one to serve because we are insulated. Our calling is to be “holy” and “worldly” at the same time. Without this balanced biblical ecclesiology we will never recover or fulfill our mission.

Taken from The Living Church by John Stott. Copyright ©2007 by John R. W. Stott. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL. 60515. www.ivpress.com

Winter 2008

Dr. John Stott is known worldwide as a preacher, evangelist and communicator of Scripture. For many years he served as rector of All Souls Church in London, where he carried out an effective urban pastoral ministry. His books have sold millions of copies around the world and in dozens of languages.

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Resource reviews Kingdomdriven youth ministry Recognizing that past youth ministry models have largely failed in the cultural context of our changing postmodern world, Wendell J. Loewen invites churches and youth ministries to embrace a kingdom-driven ministry paradigm.

Beyond Me: Grounding Youth Ministry in God’s Story (Faith & Life Resources, 2008.

ISBN # 978-0-8361-9403-6) compels readers to consider using the theology of God’s reign to refocus ministry efforts in a way that invites youth to discover their place within God’s narrative.

In the first half of his book, Loewen explores what it looks like to grow up as a teen in today’s world. A graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, Loewen was greatly influenced by Chap Clark. This is most obvious in the sections describing the systemic abandonment of teens by adults, and the differences between early, middle and late adolescence. Beyond Me also describes how postmodernism and consumerism shape the adolescent story.

The book’s strength is found in how it boldly demonstrates how the narrative of God’s reign offers a compelling counter-narrative to the postmodern, consumerist worldview most teens have adopted. It describes four dimensions of God’s kingdom and how they speak to the identity, autonomy and sense of belonging of teens. This type of ministry focus moves beyond the programmatic and offers a theology that encourages God’s reign to be realized in every area of life. The church is asked to come alongside teens as they discover how their individual calling fits into the calling of God’s church and his present and future work in the world. Teens move beyond an individualistic faith to one that is integrated into the community of believers and works with the body of Christ to live out kingdom traits. Youth ministries that adhere to these principles will find themselves being agents of change that help advance God’s kingdom.

—Chris Wagner

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Discovering purpose Over the course of my 30-plus years in ministry, one of the most exciting trends I’ve sensed is the growing interest of the lost in being found. When talking to people about my faith, I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer respond with disengaged apathy. The good news is that more and more are responding with a posture of engaged skepticism when confronted with the Good News.

Charles Drew, pastor of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in New York City, has given us a wonderfully engaging overview of the answer to the world’s deep hunger in his book, A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World (2007, P&R Publishing, ISBN #978-1-59638-042-4). Rooted in a proper historical-redemptive understanding of the unfolding drama God has given us in His Word, A Journey Worth Taking is an accessible book that Christians can put in the hands of their non-believing and/or skeptical friends—both young and old alike. Drew masterfully lays out God’s story and the place we’ve been created to take in it. After explaining the Creation and Fall, Drew invites readers to consider the wonderful message of Redemption that will ultimately conclude with Glorification and the ushering in of the new Heaven and new Earth.

People love a story. Everyone knows at some level that he or she is involved in a larger story, and is actually an unfolding story themselves. Drew does the spiritually confused a favor by gathering up scattered puzzle pieces of their lives, then putting them together in the magnificent mural that makes sense of life because it’s a picture of God’s big story. But don’t for a minute think A Journey Worth Taking is only for the unredeemed. For Christian readers, this book is a way out of the misunderstanding and theological shallows that mark so much of the church in today’s world. It can facilitate a serendipitous “aha!” moment for Christians and non-Christians alike.

—Walt Mueller

God of extravagant grace Tim Keller’s latest book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Dutton, 2008, ISBN: 978-0525-95079-0), is a short reflection on one of Jesus’ most known parables: The Prodigal Son (Luke 15). This is the story of the “younger son” (brother) who asks for and then wastes his father’s inheritance on “wayward living.” The younger brother is “lost” but returns to the surprising open arms of his father. A party is thrown because the father’s son was lost, but now is found!

Keller is quick to point out that the parable should be called The Two Lost Sons, noting that there is another son in the story. The elder brother refuses to join his younger brother’s party because he had lived a life of “keeping all the rules” but the father never held a feast in his honor.

Here’s the punch line: both brothers are lost! Keller explains, “Jesus’ great Parable of the Prodigal Son retells the story of the entire Bible and the story of the human race. Within the story, Jesus teaches that the two most common ways to live are both spiritual dead ends. He shows how the plotlines of our lives can only find a resolution, a happy ending, in him, in his person and work.”

Keller’s book (and Jesus’ parable) forces the reader to ask: What are my motivations for being good? Like anything that is true, Jesus’ message in this parable is simple and profound and only will be grasped when given time to germinate in our hearts and minds.

Keller’s insight into the deeper meaning of The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a seed worth planting, one that has the potential to grow a people God longs for: a people of humility and extravagant grace. If the Gospel we preach and teach does not naturally lead to living lives marked by humility and grace, Keller’s masterpiece invites us to “recover the heart of the Christian faith.”

—Derek Melleby

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

Our brandingobsessed world Did you know that the sound of your car’s turn signal is actually branded by the car manufacturer?

