September 2024 Ministry Reflection
We need to face a stark reality.
Young people are suffering.
It’s an oft-cited and sad statistic that nearly 60% of young people will leave their faith at some point during the 20s. This is something that many of us ministry spaces refuse to let anyone forget, and so use this number to justify the need for our organizations and work.
And while I do not mean to minimize the pain around this shocking number, it is clear that youth and young adults are not merely struggling with a lack of faith that would be bolstered with better youth programming, curricula, or even camp.
Young people ages 13-25 are dealing with mental health issues of depression and anxiety at unprecedented rates, and in 2022, the most common cause of death for 15-19 year olds, following accidents and homicide, was suicide.
And it’s no wonder that all of this is happening because more and more young people report that they feel that no one really knows them, with 31% saying they have 1 or 0 trusted adults in their lives and 66% of young people saying they have 3 or fewer meaningful interactions a day.
All of this compounds to make this generation of young people the most depressed, most anxious, and loneliest cohort of young people in American history.
Now there are a lot of reasons we could point to as to why this is happening: the COVID-19 pandemic, social media use, and even the unmooring of religious norms in a secular age.
This may all be worth considering, but this trend was occurring before the pandemic, and research has shown that it is not necessarily social media usage alone that promotes loneliness. Plus, Christianity was born in a religiously pluralistic and hostile environment.
So what’s going on?
If I were going to boil it down to our root issue as a culture, it would be radical individualism.
We are a culture that has forgotten how to be together.
It is an all too-common reality that people are experiencing a lack of belonging in social and religious institutions, thus lowering their trust in those very organizations that seek to promote wellbeing and relationships.
From the time American youth are old enough to tie their shoes, we separate them from their mommies and daddies and put them in a room with 20-30 others who have also just learned to tie their shoes and we expect them to figure out how to navigate the world together. And we repeat this process all the way until they’re 18 and leave the house, at which point they journey solo from their homes into a culture that is all too ready to literally sell them whatever they desire as the means to express and actualize their most authentic self.
Their individual self.
No wonder everyone is lonely.
It’s hard to have a sense of community when the only person you belong to is yourself.
Marketers and businesses, however, have turned self-belonging into a commodity, and perpetuate the myth that the path to human flourishing is something that must be determined by each individual, and all it will cost is subscription rate to this or that meditation app for $9.99 per month.
Now we may look at the crisis of faith among young people and assume that it’s a lack of good resources and teaching that have led to this issue. But this stands in the face of what sociologists have known for decades: that belonging precedes believing.
What if what we’re seeing isn’t a crisis of faith; what if we’re witnessing a crisis of relationship?
What if our approach to Church-as-Institution has been part of the issue fueling this relational crisis due to our emphasis on shoring up an individual’s belief?
And what if reclaiming Church-as-Family can be the solution to this issue by emphasizing the centrality of intimate, trusting relationship between cross-generational brothers and sisters in Christ?
Indeed, for Christ and His apostles, it was clear that the call to follow Jesus was simultaneously a call to join Christ’s community of followers, whom He repeatedly told were brothers and sisters.
343 times in the NT, Christians are referred to as siblings, making this the primary image that its authors chose for teaching Christians how to relate to one another.
At OYM, this is our focus and our goal. To turn the tide on loneliness. To help youth and young adults find adults they can trust by forming adults who are trustworthy.
The path to transformation for the Christian has always been through other people, by witnessing the Christ made incarnate in the lives of His followers as they truly live as embodied, little Christs.
Christ-ians.
At OYM, we are already working with church families across the nation to help adults notice, name, and know their younger brothers and sisters in Christ in order to help the youngest generations find themselves through the eyes of a loving community.
This coming Sunday is OYM Sunday, an opportunity to partner with us in fulfilling our mission to integrate young people into the fullness of Christian community. Of course, we welcome any donations you might offer, and we will use those funds faithfully and diligently to produce various resources to help build relational health between generations across the Church in the United States.
But while we can produce all kinds of things at the national level, the true success of OYM’s mission is dependent on you. The belonging our young people feel is dependent on you.
So if you want to partner with us this OYM Sunday, consider making a financial gift, but more importantly, make a relational connection with the young people in your parish and facilitate their experience of belonging to the Family of God.
Here’s some tips for what you can do (1):
1) Notice.
The simple experience of being seen can be enough to generate an initial sense of belonging, which can pave the way for a deeper relationship. This Sunday, and in all the Sundays that follow, give young people the experience of being noticed. Pay attention to what they are saying and how they may be feeling. Be fully present with young people, giving them the sense that nothing is more important than being with them.
2) Name.
There is great power in a name. After all, naming creatures was the initial job God gave Adam in the Garden. Be intentional about learning the names of the young people in your community. Commit these names to memory and use them in every passing interaction you have with young people. Ask them questions that help them feel like you want to know them by inquiring about their fears, dreams, anxieties, and joys.
3) Know.
As you deepen noticing and naming the young people in your community, this begins to free them from the fear of rejection or the felt sense of being an outsider. Accepting young people for who they are and where they’re at is an essential component of fostering belonging. So even if you disagree with their perspective, practice non-judgment and see where they’re coming from. Remember, you were young once, too, and your perspectives shifted naturally.
(1) Adapted from Springtide Research Institute’s 2020 Report, Belonging: Reconnecting America’s Loneliest Generation, p. 64-71.
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