I am teaching a class at Cincinnati Christian University on Global Youth Ministry. It has really been a great experience and I have connected with some great students. Just a short time ago, I had the chance to read through 24 book reviews of one of the most comprehensive studies of youth and adolescence from a global perspective The World’s Youth. It’s not light reading as it is a very academic sociological study of what adolescence looks like in eight regions of the world.
I’d like to share two quotes that impacted me and made me think about why and how we do youth ministry at YouthHOPE.
“A society that does not pay attention to its youth has no future.” pg. 303
One of the positive things (actually they known or stereotyped far more for the negative, but that’s a different post) that youth are known for is creativity, passion and willingness to take risk. They are the innovators and change agents in society. There is a severe problem here though. We are willing for them to do this in the future, when they are more mature, more responsible and when we, who are in power now, are tired and want to pass the baton. The great question is, “How do we invite them to do what they are naturally good at doing, not later but now?” I believe that is why we tend to repeat so many of the same mistakes. And I believe that one of the most powerful resources that we can utilize to solve many of the issues that youth face today, is the youth themselves.
“The future prospects of youth ultimately depend upon the families, communities, and nations into which they were born.” pg. 52.
My student Lauren then added in her paper, “Adolescents are only as promising as their environments.” This statement shows that we must not just work with them but with their environments. If we are going to create successful holistic youth development projects that transform the lives of young people around the world, then we have to work within the systems in which they live. We have to partner with parents, schools, governments and the local communities in which they live. One of our greatest signs of success will be how much the environment changes and attempts to invest in the lives of their youth.
There is a lot more that I could write here, but I will leave it for future posts. Thanks to my CCU students who helped me to think more deeply about how YouthHOPE can transform the lives global youth.
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