Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture - 4

Continuing in chapter 2 with the "Three Crucial Steps for the Crosscultural missionaryy" we come to Step 2:

Know young people and their rapidly changing culture.

To truly know our teenage audience Walt suggests that we need to know our students on three different levels.

First, we must know our students individually - their unique personality and abilities (nature), and their lifetime of experiences (nurture) (pg. 49).

Second, we must know our students developmentally (pg.50).

Third, we must know our students changing cultural context (pg. 51).

What I love about this step is that it's forcing the youth leader, teacher, adult to get past just trying to remember students names as the most crucial piece of working with them. Knowing their name is a great start to the marathon we are asked to run with them called life. If students are going to chose to be a part of what we are doing in our church then we need to seek to KNOW them. We must learn to ask open ended questions in our small groups that will draw out the issues of nature and nurture. We must remember that there bodies, minds, emotions and souls are going through normal, God-given changes. Therefore we need to read books on adolescent development. Finally, we need to walk in their culture. Get on myspace and check them out. Watch the WB. Watch the award shows. Watch MTV Spring Break programming. Listen to Kayne West. For some of us it's getting a T.V. in our house and starting to watch T.V. at all. CPYU - Walt's website is a great tool for knowing and staying engaged in the culture.

Knowing should start taking on an entirely different meaning!