DOGMATIC assumptions about today's youth are almost as numerous---and as conflicting---as the publications on the newsstands. Young people make the news, mostly negative about the few, because the public reaches for the sensational. Pundits rise and fall on their own pronouncements. Youth polls produce "authoritative" information, only to be knocked down by other researchers who say it isn't so.
What do we really know about modern youth? Are they saying what they are thinking? Are they misreading one an other, as one researcher avers, even as adults do? What should the church expect of them? What do they want?
The modern situation generates jolting questions, and there are few ready-made answers. But there are some assertions that can be considered bona fide about the pastor-youth relationship:
1. The pastor's most jar-reaching work is with the youth. They are the "continuing church." The youth segment is the greatest source of growth for the church, its deepest pool of new ideas, vision, expansion. Add to this the natural qualities of youth---vigor, stamina, daring, enthusiasm---and a priceless asset clearly emerges.
2. A specialized pastoral approach is the only way. This is an inescapable challenge that promises the highest spiritual adventure. The pastor must be knowledgeable in youth affairs, informed as never before on a day-to-day basis. He must have a fund of information and discernment from which he can draw plenty of why's and how's. The day of "I say, you do" is past.
Are Youth "Different" Now?
Among the winds that blow, pronouncements are heard that today's young people are not like those of any previous time. But is it human nature that changes? Are not the basic weaknesses and strengths the same for which God provided in the plan of redemption?
It is quite evident that something has changed. Mostly it is the externals. Every thing happening on the other side of the earth is only an electronic flash away. Science's gifts have changed the face of business, homemaking, recreation, and have made wars of any size exceedingly dangerous. Survival has more motivating power than time-honored achievement. Time is running out, and everyone knows it. The tensions thus created set the stage for master-minded temptations, and social norms fall apart. Youth have at their disposal all the technological advances but what to do with them? One observer declares that young people find it difficult to accept ideals based on a future that may never be. The alternative is to "have it now." Demonstrations, sit-ins, rebellious attitudes, demand a hearing. They clamor for changing the now; this is all we may ever have. Some good comes of it, and much confusion.
What Do Youth Expect of the Church?
From a survey of 3,000 youth ages 14-22, a national magazine reported the most frequently mentioned problem of youth is "a loosely wrapped bundle of worries that they call 'the future.' " The survey revealed that huge numbers had turned to religion, with 85 percent of those surveyed attending church regularly. (Yet more recently, single voices will tell you that if teenagers had freedom of choice, 90 percent of them would quit the church.) They are not "reaching for the stars;" "only 10 percent list success, recognition or fame as what they want most from life, and only slightly more desire a 'feeling of accomplishment' or a sense of service to humanity." Yet the minority have the courage to say things such as "I am getting much more than I give" and "It may sound corny, but I want to be useful to others." The question follows, How will they react when really tested in this extraordinary age? A college girl says, "All we need is motive; then you'll see."
Dr. Merton P. Strommen, head of the Youth Research Center in Minneapolis, and a leading sampler of young people's religious attitudes, found that youth begin to lose interest in religion at around age 14; doctrinal doubts and criticisms of churches were most acute at about age 17.
The cues for the church, therefore, come from the articulate youth themselves: (1) dealing with the problem of the future, and (2) making religion meaningful to young people.
Is not this why churches exist? Wherein have they failed? The National Observer, March 10, 1969, carried a full page titled "Youth Sees Religion With Questioning Eyes." High school juniors and seniors, all top students and leaders in their classes, were interviewed. Pastors were the focal point of complaint. Approval was largely reserved for a pastor who resigned from his church job and functioned on his own. The young people felt that he was not "hampered" by outmoded church attitudes and practices.
Shortcomings, expressed in both analytical and critical terms, were varied:
"The church service is too theatrical."
"There is not the participation I like."
"We're still talking in [archaic] language."
"Prayers are recited."
"Sermon examples don't pertain to me but to another generation."
"It seems to me he's afraid to get into the problems of the day . . . that only good could come from talking about these things. In terms that youth can understand. Contemporary language, not slang."
"What we want to know is how religion should play a part in our lives today, not what it did for Moses. We never get the parallel."
"Christ didn't spend all of His time organizing churches and paying off mortgages. He was out working with the people. This is where it started, and this is where the church has to go to be effective."