Or that companies are paying top dollar to have “product placement” in novels? Or that even the scent of most stores is uniquely selected because scent has been shown to influence consumer behavior and to increase sales?

In his fascinating book, Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion (Public Affairs, 2008, ISBN# 978-1-58648-468-2), Lucas Conley exposes the branded world in which we live. Conley believes there is “a global branding disorder that stands to shift human nature radically, perverting our definition of community and shaping our sense of self.”

Conley notes that “we’re branded, quite literally, from cradle to grave.”

With so many products competing for consumer dollars, many brands spend more money on marketing than on improving products. Marketers now know that “price is a rational purchasing consideration and brand an emotionally driven one,” so the key is to trigger people’s emotions. What’s more, “branding’s most fervent gurus celebrate the best brands for their capacity to establish themselves firmly in our hearts and minds. Our relationships with our dearest brands, they argue, ought to resonate on a spiritual level.” Conley laments, “Branding is corrupting our culture by heralding emotion over reason, surface over core substance and packaging over experience.”

Unfortunately, Conley doesn’t seem to write out of religious conviction. The concluding chapter on how to respond lacks substance or even awareness of how religious communities can navigate a branded world. But that shouldn’t keep us from reading this book. It is very readable, and full of statistics and quotes that can serve as good conversation starters for anyone interested in how marketing affects young people.

—Derek Melleby Winter 2008

Postmoder n ostmodern evangelism Collectively, as God’s church, many of our attempts at evangelism have fallen short and, as a result, we’ve pushed those we were trying to minister to further from God’s kingdom.

In our postmodern culture, old evangelism methods that treated people more like projects than people loved dearly by Christ, should be scrutinized carefully.

I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus (InterVarsity Press, 2008. ISBN # 978-0-8308-3608-6) is an attempt to explore the journey young people take as they move closer to, and hopefully fully accept, God’s call on their life. Authors Don Everts and Doug Schaupp have years of experience ministering on college campuses. They began noticing a cultural shift taking place. College students they were ministering to were coming to faith in mysterious, even unthinkable and completely unfamiliar ways. Yet many of their stories had much in common. There seemed to be five distinct markers along the journey people were making on their path to Christ. Everts and Schaupp call these markers the five thresholds. At each threshold there are certain hurdles that need to be cleared as the Holy Spirit works to bring home the lost.

The beauty of recognizing these thresholds is it allows us to identify where each individual is on their journey toward the kingdom. We can then minister to them where they are.

Everts and Schaupp not only describe the thresholds, but offer suggestions on how to help non-Christian friends cross each one. Credit also goes to the authors for realizing that once the fifth threshold (“entering the kingdom”) has been crossed, the journey in many ways has just begun. New Christians need to be supported, prayed for, mentored and ministered to as well. This book will prove to be a valuable read for college ministers and those who work closely with today’s young adults.

—Chris Wagner

Divorce and kids “It doesn’t take long to figure out that the world’s answers do not work! There is not enough beer, sex, drugs, perfection, academia, counseling—in short, not enough of anything— to dull the pain, much less heal it. But there is an answer. God provides a firm foundation for healing our broken hearts.” This is the message that’s at the core of a hopeful new book written by a child of divorce, Kristine Steakley.

Painfully transparent in her telling of her own story of growing up in a broken home, Steakley invites readers to understand the dynamics and results of divorce in Child of Divorce – Child of God: A Journey of Hope and Healing (2008, InterVarsity Press, ISBN #978-08308-3471-6).

It is estimated that 50 percent of the children born in today’s world will grow up to experience the divorce of their parents. Typically, they blame themselves although they had absolutely nothing at all to do with it. Divorce hurts. Just ask any kid who’s been through it. Kristine Steakley’s own struggle has taken years.

Sometimes it was all-consuming. Her parents’ divorce and her life thereafter has shaped and continues to shape who she is today. But the struggle has taken her deeply into the things of God. Child of Divorce – Child of God is a book that should be read by anyone working with or ministering to kids. It is eye-opening. It’s also a book for anyone who shares the author’s own experience. The most valuable aspect of the book is that the road to understanding and redemption Steakley lays out is one that is deeply rooted in the character of God. This is a book that shows how God can repair and re-parent the child of divorce in ways that heal and restore relationships with themselves, their parents and their Heavenly Father. In addition, an online blog for the book can be found at http://childofdivorcechildofgod.blogspot.com.

—Walt Mueller

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Resource reviews Going strong There’s an oft-cited youth ministry statistic that remains a mystery to me. I’m not sure if it’s accurate or if it should be filed under “urban legend.” Here it is: the average paid church youth worker stays at his or her job for 18 months.

Hmmm. Again, I don’t know if this statistic has ever been verified. What I do know is that over the years there are not enough youth workers who settle in to stay at the same place long enough.

Youth ministry is often a revolving door.

That’s the sad reality that’s motivated our good friend Mark DeVries to write his latest youth ministry book, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn’t Last and What Your Church Can Do About It (2008, InterVarsity Press, ISBN #978-0-83083361-0). A long-time-in-the-same-place youth pastor himself, Mark is also the founder of Youth Ministry Architects and the author of Family Based Youth Ministry. His latest book grows out of his experience of longevity and his consulting work with YMA. Sustainable Youth Ministry takes readers through the process of thinking deliberately rather than haphazardly about why we do youth ministry, what that youth ministry should look like, and the type of person our church should seek out to build a long-term sustainable youth ministry in our congregation.

