God Must Be Crazay Workshop

I traveled to Newark NJ in December to spend time with some Christian youth ministers. A friend of mine, who is also my mentor, invited me to do a workshop.

The workshop covered why people must be crazy to work with teenagers today. Considering the specific challenges that urban youth have, today’s Christian youth minister needs to to be a social worker, youth advocate, community activist, counselor, mentor, etc.

My workshop compared the challenges of working with urban youth to the challenges Jesus experienced with his disciples.

The Formation of Culture

“Culture gives people a sense of who they are, of belonging, of how they should behave, and of what they should be doing.”–Cross Cultural Studies, p. 10

God designed culture to be an extension of human existence. This can be seen in Genesis 2:15-20 when after creating Adam, God tells him he cane eat anything except dont eat from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. Here, God give Adam the ability to distinguish. Later, Adam is tasked with naming the animals. Here, God gives Adam the ability to create. All humans have both of these abilities.

Cultural Traits

In this exercise , I asked the participants to describe cultural traits for youth and adults in word on different topics such as dress, language, education, marriage, etc. Most of the words for youth were negative. I challenged the youth ministers to consider this as a problem. Urban youth tend to get raked through the coals in mainstream media. Although there are real issues, these same youth also possess assets. For example, African American youth creativity is consistently mined by the American entertainment industry. Yet there is a sense of exploitation that goes on because most of them don’t financially benefit when their cultural attributes go mainstream. So, I challenged the group to list youth assets. When you focus on this, it becomes easy to see the youth and their degrees of potential.

Cultural Study

Studying the culture that urban youth inhabit also means be observant. But we must not fall into the trap of being LIKE them. We are adults trying to help them. I pointed them to Acts 17:16 when Apostle Paul traveled through Athens and how it related to the Greeks. He had enough understanding of their culture to start his speech, not with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Moses. It started with a generic title: God. He used language the Greeks could relate to and highlighted truths already present in their culture.

Stories

Jesus utilized illustrated stories (parables) with familiar metaphors that impacted everyday life such as money, work, relationships, etc. to teach about the Kingdom of God. They were designed to to make people think. However, Apostle Pete and Paul often used persuasive speeches that identified their audience, used a familiar story with context and communicated a hard truth designed for response. The gritty reality of most urban youth can handle both of these approaches. But as you tell stories, have food close by. LOL