2
A Sociological Framework for Doing Youth Ministry
by
Dave Rahn, Ph.D.
Chapter 4 in Reaching a Generation for Christ (Dunn & Senter; 1997, Moody)
Many youth leaders get blindsided by an important realization after some experience with kids. It's the kind of truth that can take your breath away, sort of like the first jump into a swimming pool that's a little colder than anticipated. Here's how it goes: “Youth meetings might be well paced, engaging, and meaningful--but that's not why kids attend. They also don't show up because the youth leader is cool, witty, and easy to listen to. Rather, most kids get involved in a youth ministry because it gives them a chance to connect with the people they want to be with.”
The initial awareness of this youth ministry fact-of-life typically produces two effects on an erstwhile youth leader. The first is to thank the Lord for the unanticipated splash of humility this truth carries. After all, indulging in the temptation of self-importance can be quite a tug for any youth minister. The second is to thank the Lord for the expected benefit that this profound insight will bring to any ministry with adolescents. Understanding the social framework for doing youth ministry can be like finding the light switch in a dimly lit room. With the new improved visibility come tremendous possibilities. My goal for this chapter is to help youth ministry folks to think critically about the role of social and cultural context in determining ministry forms and methods. By shedding a little light on the subject I hope to provoke creative youth ministry responses.
Social contexts shape all of us. Chances are better than average that our junior high and senior high school years contributed richly to our present formation. Our personal socio-developmental tools--the ones that have carried us into adulthood--were test-driven in our adolescent years. It isn't too difficult to tap into this mother lode of memories. Do you remember your first kiss? Or the first time your hormones seemed to be going on “red alert”? How about the first time you drove a car, or, better yet, the first time you drove solo to pick up a friend? Can you remember what it felt like in your first year at high school, and how incredibly old the seniors seemed? Did you ever experience rejection from a group of persons you wanted to belong to? Can you identify a time when you felt as if you finally belonged to a group, that they were a perfect fit for you?
It's not a bad idea to reflect on our own adolescent social pilgrimage as a resource for youth ministry. But we ought to be cautious. Our tendency to project our experiences as normal for others may lead us to unwarranted assumptions. For example, not everyone experienced a first kiss during their adolescent years, felt intimidated by older students, or struggled with fitting in. How can we understand what's going on in the social world of those we want to minister to without presuming that their experience is similar to ours?
By approaching each social context in which we minister as learners ourselves we can avoid the pitfalls that accompany errant assumptions. To assume that our personal adolescent experience equips us to understand the social world of any teen we meet is like believing that because someone worked on the mission field in Tokyo they understand mission work in Haiti. In truth, the difference between Japanese and Haitian cultures is huge. To conclude that “missions are missions…they're all the same” would be disastrous. On the other hand, there is significant similarity between two missionaries who start their respective work in Tokyo and Port-Au-Prince with commitments to learn culture before fixing on ministry strategies. In the same way, a priority strategy for any youth minister is to discover an accurate understanding of the social and cultural context where their youth ministry will take place.
Let me illustrate. In my Youth for Christ ministry years I led Campus Life clubs in seven different high schools. Each school had its own culture. There was a mix between urban and suburban, small town and rural. Racial attitudes were different. The sophistication of kids' experiences varied from school to school as did the level of tolerance for persons who deviated from norms. Some schools had an enthusiastic unity; fractured, dissimilar interest groups composed other schools. If my only motivation was to establish a program for those teens who showed interest in spiritual things, I could have marketed Campus Life the same way in each situation and contented myself with the results. Since YFC's mission called me to think about penetrating an entire school community with the gospel of Jesus Christ, it was critical that I understood the social context of each situation and form a ministry response that was appropriately strategic. For example, one year it became clear that there was a small group of football players who exercised an unusual degree of influence on what was socially acceptable at their school. They had, for whatever reason, labeled Campus Life in such a way that it was socially risky for many students to get involved. As a strategic response to this particular social context I worked hard to win the trust of this group of guys. When they subsequently began attending our meetings, Campus Life's social status changed. For a time it even became socially risky to not get involved!
We can get a good handle on the adolescent social context in our communities if we posture ourselves as learners before we're ministers. The pursuit of three broad questions can help us to “exegete” the social and cultural contexts for youth ministry in the same way that systematic inquiry disciplines one's Biblical exegesis. Those who have led inductive Bible studies might notice a parallel to the “What does it say?--What does it mean?--What does it mean to me?” trilogy.
The first step is to gather snapshots of as much cold, hard data relating to teenage social life as possible. We can think of this as a pictorial portfolio, and ourselves as photographers. The question guiding our inquiry is, “What are the facts of teenage social life in this community that can be objectively verified?” The chance of getting a handle on the big picture of adolescent social patterns increases with the number and variety of pictures we have collected. For instance, if the first five guys we talked with about what they like to do for fun all mentioned paintball, we might make the unwarranted leap that paintball is all the rage among students in our area. Our limited picture-taking may have happened on the pocket of paintball enthusiasts who hang out together. A lot of additional “pictures”, from a lot of different angles, would help us to be more accurate in assembling the larger picture of teen social activity.