Churches will learn how to build a job description, make wise hiring decisions, build a strong volunteer team, help youth pastors set and keep boundaries, and create a road map for navigating church politics.

This book is a timely and practical challenge to the entire church—pastor, search committee, parents and youth worker.

—Walt Mueller

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Pop the lid “He just can’t keep a secret” isn’t an accusation that’s usually made about kids who have experienced deep hurt and pain in their lives. Stories of abuse and addiction are typically kept hidden by victims who sometimes take those secrets to their graves. The consequence of sitting on these secrets is that the help that’s needed in order to embark on the path to hope and healing is never found. The hurt stays tucked away only to be watered and fertilized by fear and shame—and it just keeps on growing.

My friends Megan Hutchinson and Jen Howver grew through their childhood and teenage years as secret-keepers. It wasn’t until they found the freedom to share their horrifying secrets with others that they were able to embark on a journey to finding God’s healing and wholeness. In their book Secret Survivors: Real-Life Stories to Give You Hope for Healing (2008, Zondervan/Youth Specialties, ISBN #978-0-310-28322-5), Megan and Jen tell their own stories along with the stories of six other secret survivors. Written to help the growing number of secret-keeping teenagers pop the lid on the stuff they’re hiding inside, Secret Survivors tells stories about date rape, cutting, abortion, pornography addiction, physical abuse, incest, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Readers are invited into a community of fellow pain-bearers, and by entering, given strength and permission to take the first step of telling their own story.

This is not a book that encourages kids to wallow in the pool of pain with others. Instead, it offers practical advice from those who have been there in how to share your secret, how to tell your story, and how to find a merciful, gracious and loving God in the midst of it all. For those who have been spared the pain, Secret Survivors will help you understand what it’s like. This is a wonderful book to read and discuss with the kids you know and love.

—Walt Mueller

Forgetting Jesus?

Many polemics have been written about the North American evangelical church.

Some center on theology, others on practice, but many assume that what evangelicals think or do is gospel centered. Michael Horton, in his new book, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Baker, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-8010-13188), challenges readers to consider whether or not churches are preaching Christ, or something else. “I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful and perhaps even well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself,” Horton writes. “Judging by its commercial, political and media success, the evangelical movement seems to be booming. But is it still Christian?”

Horton believes many churches cater to society by offering a Gospel that is easy to accept, while preaching and teaching “good advice” not “good news.”

He sifts through popular Christian writers and teachers, most notably Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Robert Schuller, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball and Mark Oestreicher, to reveal a reluctance to communicate the offensiveness of the gospel. According to Horton: “Today it is less about measuring ourselves against God’s holy will than about helping make good people better through good advice.”

Horton reveals that the moralistic, therapeutic, deistic worldview, discovered by sociologist Christian Smith is really the worldview of most Christian adults.

Not everyone will agree with Horton’s arguments, but they certainly are worth considering. Has the church stopped preaching Christ and Him crucified?

Are we leaving out central elements of the faith, especially when teaching the young? Horton’s diagnosis is compelling and seems more accurate than not, but it isn’t all bad news. He also reminds us of the Good News and suggests ways to put the church back on track.

—Derek Melleby

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

Wisdom from Mother T Shortly after experiencing a “newfound awakening to faith,” longtime educator Mary Poplin watched a documentary about the life of Mother Teresa. In the film, Mother Teresa described what she did as “religious work, not social work.” That inspired Poplin to take a sabbatical to work alongside Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity in India in 1996. After struggling for many years to write about her experience, Poplin has recently published a magnificent reflection entitled Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service (Intervarsity, 2008, ISBN# 978-0-8308-3472-3).

Readers will gain much insight into the life of Mother Teresa and what it is like to serve the poorest of the poor. But the book is about much more than that.

The title of the book comes from a quote

by Mother Teresa: “Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see.”

Poplin not only describes her time serving in India, but she also explains how she was able to integrate her experience into her work as an American college professor. Poplin explains, “Mother Teresa answered her call to love the most unlovable of people. There is no reason to romanticize the poor just because we make the mistake of romanticizing the rich. The people the Missionaries serve are difficult, just as you and I are difficult.” Finding her “Calcutta” teaching in a secular university, Poplin openly discusses the difficulties of serving the broken institution of higher education.

Her stories from India and America are compelling and inspiring.

This book is for anyone looking for deeper meaning in their work, regardless of their occupation. Poplin’s insights into American higher education also will be of value for teachers, professors, guidance counselors, youth workers and parents sending their children off to college.

