Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture - Chapter Three: Postmodernism - A World Without a Center (!?)

Walt Mueller's Supplemental Resources for Chapter 3

Books/Articles Referenced:
1. Gene Edward Veith Jr - Postmodern Times
2. Douglas Groothuis - Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism
3. Peter Kreeft - Back to Virtue
4. Stanley Grenz - A Primer on Postmodernism
5. J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh - Truth is Stranger Than it Used to Be
6. Alan J. Roxburgh - Reaching a New Generation
7. Marva Dawn - A Royal Waste of Time
8. Susan Campbell - Hidden Hooks in Children's TV Ads
9. Ravi Zacharias - An Ancient Message, Through Modern Means, to a Postmodern Mind in D.A. Carson - Telling the Truth
10. Gerard Kelly Retrofuture
11. Leonard Sweet - Postmodern Pilgrims
12. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm - Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World
13. Harry Blamires - The Post Christian Mind
14. Francis Schaeffer - He is There and He is Not Silent
15. Charles Colson - How Now Shall We Live?
16. Michael Stipe - The Party 2000
17. Dick Staub - Too Christian, Too Pagan
18. Alister E. McGrath - The Unknown God
19. John Stott - Between Two Worlds

Additional Books Discussed on Blog
1. David F. Wells - Above All Earthly Powers
2. Jamie Smith - Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
3. Myron B. Penner Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views

I need to be honest, I really didn't like this chapter. Also, forgive me in advance of reading this posting. I'm writing in a bit of a knee-jerk way - and so I am willing to be challenged and also willing to re-negotiate my position if you can prove me wrong.

But before I hear your reactions, let me clarify my opinion:

1. In evangelicalism, we have a hybrid version of postmodernity which served as a bandwagon term from the 1990s which was used to justify anything that was trendy, different, and new. As time progressed, there was a more sophisticated (and somewhat) elitist use of the term which has now evolved into the pseudo-intellectual movement known as 'the emergents.'

As a result, the term 'postmodern' has been used by philes and phobics alike to drive home personal agendas which have more to do with egos than they do a solid assessment (or even understanding) of this term. Therefore, postmodern (to the evangelical) means everything and nothing. It has become more a fad caught up in the commodities sold in the Christian section of WalMart than it does anything to do with French intellectuals, architecture, and Baudrillardian assessments of America!

With that being said, the concept of postmodern evangelicalism - as a pastiche of thought and action among a community - is worthy of being thought and talked about as a cultural phenomena.

2. The PoMo phenomena in youth culture is part of our culture - and it's here to stay whether you like it or lump it. However, it seems that Mueller has drawn upon a series of absolutist, foundationalist writers who are more about preserving the modern aspects of our culture than being willing to concede to the postmodern wave. This is a typical Gordon-Conwell reaction (where Mueller studied) which I think it unfounded. See for example, the work of James Sire, Ravi Zacharias, Douglas Groothuis, Marva Dawn, and David Wells.

I have a problem with this. Is it because I support post modernity? No. it's because I don't support a reactionist view that criticizes one philosophical framework without critically reflecting on the holes which exist in the pre-existing framework. In other words, I am frustrated with this perspective because it contradicts the solid missiological principles Borthwick was speaking about in just the previous chapter.

Guess what? Christianity seems to have done well in pluralistic, reletavistic cultures! In fact, Descartes himself helped to throw the theoretical wrench which has caused the chain reaction which has resulted in the emergence of the post-Christian west! So why would we be so committed to this as an ideal??

I call this our 'affair' with modernity! It's adulterous - and requires a better alternative framework. I'm not saying the alternative is to be found in Derrida and Foucault. I'm just saying that post-modernity has helped expose how tightly the church has clung to enlightenment ideals. Come on! Let's wake up!

We, as a church, are facing an identity crisis. If all that Christianity can be reduced to is what Immanual Kant came up with, then I might as well become an agnostic! That's not Christianity - that's what missiologists call 'syncretism' - the amalgamation of cultural accretions which become indistinguishable from what is theologically sound. I'm less worried about pomo than I am about modo - therefore a retreat into foundationalist assumptions isn't going to help youth. It will simply embitter and frustrate them.

Maybe Lesslie Newbigin had it right when he was in India. Maybe we need to freshly re-imagine our identity as the church? Maybe Booth-Tucker had it right when he also was in India.

What do you think? Am I a heretic - or is there some validity to what I'm saying? Check out Mueller's links and search for foundationalist solutions for the postmodern problems.

