Youth Culture 101 Study Guide Introduction

Walt Mueller is the preeminent authority on youth culture in evangelical circles. His books, articles and seminars have been helping to equip youth workers for years. I tip my hat to this humble veteran youth worker and research specialist. He has honorably and gracefully engaged generations of youth culture research novices (like me) - who have sparred with him from different philosophical and theological corners of the dialogue ring. In the end, I find myself returning to the wisdom I find in his words - words that are grounded, well-articulated and holistically missional.

As a result, I have selected his book, Youth Culture 101 as a text for one of my classes. I am developing this blog-based study guide for the youth workers studying on this subject at Railton School for Youth Worker Training. I have created these questions to invite these new sparring partners to enter the ring to wrestle through how we can reclaim children and youth for Christ in a media-saturated culture. To learn more about his ministry and resources for both parents and youth workers, check out his excellent website: http:cpyu.org

This dialogue ring welcomes others (both Christian and non-Christian) who might be interested in engaging with the questions outlined throughout this guide.This isn't intended to be an 'official' study guide of the book - just merely an attempt to help focus readers on identifying the gems that emerge from this text. If you think that there are other questions that might be pertinent to this chapter, email me and let me know.


I will be regularly updating these chapters over the next few weeks. Please check in regularly for updates.

Chapter One: Good News: There's a Teenager in Your Life
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Two: The Times... They Are a-Changin'
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Three: Media: The New Face of Nurture
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Four: The Media How It's Shaping Kids
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Five: Through the Maze: Teaching Kids Media Discernment
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Six: It All Ads Up: Marketing's Powerful Influence on Teenagers
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Seven: Fitting In: The Push and Pull of Peer Pressure
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Eight: Hooking Up: Understanding Our Sexualized Youth Culture
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Nine: Living in a Material World
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Ten: Under the Influence: Teenagers and Substance Abuse
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Eleven: When Adolescence Hurts: The Dark World of Teenage Depression and Suicide
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Chapter Twelve: Especially for Parents: Helping Your Teenagers Find Their Places in God's Story
[Supplemental Resources and Info]

Youth Culture 101 Study Guide - Chapter Two: The Times... They Are A-Changin'

Past Chapters
Overview
Chapter One: Good News: There's a Teenager in Your Life

Question 1.
For years, culture watchers like Alvin Toeffler, David Elkind, Neil Postman and Douglas Coupland have been predicting the ‘acceleration of culture.’ Yesterday’s prediction is today’s reality. As Walt Mueller states, “The rate of change is gaining momentum. Like a snowball that accelerates and grows during its rapid descent down a steep hill, today’s youth culture is changing at breakneck speed.” (p.33)

In what ways has the world in which children and teens growing up similar and/or different to your own experience of childhood and adolescence?

Question 2.
Walt Mueller describes culture as, “…the ‘soup’ in which our teenagers swim around and soak every day. The soup’s ingredients include values, attitudes and behaviors – as well as media, peer group, language, and so on that express them. To know kids, we must lift the lid on the soup pot an see what’s in the mix… if we hope to effectively protect our kids from harm, provide for their well being, and lead them to vital faith in Christ, we must understand their world… a world that’s very different from the world we knew when we were that age.” (p.35)

Identify some aspects from today’s youth culture which you observe and think to yourself, “I don’t get that! I don’t understand why they do that?” How can you begin to understand the ‘soup ingredients’ that are shaping the values, attitudes and behaviors of the youth we are working with? Do they differ from your own experience of adolescence? If so, what are the differences that are fueling this shift in culture?

Question 3.
Mueller discusses Chap Clark’s concept of ‘systemic abandonment’ by parents. “In order to survive systemic abandonment and still function, vulnerable and confused young people create a separate and highly structured social system Clark calls ‘the world beneath,’ a safe place where they find connections – with equally confused young and abandoned peers – that help them as they navigate the difficult waters of adolescence… Clark concludes that one of the most vital things those of us who are close to kids… can do is to ‘understand their world.” (p.39)

In what ways can the local church/Corps and community center serve as an alternative safe space where adolescents can come to build meaningful relationships that will help to fulfill this need in a way that is positive and pro-social?

Question 4.
In chapter 2, Mueller identifies six major factors that have contributed to an increased stress on the relationship of parents and youth. These ‘family permutations’ include:

• An increase and acceptance of divorce (p.42)
• The rise in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births (p.44)
• The crisis of fatherlessness (p.45)
• An increasing number of mothers who work outside the home (p.46)
• A decreasing amount of time parents are spending with their kids (p.46)
• More children are victims of family violence (p.46)

Some would argue that the family is the first ingredient in the cultural soup that shapes youth’s values, beliefs and practices. Would you agree or disagree that the shift in family values and the increase in systemic abandonment has contributed toward a very different social construction of adolescence?

