Youth Ministry Re-Imagined: The Tasks of Adolescence

As we consider the changing landscape of the lives of our teenagers it is important to remember that this has happened before. We didn’t always have teenagers, at least not the way we think of them now. Around the beginning of the 20^th century a new phase of life emerged: Adolescence.

Those who took an interest in this new breed of teenagers became convinced that an adolescent had three main tasks to accomplish before they became adults (“adult” being the word used to describe someone who has moved from dependence to interdependence in a particular culture.). A teenager essentially needed to answer three questions: 1. Who am I (questions of identity) 2. Do I and my choices matter (questions of autonomy) 3. Where do I fit in (questions of affinity).

Around 1900 adolescence (which most believe begins with the onset of puberty) began, on average, at age 14.5. At the same time, the average age one entered adulthood was 16. This new phase of life was only 18 months long. In 1900 it only took a teenager 18 months to participate in their culture in such a way that they finished the three tasks of adolescence.

Skip forward to 1970. The average age of the beginning of adolescence had now dropped to 13. The average age of adulthood was now 18. What was once an 18-month process was now 6 years (roughly the two years of junior high and the four years of high school). It was during the 70s that churches began to respond to the specific needs of adolescents by hiring young youth pastors to guide them through adolescence.

Today the average age for the beginning of adolescence is 10.5 – 11. Most observers of culture argue that adolescence ends in the mid to late 20s. What began as an 18-month process of discovery has turned into a very long, very difficult 15-year journey. The implications for how churches minister to junior high, high school and now college students are staggering.

Our challenge in youth ministry is to understand how we as a church community can help our students ask the questions of adolescence (who am I? do I am my choices matter, where do I fit in?) with Jesus Christ as a central conversation partner. We have begun to ask ourselves the following questions:

v What experiences can we facilitate to help them ask who Jesus says they are?

v What kinds of relationships will help them begin to understand that they matter in a deep, eternal way?

v What kind of church environment should we cultivate in order for them to know they fit in with the body of Christ?

v Do the efforts that we employ currently still help our students find a path of spiritual formation when they were first experimented with in the 1970s, a time when adolescence was a much different experience?

You probably can think of better ones. We’d love to hear them. We’d love to hear what you think the answers might look like. Join us. www.youthministryreimagined.blogspot.com.