The second step is to try to uncover what all the data means to a variety of different teens. When we engage in this step we're still gathering information, but our research posture is more like that of feature reporters than that of news photographers. It may be helpful to imagine ourselves as showing our data portfolio to a wide range of young people to seek their interpretation. Our goal is to see the facts of the relevant social context through adolescent eyes, and our question is, “What does all the various social activity mean to the teens in the community?” The paintballers mentioned above may be the first wave of students to dive into the newest fad. They could also be seen as militant fringe kids in the social strata of a community. Social meaning is in the collective eyes of the beholders.
While it is important to keep from narrowing our research too soon, it is also essential that we eventually filter our new insights about adolescent social life through the mission, vision, and focus of our particular youth ministries. After all, to honor the Lord Jesus as we minister to the youth he has called us to is our ultimate goal. In this final area of inquiry our strategically reflective question is, “What does this social context--now clearly uncovered--mean for our particular ministry with young people?” Now that we know what we know about paintball in our area, would it be worthwhile to invest in this activity? I know of a very effective youth ministry that has done just that by purchasing 20 paintball guns.
Let's return for a moment to my earlier illustration about the football guys and Campus Life. In the fact gathering phase, I was able to personally observe these guys in the cafeteria and in a few social hang-out spots. As I got to know other teens, I would ask about weekend activities. There were always parties, and these guys were regularly mentioned as featured attendees. I began to form a hypothesis about the role these fellows played in this schools' social network and tested it by asking other students about them. The almost reverential tones from most teens tended to confirm my theory that this small group of guys was the gatekeepers of what was cool in the school. My probing had also confirmed that Campus Life was not on their acceptability list. Neither was I. Notice how natural it was to move from gathering data to gathering teen interpretation of the data--phase two. Since my maximum effectiveness depended, at least in part, on Campus Life's social acceptability among those who were unchurched, I realized that my best option was to pray hard and work to build relationships with these guys. That strategic response--part of the third phase--was based on Campus Life's mission. Not every youth ministry working in this particular social context would have warranted such an effort.
More explicit help for responding to the social context of youth ministry according to this three step model is offered in each of the following sections.
Just the Facts, Ma'am
One of the great shows from early TV years was Dragnet. In this half-hour crime drama, Sgt. Joe Friday would work with his partner to solve a crime. Inevitably he would interrogate some witness who might ramble away from the direct response to pointed questions that Sgt. Friday was looking for. The detective's response was classic: “Just the facts, ma'am.”
The first phase of understanding the social context for our particular youth ministry needs to be so focused. We can quantify much of the information gathered at this stage. After we assemble the data, we ought to jigsaw the pieces together so as to be able to see the big picture of the social patterns of young people.
We're trying to discover who goes where, when. While any one of these “w's” can serve as a good starting point for investigation, the limited number of time slots makes the “when” research question useful. The question is simple, “Where are teenagers in this community at (such-and-such time)?” Those interested in finding out about a particular hang-out could begin by asking the “where” research question, “How many teenagers can be found at (such-and-such place) at any given time?” Maybe a youth leader has a burden for a particular group of teens. In that case, asking the following “who” research question makes the most sense: “Where do (certain people) go at any given time?”
If we lay the information out in table form (see a limited example in Figure 1) we can get a quick grasp of what we know and don't know about the social movements of the teens in our communities. The column dealing with percentages can help us to see that, while we may know something about the patterns of a number of teens, there are scads of others that we don't know about. Could there be strategic ministry possibilities hidden in what we don't know? For example, the illustration in Figure 1 successfully locates 25% of the student body population after school, as well as 15% on Monday nights. What could we do to find out what the majority of kids are doing after school and on Monday evenings? Further, what sort of ministry response might convert this informative data into opportunity?
When? / Where? / How Many? / % of Whole? / Who?after school / athletic practice / 225 / 10%
after school / part-time jobs / 337 / 15%
Friday night / cruising / 450 / 20%
Saturday / part-time jobs / 450 / 20%
Monday night / Campus Life / 112 / 5%
Monday night / intramurals / 112 / 5%
Monday night / drama & music / 112 / 5%
Figure 1
What time slots are worth checking into when trying to understand the social movements of teens? Try these, for starters: before school, between class, during lunch, after school, each weeknight, each weekend night, Saturday, Sunday. The seasons of the year create different nuances of social interaction among teens. Would it be useful to know where kids spend their time in the summer? Or what they do over school holidays?
In any school community, a great number of students collect themselves in interest groups. Typical clusters include athletes, band people, drama kids, those involved in student government or student publications, socialites, and smokers. Often there are sub-groups within each of these categories. For instance, football players and women's basketball players are both athletes, but it is not likely to be useful to lump them together as representing a single interest group. There is tremendous strategic value in identifying all the different interest groups represented in a given community and then figuring out who belongs to each group. Group affiliation is an important way for all of us to understand our identity. This is especially true among socially hyper-conscious teens. Many kids engage in a variety of experiences, but would likely cite only one group as the one that fits them best. There are also a number of teens who, though involved in a lot of different groups, don't necessarily feel a strong allegiance to any particular group. Gathering the best data possible on these groups and their membership is a great way to approach the “who” section of the table above (Figure 1).