—Derek Melleby Winter 2008

Delayed maturity Do you notice that it seems to be taking boys longer to mature into adulthood? Do you know of any “basement boys,” emerging adults who “find not only free lodging, meals and security at home but also the freedom to come and go at will and, in the privacy of their converted subterranean lairs where no one will tell them to make their beds, to play endlessly on their Playstation consoles?” Perhaps you’ve also heard the complaint by many young women who ask, “Where have all the men gone?” It was questions like these that motivated historian Gary Cross to write his book Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity (Columbia University Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-231-14430-8). Cross calls many in this generation, “boy-men” who “live for today, disdain pretense and formality, are ever open to new thrills and experiences, but also mocking convention in celebration of amoral fantasy, crude vulgarity, and unrestrained appetite, the boy-man makes a fetish of the ‘cool.’”

Part of the problem is that “rites of passage” that typically aided in the maturation of young people are fading away. Many are having a hard time finding career-oriented work right out of college, marriage and child rearing have been delayed (if not abandoned altogether), and the entertainment industry has made being young so much “fun” that it is hard to let go. Cross traces the history of models of maturity, but does not glorify the past or point to a “golden age” when all boys matured to responsible adulthood.

In Men to Boys, Cross combines historical analysis with contemporary illustrations to reveal a generation of immature young people who need better models of maturity. By reading this book, parents will gain insight into how their children are bombarded by the media to remain “youth,” and pastors will be forced to consider how the church can minister to future generations.

—Derek Melleby

Crossroads of faith and culture A central motivation for the writing of Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew’s new book Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview (Baker Academic, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-8010-3140-3) is that a faithful Christian worldview must derive from Scripture. They argue, “If our worldview should, by our neglect, lose its roots in Scripture, it becomes vulnerable to being taken over by some story other than that of the biblical drama.” Goheen and Bartholomew’s first book, The Drama of Scripture (Baker Academic, 2004), provided an overview of the biblical story, explaining its major themes and applying them to life. Living at the Crossroads is its natural sequel, focusing on the story of Western culture and explaining where the two stories meet and conflict.

After a helpful introduction that defines the term worldview, explains how worldviews work and articulates the centrality of Jesus within a Christian worldview, the authors offer an overview of the story of Western civilization and its worldview. “Since every human culture since Eden has been shaped at least in part by a vision of life that is incompatible with the Christian faith, it is important that we understand well our own Western cultural setting and the beliefs that have shaped it.” Whereas the hero of the Christian story is Jesus, the hero of the western story is humanity: “Man becomes the measure of all things.”

After the historical overview, the authors focus on the shape of contemporary culture with a helpful discussion of postmodernism, consumerism, globalization and the resurgence of Islam.

Even though there are many books written on developing a Christian worldview, this one should not be overlooked. How we live out that truth is always difficult and we need books like this one, to help us be more faithful in our callings.

—Derek Melleby

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Trend alert Youth ethics

by Chris Wagner

Every two years the Josephson Institute releases a study titled “Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth.” Data from the 2008 study became available in late November and the results portray a growing problem with the moral fabric of today’s young people. What follows is a snapshot of some of the results from this year’s survey administered to nearly 30,000 high school students across the country.

Encouragingly, it seems as though having strong morals and being of good character are ideals teens highly regard. However, there is a disconnect between what they say and how they act.

The first set of figures below represents the positive side of the survey results. They demonstrate the perceived notion that having high moral character is important to teens.

• This divide can be seen in the classroom as well, where 40% of teens believe, “A person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed.” And though only 21% agree with the statement that, “People who are willing to lie, cheat or break the rules are more likely to succeed than people who are not,” 65% have lied to a teacher and 64% have cheated on a test within the last year.

Interestingly, teens do not notice—or are unwilling to concede that though they may lie, cheat and steal—these actions are harmful to their personal character and what others may think of them. Despite the many grievances they confessed during the survey, 77% agreed with the statement, “When it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most

• 98% agree “it’s important for me to be a person with good character.”

• 96% believe “it’s important to me that people trust me.”

• 84% say they agree with the statement, “It’s not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character.”

The following examples, unfortunately, begin to show disintegration between thought and actual behavior.

• Though 98% of high schoolers agree that, “In personal relationships, trust and honesty are essential,” 82% also admit to lying to their parents about something significant within the past year. And, 23% have stolen something from a parent or relative, and 20% from a friend within the past year.

people I know.” You could argue then, that teens believe it is a bigger issue when others lie, cheat or steal, than when they do it themselves. Perhaps they don’t hold themselves to the same standards as their peers.

In the summary of their findings, the Josephson Institute noted that the bleak picture painted in the survey actually may under report how bad things really are regarding the ethical behavior and honesty of today’s high school students. This is because 26% of respondents admitted to not answering all of the questions in the survey with complete honesty. They conclude that, “experts agree that dishonesty on surveys usually is an attempt to conceal misconduct.”

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ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

What can parents, youth workers and educators do to begin redirecting the moral compass of today’s youth? CPYU offers the following suggestions: Parents—Children begin learning at a young age from the example set by their parents. Be sure the behavior you exhibit is in line with what you teach. If you teach your children that lying is bad and goes against God’s standards, but then model behavior that stretches the truth or tells white lies, you only will be reinforcing the disconnect mentioned in these survey results. Instead, teach them God’s standards at a young age and then model that behavior yourself. Show them how to integrate faith into all areas of life. Be honest about your own inconsistencies with your teens, and lovingly point out theirs as well. Use the opportunity to discuss Paul’s words in Romans 7 to show that struggling with sin is a constant battle, but be sure to help your teen work toward Paul’s answer and declaration (vs. 25) from the question he poses in verse 24.

