The implications of Soul Searching for Mennonite youth ministry

Do you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with these statements: “The youth today are just so different from previous generations” and, “Doing youth ministry in a postmodern era calls for radically different approaches”? Or do you simply feel out of touch with young people and dare not venture an answer? A deeper question undergirds these issues: How will we nurture the Christian faith of young people both now and in the future?

In the past several years as I have served in conference youth ministry and taught college youth ministry courses, I have been surprised by what all the term “youth ministry” conjures up in people’s minds—Wednesday night Bible studies, conventions, fun, service trips. These certainly can be activities that help shape the faith of adolescents, but do they adequately entail what is needed to pass on the Christian faith? We as a church must do more, but at the same time we are doing more to instill faith in young people than we realize. What will guide us in the evaluation of our efforts? Where will we look for clues?

NSYR and Soul Searching: One book I have reflected on is Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by principal investigator Christian Smith, published in January 2005. It shares findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion, a comprehensive sociological research project conducted at the University of North Carolina that began in 2001. This project’s purpose is to research the shape and influence of religion and spirituality in the lives of American adolescents; to identify effective practices in the religious, moral and social formation of the lives of youth; to describe the extent and perceived effectiveness of the programs and opportunities that religious communities offer their youth; and to foster an informed national discussion about the influence of religion in youth’s lives in order to encourage sustained reflection about and rethinking of our cultural and institutional practices with regard to youth and religion. The conclusions in this book offer both challenge and hope.

First, they discovered that religion is a significant presence in the lives of many U.S. teens today, and in fact most teenagers generally feel positive toward religion and the institutional church. However, religion operates in a weak social structural position compared with other activities and organizations that lay claim to their time, so religion is simply not a big deal to them. Furthermore, the spiritual and religious understanding among teens is weak, and for the most part they are inarticulate about their faith beliefs.

Second, supply and demand matters to the spiritual lives of teenagers. The greater the availability of religiously grounded relationships, activities, programs, opportunities and challenges for teens, the more likely they are to be religiously engaged and invested. In other words, “congregations [conferences, denominations] that prioritize youth ministry and support for their parents, invest in trained and skilled youth group leaders and make serious efforts to engage and teach adolescents seem much more likely to draw youth into their religious lives.”

Third, this study concluded that teenagers tend to espouse a religious outlook that is distinct and different from traditional faith commitments of most U.S. religious traditions. This can be described as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD),” which is “(1) A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life. (2) God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. (3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. (4) God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. (5) Good people go to heaven when they die.”

This third point, however, is directly connected to the fourth. The single most important influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents. In fact, most American teenagers follow in their parents’ footsteps when it comes to religion, and thereby teenage religiosity is extraordinarily conventional. In other words, the “youth culture” described in Soul Searching suggests that the beliefs and practices of youth are really a mirror image of their parents’ beliefs and practices. Perhaps the generations really are not that different, even though it may appear that way on the surface at times.

The finding that parents are the number one influencers of the faith of young people has been documented in other studies over the past few decades. Yet this leaves me wondering if and how we as a church support and nurture the parent-teen relationship in our youth ministry programs and activities. Will we be serious about nurturing the faith of our young people through relationships already proven to be extremely influential? I am not suggesting that other adults in the church do not play significant roles in the faith formation of adolescents, but why isn’t “strengthening parent-teen relationships” as common to “youth ministry” as other activities?

Furthermore, this study leaves me troubled by the religious outlook of MTD. There will not be youth who consciously say, “I believe in MTD,” but if young people are mirrors to their parents, then what are we teaching our adults in the church? Are we content to allow a human-centered theology that only calls out to God when we feel we need God to perpetuate itself across generations? Our inability to articulate faith understandings will only result in a heightened sense of American individualism, particularly for Mennonites who value community and a Christ-centered faith.

I also glean much hope from Soul Searching. One is that youth are getting it; they pick up and embody what is modeled by their parents and other adults. Young people are not a “strange breed” we need to dissect and study in order to fully understand. They value adult relationships and learn from them. If we are able to be authentic and appropriately transparent with them about our lives and our faith, then they will get it. The challenge for adults, however, is to engage in spiritual practices that will nurture their own spiritual formation and growth. In the midst of our busy schedules, are we willing to do that? Are we going to step up and be the spiritual mentors that our youth need?

A second hope from this study is that highly religious teenagers appear to be doing much better in life than less religious teenagers in regard to certain life outcomes such as risk behaviors (i.e. drug and alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking), suspensions from school, relationships with parents, sexual activity, emotional well-being, attitudes about life, moral compassion and reasoning, and community participation. In other words, an active highly involved faith does make a difference in lives of young people.

A final hope I glean stems from a suggestion of theirs: “The best way to get most youth more involved in and serious about their faith communities is to get their parents more involved in and serious about their faith communities.” This fits well with Mennonites’ understanding of discipleship. If we engage outreach and evangelism seriously, then we will strive to nurture the faith of whole families and not be content with reaching only certain individuals. A challenge for the church today is to help all ages actively walk the faith that Christ calls us to.

Relationships with adults other than parents are also essential, particularly for those who experience strained relationships with their parents or whose parents are deceased. Again this connects with Mennonites’ historical approach of passing on the faith through an intergenerational community. When I consider youth ministry, this is what comes to my mind, not highly programmatic events, particularly since I am a product of small churches. I am a committed Christian and an ordained pastor in Mennonite Church USA not because of successful youth activities, though they had their proper role and function, but ultimately because of the Spirit’s movement in me and through the lives of Mom, Dad, Uncle Paul, Aunt Doris, Louise, Lynn, Don, Ruth, Roman, Ken and others.

APPENDIX A: Chronology of major events in Mennonite youth ministry

Bob Yoder is director of youth ministry at Goshen (Ind.) College.