Thomas Bergler is associate professor of ministry and missions at Huntington University and senior associate editor for the Journal of Youth Ministry. He has taught youth ministry for twelve years and is the author most recently of The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2012).
Please begin by explaining how the whole idea of "youth," "youth group," and "teenager" arose in common understanding today.
Most scholars believe that the idea of adolescence was more or less invented around the turn of the twentieth century, and it had to do with changes happening in society such that the teenage years were beginning to be separated from adulthood. If you think back further in history, in the nineteenth century and before, by the early teen years, one was entering into the world of adult work. But as society changed, especially with the middle class taking more professional-type occupations, there was more schooling and longer preparation. So people started talking about this new phase of life called "adolescence."
In my book I explore the 1930s and '40s when there was a widespread perception in America of a crisis of youth and a crisis of civilization. The Great Depression had a huge impact on young people, with its high unemployment rates; and in Europe, the Fascists and the Communists had powerful youth movements that were leading young people astray. People began to worry if the same thing could happen here in the United States: If we have a bunch of young people who can't find jobs and are discouraged, will they begin to act out politically or criminally?
Throughout your book you talk about how in today's youth ministry a relationship with Jesus has been turned into a romantic relationship, rather than a relationship with a historical person. Is this what you mean by juvenilization?
My initial preparation for the book led me to ask how youth ministry has shaped the church. There are many benefits I could talk about, but one of the negative impacts of youth and youth ministry on the church in America has been the assumption of traits that are perhaps appropriate for adolescents, but then celebrating those and making them ideal for all ages. For example, I'm not surprised that in youth ministries people seize on the analogy of falling in love as an analogy for one's relationship with Jesus. After all, what can be more powerful for an adolescent than that first time of falling in love? It seems like a great analogy because it suggests that the relationship you have with Jesus is so emotionally powerful, so captivating, so obsessive even, that it should just shape everything; you should be thinking about Jesus 24/7. It seems like an apt analogy to someone working with 14- to 16-year-olds because of the way they're developing emotionally.
But what happens when people are 44 years old, and they're still thinking about their relationship with God that way? In other words, if I'm not feeling intense emotions about Jesus, then something must be wrong. Indeed, I don't think it takes until 44. First of all, the whole metaphor of "falling in love with Jesus" is on really shaky ground biblically. It's immature to relate to Jesus with these gushy feelings, and I think we have evidence to suggest that this leads to a relationship with Jesus that has all the staying power of an adolescent infatuation.
I'm not saying that youth ministries or young people in particular caused all the problems of immaturity in American society; but youth ministries were the place where the church made its peace with some of these broader trends toward immaturity, and as a result, without anyone really intending it, it paved the way for immaturity even among adults in the church.
On a more positive note, we've not only heard reports but seen a phenomenon developing where young people, millennials for example, are more interested in learning theology, apologetics, and church history, and are digging deeper into the Scriptures than their youth pastors or sometimes even their pastors.
Some of the responses to my book mention a similar thing. I was reading the other day an article that claimed, "The youth in my church are going way deeper in their theological study than their parents or other adults in the church." One of the problems that happens is when we decide that young people or children need a certain type of ministry in order to really connect with God or connect with the church. We might stereotype them and expect less of them than we might otherwise. It's probably the case that we underestimate what teenagers are capable of. You always have the problem that there's a spectrum, because of spiritual developmental issues. So in the same youth group you have some who are very advanced, and some who are really only there because of the pizza or whatever, but is that really that different from the adult church? No, you have the same problem there, and you have to use some of the same solutions, which is preaching the Word but also providing pastoral care, helping individuals take their next step, and not assume that just because some people in the group are only ready for pizza and a really short talk, that that's all we're going to offer anyone.
You point out that in the process of "adapting to the new immature adulthood," churches started looking a lot like youth groups, in part because many evangelical pastors began their careers as youth pastors over the past forty years. To take one highly influential example, Bill Hybels first experimented with his seeker-friendly model and church market research while serving as a youth pastor in the 1970s. Even the emerging church movement’which among other things is a reaction against this white middle class suburban version of Christianity’is itself a product of juvenilization. In the 1950s and '60s, youth ministry was something the church did on the side, but today it is so mainstream that actually everything in the church is subordinate to "youth ministry." Nobody wants to grow up.
There's a bigger trend that a number of sociologists and students of human development have noticed, which is that the mainstream ideas of what it means to be an adult, or how and when you become an adult in American society, have changed over the past thirty to forty years. There is a new adulthood, but basically the new adult journey looks a lot like the old adolescent journey; that is, it's an unending journey of self-exploration and self-development in which adults are trying to avoid getting stuck in anything, and commitments are only to be kept if they feel like keeping them and so on.
When it comes to responding to these developments, or as you put it, "taming juvenilization," it's important to ask about solutions. Is the answer just to unplug the youth group? No, that's not the answer. Youth ministries are providing a vital function. One of my colleagues wrote a piece I hope will be published soon that uses the term "hybrid." I think a hybrid model involves some age-specific youth ministry activities but then also intergenerational activities and involvements. One thing I think we should unplug is having a youth-only worship service on Sunday morning that's happening at the same time as the adult worship service.
On my reading, Ephesians 4 talks about each part doing its work as the body is built up into Christ, into maturity. That spiritual maturity is a corporate reality as well as an individual one. We can't reach maturity as a church body unless we're all together. That means adults need to pour into the lives of youth. Adults need youth, and youth need adults. If all we do is say that we're all going to be together for that hour or two on Sunday morning, but we're not going to do anything more to help adults connect with youth, we haven't achieved much. We need to think about how we can facilitate meaningful interactions between young people and older adults.
You certainly see the effects of that turning the world upside down in the apostolic church, but also think of the Reformation where obviously the Reformers were very busy. Yet Luther and Calvin spent hours teaching catechism and the Psalms to the young people in the church; they were the main catechists. Very often today, however, young people can grow up without ever having met the pastor, much less having had the pastor teach them the faith.
I think that if we have a youth ministry, then we need to think about it as a ministry of the whole church. Hiring a youth minister can be helpful’I train youth ministers and I believe in that, and for churches that can afford it, I think it's great’but we need to see that we're hiring a youth minister to be the leader or coordinator of the whole church's ministry to youth.
So how will that youth ministry incorporate the younger generations with the older generations, instead of simply nurturing and pampering one generation?
Looking at all this from another perspective, in some ways I see the history of youth ministry as triage in response to a culturally destructive, humanly destructive divorcing of the generations that has happened in modern societies. Youth ministry is triage that tries to rescue some young people from the damage that's been done because of the distance between youths and adults. The reality is, of course, that while there are always young people who don't want to go to church, there is almost no young person who would not like personalized mentoring from somebody. I think that says a lot. Young people are hungry for adults who truly care about them and who will truly listen to them’if only that level of investment on the part of all of us adults wouldn't scare us off.