Youth workers—The survey results demonstrate our fallenness and the truth of Romans 3:23.

However, teens seem to see little wrong with their current behavior. Use the findings as a starting point for a youth group lesson that teaches teens about our sinful nature. Help them see that Christianity isn’t about a list of do’s and don’ts. If this were so, we all would be without hope. Help them discover God’s grace provided through his son Jesus Christ. Paint the broad picture of God’s story and how he calls us into it through a relationship with Jesus so that our own stories can find significance. Outside of this story, especially in today’s postmodern culture where people believe truth to be relative, there is little reason or motivation to live a life of high moral conduct.

Rather, by seeking God and working to advance his kingdom we are compelled to make better choices and reflect behavior that is pleasing to God. As you help teens live out these truths, they not only should begin making better ethical choices, but they also should be honest with themselves, realize when they fall short, seek forgiveness and strive to make improvements.

Educators—Media plays a huge role in shaping the ethical behavior of today’s young people. CPYU has created a 3(D) approach to media consumption that can be used and taught in classroom settings within the public school system. Teachers are encouraged to use this resource as a way to help teens align their ethical ideals with the media choices they make.

Copies of Minding Your Media: A 3(D) Guide to Making Responsible Media Choices can be obtained through CPYU’s online resource center at www.cpyu.org. A free downloadable Winter 2008

Teacher’s Guide is also available. (Note: CPYU also recommends that parents, youth workers and Christian school teachers use the related resource How To Use Your Head To Guard Your Heart: A 3(D) Guide To Making Responsible Media Choices with teens. More information, including a free downloadable Leader’s Guide, is available on our Web site.)

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More detailed survey results can be found at http:// charactercounts.org/programs/reportcard/index.html

Chris Wagner is a research assistant at the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding

CPYU looks at three big blips on today’s youth culture radar In this column, we’ve filtered three popular media expressions through our How To Use Your Head To Guard Your Heart media evaluation resource. We encourage you to use our analysis as a springboard for your further examination. For copies of How To Use Your Head To Guard Your Heart, please log on to our Web site at www.cpyu.org.

Song/Video: ‘F ‘Flly On The Wall’ Background/summary: This is the latest single release from teen pop star Miley Cyrus. On her album Breakout, this catchy song’s video is one of the Web’s most accessed thanks to Cyrus’ Hannah Montana-fueled star power. Cyrus is especially popular among pre-school and elementary-aged kids, resulting in tremendous influence thanks to their developmental vulnerability.

Discover: What is the message/worldview?

• The video begins with Cyrus and a boyfriend emerging from a movie theater after viewing a “fright night” feature. As they walk and discuss the film, the boy stops and starts to quiver. A confused Cyrus looks on as he morphs horror-film style into a “monster.” In this case, the monster takes on the form of a celebrity-chasing member of the paparazzi, so Cyrus hides in a parking garage while singing to the camera.

• The song then moves on two levels: one visual and one lyrical. On the lyrical side, Cyrus is singing to a curious male friend who seems to want to know everything about her. She sings, “Don’t you wish that you could be a fly on the wall/A creepy little, sneaky little fly on the wall/All my precious secrets, yeah/You’d know them all/Don’t you wish that you could be a fly on the wall.” She proceeds to tell him that, “If you were my boyfriend, I’d be true to you,” making a pledge that “If I make a promise, I’m coming through.”

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• On the visual side, Cyrus is sending a message to the paparazzi and the celebrity-obsessed fans who depend on them and the gossip pages to keep them informed as to every little detail of the star’s life. She says they are misinformed: “You don’t understand what it is that makes me tick/But you wish you did,” and “If you only knew what I talked about/When I’m with my friends just hangin’ out/Then you’d have the inside scoop.” However, she says “You’re getting misinformation/Too much hearsay, hearsay.”

• As the video ends, Cyrus retreats from a group of black-clad male dancers who have found her in the garage. Soon after starting to dance, their cameras appear and start snapping.

The paparazzi have found her again. She is rescued by her boyfriend as he pulls into the garage in his original character.

She hops in his car and they drive off with the paparazzi snapping away wildly. She speaks quickly in typical 16-year-old fashion explaining to him what just happened, telling him she had this weird dream where all these dancers turned into paparazzi. Little does she know that the secrets she’s telling him are being filmed and simulcast on an Internet celebrity gossip site by a small Webcam he’s placed on the dashboard. It seems she can’t trust anybody.

Discern: How does it stand in the light of the biblical message/worldview?

• Celebrity is a double-edged sword. For the celebrity, the price of fame and fortune is too often a complete loss of privacy that’s accompanied by an endless stream of speculation and rumor. For the fan, celebrity obsession too often becomes idolatrous worship that’s fueled by a media machine equally obsessed with feeding our worshipful frenzy. While God is no respecter of celebrity, we have established a pecking order that our kids embrace at a very young age. We fuel an unhealthy and diversionary love for celebrity and celebrities that not only leads them to pursue fame and fortune themselves (How many people audition for American Idol every year?), but has them spending their time, money and attention on following the famous rather than following the only One worthy of their worship.