Question 5.
With a decrease in the family as moral compass for today’s children, and a divide between values communicated in church and school, “…the voices of other institutions become more powerful in their ability to educate and socialize teenagers.” (p.49). These voices are largely shaped by the rise in digital, personalized technologies that saturate our youth in a media sphere in which everything in a teen’s world - from peer interaction to savvy consumer advertising becomes an integral part of their everyday lives.

To what extent are personalized technologies (cell phones, iPods) and social networking media (YouTube, MySpace) replacing the local village (parents, school, church, peers) with a ‘electronically-mediated global village’ (celebrities, advertisers, online acquaintances, etc.) to raise our children. What role does technology play in the shift which is taking place in our culture(s)?

Question 6.
Mueller reminds us that, “…we know we can’t guide our kids through the soup of today’s culture until we deal with the inconsistencies in our own lives first. We have two choices. We can take the easy way out (for now) and keep sailing along on the same course, preferring not to rock the boat. Or we can row vigorously into the sea of youth culture and strive to understand it.” (p.69)

What is our own perspective on media? Is this a God-glorifying position? Do we lean to one of the extremes of being either isolationist and reactionary or relativistic and co-opted? How do we overcome fear or apathy in order to begin to seriously engage in today’s youth culture?

Question 7.
How would you go about setting up a meeting with parents to discuss the “principles that bridge the cultural generational gap” that Walt Mueller outlines at the end of this chapter?

• Understanding the world of kids is primarily a parent’s calling
• It’s never too early
• It’s never too late
• It won’t be easy
• Pain is a blessing
• Understanding youth culture equips parents to pass on the torch of faith
• Understanding youth culture fosters relational closeness (pp.70-75)

Youth Culture 101 Study Guide for Youth Workers - Chapter One: Good News: There's a Teenager in Your Life

Walt Mueller is the preeminent authority on youth culture in evangelical circles. His books, articles and seminars have been helping to equip youth workers for years. I tip my hat to this humble veteran youth worker and research specialist. He has honorably and gracefully engaged generations of youth culture research novices (like me) - who have sparred with him from different philosophical and theological corners of the dialogue ring. In the end, I find myself returning to the wisdom I find in his words - words that are grounded, well-articulated and holistically missional.

As a result, I have selected his book, Youth Culture 101 as a text for one of my classes. I am developing this blog-based study guide for the youth workers studying on this subject at Railton School for Youth Worker Training. I have created these questions to invite these new sparring partners to enter the ring to wrestle through how we can reclaim children and youth for Christ in a media-saturated culture.

This ring welcomes others (both Christian and non-Christian) who might be interested in engaging with the questions outlined throughout this guide.

This isn't intended to be an 'official' study guide of the book - just merely an attempt to help focus readers on identifying the gems that emerge from this text. If you think that there are other questions that might be pertinent to this chapter, email me and let me know.

Chapter One: Good News: There's a Teenager in Your Life

Question 1.
Paul David Tripp states that “It is time for us to reject the wholesale cynicism of our culture regarding adolescence. Rather than years of undirected and unproductive struggle, these are years of unprecedented opportunity…” (p.12) Walt Mueller later states that, “Our widespread cultural cynicism regarding teenagers and these exciting years of their lives in unjustified and must cease.” (p.14)

In what ways can youth workers help the church provide an alternative to the deterministic cynicism that Tripp speaks of when referring to our culture’s stereotypical views regarding adolescence?

Question 2.
The relationship between parent and teenager seems to be increasingly strained. Factors cited include an increase in divorce, busyness of individual schedules and media consumption patterns that fill personal space and time. Mueller presents statistical evidence that advice from Moms and especially Dads is significantly being fulfilled by friends, schools, churches, media, advertising, coaches, etc. (p.15f)

What role do youth workers play in addressing this trend? Is it best to simply focus on working with the teen – standing in the gap of the unfulfilled need? Or is it the responsibility of the youth worker to also work with parents? If so, why would this be?

Question 3.
Walt Mueller states, “Believe it or not, to assume you’ve somehow made kids immune to the influence of culture just by shielding them from culture might just produce the opposite effect. In other words, by not preparing them to engage the culture with minds and hearts saturated by a biblical world- and life view, we actually make them more vulnerable to the negative cultural forces they face both now and for the rest of their lives. Both we (parents and youth workers) and our kids need to be wise to the Scriptures and streetwise about our culture… When it comes to teenagers and their culture, what we don’t know (or don’t want to know or refuse to know) can hurt them.” (p.19)

Do you agree or disagree? Does the desire to protect our kids from culture weaken or strengthen our teenagers?

Question 4.
Walt Mueller speaks about the profound need that teenagers have for relationship with God. He quotes Alistair McGrath’s expansion on Blaise Pascal’s model of, “a God-shaped emptiness within us, which only God can fill. We may try to fill it in other ways and with other things. Yet one of the few certainties in life is that nothing in this world satisfies our longing for something that is ultimately beyond this world.” (p.19)

If this theological statement is true of all human beings – not just believers, in what way do we see this vacuum evidenced within even the most ungodly forms of cultural expression that interacts with teenagers?