Seventh-day Adventist youth are also speaking up, and the church is listening. We heard them in a General Conference-sponsored Youth Challenge Committee early in 1968, and in other specially called groups since. This will continue. It is influencing plans and decisions. Our best way of finding out what our youth need from the church is to let them tell us. They have shown no concern about the generation gap, "whatever that is." They recognize the role of adult experience and counsel on a partnership basis.
How Can the Pastor Communicate With and Involve the Youth?
Youth are people, they are thinkers. Communication is a two-way street. It will be effective for the pastor who follows important guidelines. He must give evidence of a knowledge of youth problems and ability to help them search for solutions. He must be individual-minded as well as group-minded, and know the relationships of each to himself and to the church. He will know how to listen and discuss with out showing shock, and show authority that comes from "keeping up." He will demonstrate confidence in youth's sincerity, trustworthiness, and intelligence. He will get them involved in the church program. The pastor should talk his language but understand theirs, avoid catering to them.
How can the pastor involve the youth in his program? The sharp pastor will understand that the youth really want to be involved. And they want their involvement in the church program to begin in the first planning steps---then it is "their" program. The pastor who knows how to reach the youth will listen to them as well as tell them; he will keep them posted on church developments, let them share in major decisions, let them work as far as possible in their own ways.
The pastor who is "in" with the youth is the pastor with the open mind. How far should we go in this direction? A commit tee of Harvard professors wrestled with this problem and produced a classic formula: "If toleration is not to become nihilism, if conviction is not to become dogmatism, if criticism is not to become cynicism, each must have something of the other."
A recent handbook of the National Council for Social Studies of the National Education Association is based on the findings of visiting teams of observers in twenty-seven States. It contains a set of approaches for serving the goals of citizen ship that are here adapted for this study:
1. The church can develop the abilities its youth bring to decision-making and action.
2. The church can provide its youth with opportunities for realistic examination of the issues of our time.
3. The church can make realistic contact with the total environment of its youth, adjusting the expectations and program, and training accordingly.
4. The church can show its concern for the individual by providing adequate counseling on education, vocations, marriage, budgets, homemaking, child training.
5. The entire church its goals, personnel, organization, procedures, and climate for learning can mirror a commitment to democratic values.
6. The church can offer a variety of experiences through which youth can learn and practice behavior appropriate to multiple goals.
7. The church can help develop for its youth both service excellence and satisfying membership.
Are We Updating and Fast?
The "generation gap" we hear so much about is a misnomer. It can be a crutch when we are not sure just what we do mean. The real discrepancy exists between a new time that fulfills prophecy and a past time that was vastly different. The new day cries "Change! Change! Change!" This is harder for mature people than for youth, but both are equally capable of comprehending and interpreting the changes that are flowing all around them, and acting upon their findings.
What a message we have for a day like this! Nothing else is stable. What does the "future" mean? What is there to look for ward to? The world quakes with the fear of annihilation. Security is sought in extreme faddism. Dead-end thinking produces beatniks, hippies, rebels, the philosophies of existentialism and its strange bedfellows. But the glorious message we know, and are obligated to give to the world, has the exhilarating answer the peace, the hope, the reality, the comfort, the security, and the anticipation of the future life so perfect it is indescribable!
Perhaps the youth indict the clergy be cause churchmen are among the slowest to accept change. Young people see tradition, ritual, ceremonies, "the way we have always done it," as stifling to spiritual growth. They want to wrestle with great principles of truth and find out for themselves what they believe and why. We must hear their challenge to think in terms of today for all it is worth. Are we keeping up? Are we regularly re-evaluating our own thinking and practices? Are we "with it" today?
The Young People's Department of the General Conference has on file news stories by scores that glow with the success of young people as soul winners. Thousands have been baptized into church member ship because young people went after them. They know how. They employ departmental plans and they originate their own brilliant plans. It is natural for them to reach other young people. It is equally natural for them to go into ghetto situations and win their way with love and needed help, always with a postscript for the message they represent. They clamor for appointment as student missionaries, anywhere, under any conditions, doing any kind of work for humanity.
It is no wonder that J. L. McElhany, one-time president of the General Conference, was once prompted to say: "God's movement can never be finished without our young people. The future of this cause depends upon our young people."
To realize the inherent dividends from our youth capital may mean that church leaders will have to update themselves— search and research, interview, listen, discuss, change many things, even take special training. But it will be worth all it costs. A pastor who wins his youth gains his church.