• The Scriptures are clear that we are to tell the truth and avoid lies. Cyrus raises an important issue when she warns listeners to not believe everything they’ve heard. The rumor mill produces harmful and toxic stuff that destroys people and relationships. We are not to bear false witness, and neither are we to engage in double-talk or slander.

• In today’s culture, people are often used by others as a means to an end. In these cases, deception rules. On the one hand, Cyrus reminds us to avoid dispensing easy trust. We must be cautious in our relationships. On the other hand, the

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

song reminds us that our world needs us to be people who model Christ-like honesty, thereby making us trustworthy. Our “yes” should be “yes,” and our “no” should be “no.” Christ’s followers must reflect His glory by building a culture of trust.

Decide: What do I do with it?

• Like much of Cyrus’ music, this is a relatively safe dancepop song and video that’s void of the type of negative content that typically concerns parents and youth workers. Consequently, this is a great video to use with younger children as a springboard for discussion of issues surrounding celebrity, celebrity obsession, truthfulness, gossip, who or what to worship, and how to treat others. It’s safe for showing and discussing with kids in the home or in a youth group setting.

• Because of its safe content, “Fly On The Wall” is a wonder-

Movie: Britney for the Record Background/summary: This one-hour documentary covers a period of 60 days in the life of Britney Spears, commencing with the eve of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, which happened to be the designated starting point of her comeback after some years of highly publicized bizarre behavior and poor career moves. Although not explicitly stated, the film is a promotional piece playing an integral part in the latest Spears

marketing campaign. The film originally aired on Sunday, Nov. 30, two days before Spears’ birthday and the release of her latest album, Circus. It continued to run at various times on MTV, and can be viewed in its entirety on mtv.com.

Winter 2008

ful video to use for entry-level media literacy efforts with children and younger tweens. Because it raises numerous timely ethical issues, it lends itself well to CPYU’s media evaluation process in How To Use Your Head to Guard Your Heart.

• Idolatry (worshipping created things rather than the Creator) is a very real problem in today’s culture that’s been left largely ignored by a contemporary church that is both materialistic and celebrity obsessed. For that reason, this video might serve as a great spark for discussion among adults of these issues.

While the irony is that Cyrus seems to be doing nothing in her own career to avoid feeding her celebrity, there is a sense in which this song provides adults with an “out of the mouths of babes” nugget of wisdom that should make us think twice about our own priorities.

Discover: What is the message/worldview?

• The film bills itself as an invitation into the life of Spears with no topic “off limits.” The film intersperses talking-head discussion with the pop star, along with various scenes from her professional and personal life. In the opening scene she states her reason for making the film: “I wasn’t being seen in the light that I want to be seen in” and the fact that there’s a lot she wants people to know about her.

• Spears is asked if she knows her life is “weird.” She says that this is all she’s ever known as a celebrity and that to her it isn’t weird at all. Still, a great amount of the film is spent showing viewers the downside of celebrity, including the loss of privacy, the constant onslaught of paparazzi and the need for 24/7 security. Hers is anything but a normal life.

• She describes the tumultuous last few years of her life as a time when she “totally lost my way.” She looks back and wonders, “What the hell was I thinking?” She confesses that much of her trouble is rooted in the fact that she’s a lonely person and that she sought to assuage her loneliness in ways that got her in trouble.

• Evidence of this loneliness is found in a string of broken relationships including her high-profile breakup with boyfriend Justin Timberlake, her overnight marriage to a high school friend, and her marriage and breakup with Kevin Federline.

She confesses that she doesn’t handle breakups well. After her breakup with Federline, she tried to fill the void by living the party life, and by building a dream house at the beach.

• Spears’ main escape is in her singing and dancing. Much time is spent highlighting her joy of dancing and the making of new videos for singles on Circus.

• She confesses that there are times when she wishes she wasn’t famous. She can’t go anywhere alone or with her kids without security. There was a time, six years into her career, when she wanted to stop performing, go home to Louisiana and start a brand new life.

• There’s little mention of her children, until she tells viewers that it is her children who make her believe in God. • When asked what she wants people to take away from the film, she answers, “That I’m just like them.”

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Discern: How does it stand in light of the biblical message/ worldview?

• All humanity has experienced the Creation and the Fall.

Consequently, all humanity longs for redemption. In this respect, Spears is no different than anyone else. The Scriptures from start to finish point to the fact that redemption is found in the restoration of our relationship with our Creator through faith in Jesus Christ. Still, all humanity looks for redemption in a variety of places, things and experiences—just like the writer of Ecclesiastes. Fame, fortune, material things, relationships … these are all dead ends. They do not free us nor can they redeem us. Spears’ continuing loneliness and unsettledness testify unmistakably to this fact.

• The film—in an effort to re-launch Spears and market her career—glorifies celebrity in ways that entice young viewers to see Spears as a role model, leading them to long for satisfaction by pursuing and achieving celebrity status themselves. If this pursuit becomes the highest of callings in our culture, kids will miss out on hearing God’s call to develop and exercise their unique mix of gifts and abilities in those vocational callings that are suited to who they are, not who they think they should aspire to be.

• Sadly, a mid-20-something Spears already has been paying the price for entering into risky and toxic relationships. Her relational and marital behavior serves as a map for impressionable young students. Already married and divorced twice, Spears’ life reminds us that the Scriptures take a high view of marriage as a carefully thought-out and crafted covenant between one man and one woman who promise before God to remain committed to one another until “death do us part.”

• A life lived apart from God—whether high profile or low profile—is a life that inevitably leads to the unquenchable restlessness of dissatisfaction and a dead end. Those who choose the path Spears has taken would do well to heed these

Song/Video: ‘Circus’ Background/Summary: This second single from the Britney Spears album of the same name dropped with a big splash in early December 2008. Part of the marketing package in the effort to facilitate the singer’s comeback, the song has been received well by Spears’ fan base with some of them calling it the best video she’s ever done. Because Spears is a long-time pop culture icon who is back on the pop culture landscape in a big way, this song is worthy of our attention, understanding and response.

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Discover: What is the message/worldview?

• The song’s video and lyrics send a strong message regarding Spears’ self-understanding, who she intends to be as a pop icon, and how those things fit into the so-far successful plan to recover and reinvent her music career. The video’s opening scene shows Spears in a dressing room as she prepares to enter the “circus” of today’s overly crowded popular music

inspired words of God: “Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

Decide: What do I do with it?

• Our children and teens are being raised in a celebrityseeking and celebrity-worshipping culture. This type of idolatry not only will destroy them if left unaddressed, but it feeds the celebrity of the celebrities, thereby making it more difficult for the celebrities themselves to break free from this trap, which—when the applause is silenced if even for a short period—reveals deep-seated brokenness and loneliness.

Celebrity and celebrity worship exact a price. We must teach our kids to seek and worship Christ and Christ alone.

• The film can be used with students, youth workers and parents as a case study in marketing. The movie itself is a shameless attempt that poses as an expose of Spears’ life.

Instead, it has been carefully crafted to resurrect her oncedying career, and it appears to have worked with the rest of the marketing plan to have done just that. Deconstruct the film with students to reveal how they are being manipulated and marketed to.

• Art is therapeutic for so many of our children and teens.

This is especially true from those stuck in the bondage of relational breakdown and hurt. The film serves as a good springboard for discussion of the role art and music play in young lives and how we can use these things as windows into their world.

• Like so many young people, Britney Spears—despite her public persona—is lonely, hurting and vulnerable. We may not like her musical message or the example of her lifestyle, but we should be praying for the peace that passes understanding to rule in her heart, mind and life. This is a young woman who needs our prayers.

scene to take what she thinks is her place in the center ring.

Observant viewers will note that her dressing room table and preparatory routine include two fragrances from her perfume line, Fantasy and Curious—some obvious product placement.

• Spears explains that “there’s only two types of people in the world.” The “ones that entertain and the ones that observe.”

She then confidently proclaims that she’s a “put-on-a-show kind of girl” who’s “gotta be first” and has to be the “ringleader” calling the shots.

• As Spears steps into and stays in the center ring for the remainder of the video, she is surrounded by a variety of dancers, circus performers and circus animals in a dimly lit setting. She confesses that the stage and dance floor are where she belongs, that this is her stage and that being there sends the adrenaline through her veins.

• She tells listeners that she’ll be cracking the whip and getting everyone to obey her commands as they follow her—something that will happen since “all eyes (are) on me in the center of the ring.”

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU

• She continues by explaining that there are two kinds of guys in the world: “ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared.” Again, she plays the role of the leader. The video visually portrays this as Spears assumes her characteristic dance moves and apparel, all the while playing the sexual object who entices and leads guys on. Some of her male dancers take the bait, ogling her body and seeing that body as her identity.

Discern: How does it stand in light of the biblical message/ worldview?

• Like so many kids in today’s youth culture, Britney Spears continues to show evidence of her deep search for meaning, purpose, significance and redemption. While we should applaud her desire to move away from a period in her life when she experienced a very high-profile meltdown, we must also acknowledge that human resolve, marketing efforts and personal reinvention can never truly make over a person. Like all humanity, Spears has experienced the chapters in the unfolding biblical story known as “Creation” and “Fall.” She longs to experience the chapter titled “Redemption.” The Scriptures are clear: yes, redemption is what we need. But the only source of redemption is the God-man, Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

• All humanity is created in the image of God. Therefore, we are called to function as creative beings creating out of the created order in a manner that serves as worship, bringing honor and glory to God. We must applaud Spears’ creative talents. We also must applaud her efforts to be who she was made to be, something evident as she feels “the adrenaline moving through my veins.” It seems that Spears has experienced a partial discovery of vocation and place (i.e. her “great joy”) as described by theologian Frederick Buechner: “That place where your great joy meets the world’s great need.”

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• Spears’ desire is not to channel the glory to her Creator.

Rather, her desire is one of selfish narcissism that focus all eyes on the holy trinity of me, myself and I. In addition, she sets herself up to be followed. The Scriptures regularly remind us that “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” As followers of Christ, we are called to “clothe yourselves with humility” (I Peter 5:5).

• As a map for impressionable young viewers and listeners, Spears’ music—including “Circus”—sends the clear message that one’s identity is found in things like fame, fortune and appearance. We are not objects to be idolized and worshipped by others due to our fame, good looks or sex appeal. Instead, we are to find our identity in Christ alone. Anything else is idolatry.

Decide: What do I do with it?

• Because it serves as a map for kids and window into their world, “Circus” should be viewed, deconstructed and discussed by all those called to nurture, love and lead kids (parents, youth workers, pastors, educators, etc.). By seeing and hearing firsthand the compelling and convincing form and content of the video’s messages, we will then understand the emerging worldview more clearly. Then, we can speak God’s unchanging truth to the cultural messages and realities that exist.

• The video serves as a powerful springboard for discussion with young Britney Spears fans. After viewing the video, discuss the issues raised in the song including narcissism, celebrity, human depravity, the longing for redemption, idolatry, humility, vocation, etc. Use it as an opportunity to bring the light of God’s Word to bear on each of these issues, thereby helping kids see that God does have something to say about each.

• Because marketing is the media outlet currently influencing children and teens most deeply, take time to teach kids how they are marketed to. Discuss marketing and how it figures into the Britney Spears’ comeback campaign. In addition, use “Circus” as an example of product placement.

• “Circus” is an ideal song to use to teach your kids how to think Christianly and biblically about all music and media.

Show it to your group and then take the time to break into groups to filter the song and video through CPYU’s How To Use Your Head to Guard Your Heart 3(D) media evaluation guide (available online at www.cpyu.org).

• The history and music of Britney Spears serves as a powerful reminder of our need to pray for our children and teens.

They are hungry for heaven. Theirs is a dark world. They are broken, and they are confused. Ask God’s Spirit to melt their hearts and to incline their ears toward their Heavenly Father.

Finally, do the same for Britney Spears.

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A list of 10 interesting and helpful BLOGS to check out next time you’re surfing the net

Learning My Lines learningmylines.blogspot.com This is CPYU President Walt Mueller’s blog, featuring his thoughts on the intersection of faith and culture, all occasioned by contemporary and personal events. Readers are invited to comment on Walt’s thoughts.

Hearts and Minds Booknotes heartsandmindsbooknotes.blogspot.com Byron Borger’s Hearts and Minds bookstore in Dallastown, Pa., is a book lover’s dream. But you don’t have to live near the store to benefit from Byron’s great knowledge of books. Just check out his blog, which features Byron’s annotations, blurbs and ruminations to enlarge the heart and stimulate the mind.

CPYU Bookshelf cpyubookshelf.blogspot.com Created and maintained by CPYU’s Derek Melleby, this blog features reviews of books read by CPYU staff. In addition, it includes interviews with authors. If you are wondering what the CPYU staff is reading and want some great recommendations, this is the place to visit.

Child of Divorce/Child of God childofdivorce-childofgod.blogspot.com This blog has been created by Kristine Steakley, the author of the hope-filled and help-filled book, Child of Divorce – Child of God. Steakley offers children of divorce and those who want to understand them deep insights into how divorce effects children, along with where and how to find hope.

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New Breed of Advertisers newbreedofadvertisers.blogspot.com Sadly, Sam Van Eman’s great little book, On Earth As It Is In Advertising, was taken out of print. It is a treasure chest of good thought about advertising and the role it plays in our spiritual lives. But don’t despair. Sam continues to provide insights for students and practitioners through his regular blog postings.

Mouw’s Musings netbloghost.com/mouw Richard Mouw is the president of Fuller Theological Seminary. He’s also a wonderful thinker on all things faith and culture, so much so that he’s become a favorite of the CPYU staff. It’s always great when you don’t have to wait for a great writer to release another book. Now, you can read Mouw regularly on his online home.

Stuff Christians Like stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com Walt Mueller had some seminary friends who gave birth to a son name Jonathan. Jon has since grown up to write a very funny, thoughtful and popular blog that forces Christians to look in the mirror. If you want a good laugh—usually at your own expense—check out Jon Acuff ’s blog on a regular basis.

It’s so popular it’s going to wind up as a book!

Resurgence theresurgence.com/md_blog Mark Driscoll is being used by God in mighty ways to connect with the emerging generations. The pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Driscoll has committed himself to going deep in his theological understanding and cross-centered ministry. An introspective person, Driscoll opens up access to his mind and thoughts in his blog.

Desiring God desiringgod.org/Blog This is the blog of Desiring God Ministries’ founder Dr. John Piper. Piper has focused his ministry on teaching believers how to live all of life to the honor and glory of God. The blog offers regular commentary from Piper and his Desiring God staff.

Ref21 reformation21.org/blog This is the online magazine of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is designed to encourage biblical thinking, living, worship, ministry and constructive cultural engagement.

Lots of connections to video archives, audio archives and articles. Updated regularly, this is a very thoughtful and helpful blog to visit on a daily basis.

CPYU does not necessarily endorse, support or condone these sites and their sponsors. Some are listed for informational and research purposes only as they are prevalent in youth culture today.

Links to these sites and many others can be found at www.cpyu.org!

ENGAGE: The Journal of Youth Culture from CPYU