Steve

Urban Sanctuaries by Milbrey McLaughlin

I have been a fan of the work of Milbrey McLaughlin for the past couple of years. I did a posting a while ago of her report called Community Counts, and have occasionally referenced her book writted with Shirley Brice Heath called Identity and Inner-City Youth.

Urban Sanctuaries: Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-City Youth is a book which she wrote in 1994. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago at a second hand bookshop in NYC. When I began reading it, I discovered a wealth of information incredibly relevant to youthworkers. (I RECOMMEND this book whole-heartedly!)

McLauglin calls successful youth leaders 'wizards':

"They have created environments in which youth from the tough streets of inner-city neighborhoods can imagine a positive future. Accomplishing what conventional wisdom has often held impossible, these wizards have fashioned organizations that capture urban adolescents' attention, time, and loyalty. They are successful with adolescents many in society dismiss as unreachable or unredeemable." (p.37)

McLauglin observed five common characteristics in these type of leaders:

1. Seeing Potential, Not Pathology. "Successful leaders of inner-city youth organizations have a passionate commitment to young people, particularly to undeserved and disadvantaged youth... Wizards have no hesitation in viewing inner-city youth as valuable assets to society..."

When wizards frame their personal and organizational missions they consider inner-city youth as resources and youth organizations as opportunities to develop these resources. They see potential, not pathology; therefore they design settings to guide youth through the mingled violence and indifference of the inner-city environment and to engage them in the types of learning and experiences that will transform these adolescent boys' and girls' sense of their own abilities and expectations so that they can duck the bullet." (p.96)

2. Focusing on Youth. "...They focus on youth before organization, program, or activity. They see youth organization technology and the models that policymakers focus on and try to replicate only as vehicles for turning commitment into practical reality. Wizards personal agendas contrast with those well-intended leaders whose primary passion is their program or institution." (p.98)

3. A Sense of Efficacy. Wizards' commitment to and focus on inner-city youth is reinforced by a strong sense of personal efficacy. While counteless other youth workers or policymakers stress that 'it is too late for teens,' that 'you have to get them when they are young,' these successful leaders have a firm conviction that they can and do make a difference in the lives of teenage youth from even the bleakest urban settings." (p.100)

4. Giving Back. Part of wizards' consuming commitment to youth results from their wanting to give back what others gave them as they grew up... (they) also hope their adolescents, in turn, will develop a commitment to give opportunities and brighter futures back to others...

The salience to the wizards of giving back explains why these talented, energetic individuals choose to work in a field of notiriously low pay, little or no recognition, and limited upward mobility. All of them see their work as a mission and vocation, not simply a job or even a career in the traditional sense... They are not seeking to move up and out of their positions that bring them into regular contact with youth. (p.101)

5. Authenticity. Each wizard manifests different personality and programmatic interests, with the result that each successful organization has some characteristic that is a special draw for youth. Wizards create programs for musicians, thespians, scholars, athletes, artists, and young people who simply want a supportive group to call their own... The moral here appears to be that one-size-fits-all programming misses adolescents' need to do their own thing, to feel they are pursuing interests and goals they themselves have selected.

The wizards we came to know also demonstrated the authenticity of their commitment through becoming part of their inner-city communities' fabric and soul. (pp.102-103)

Savage Inequalities of Public Education - Jonathan Kozol

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to converse over breakfast with a retired African-American school principal from the NY Board of Education. During our conversation, we discussed the inequities which exist in schooling - and how in one of the most powerful nations in the world, there is still a massive divide between rich and poor.

This really became clear to me two Friday's ago when Project 1:17 was in the Bronx with Bill Wilson's Metro Ministries. We were doing visitation in a series of apartment buildings which looked for like Falluja than New York! When 'Yogi Bear' (which M.M. calls their sidewalk Sunday School) stopped by, the grey war-zone of the South Bronx became a cacophony of kids who happily emerged from the hell holes they are living in - to enjoy a moment of shalom (and get a bag a candy!).

I've lived in Cape Town where I expected to see poverty in the Cape Flats and townships, but what I witnessed in the South Bronx that day enraged me that this could take place less than 15 minutes from where they shoot Donald Trump's 'The Apprentice"!

As I shared these experiences with my retired principal friend, we got onto a discussion about schooling in America. Jonathan Kozol in his book Savage Inequalities explores major US cities where this type of Dickensian best/worst divide continues to exist. Although it's an older book, it illustrates the 'us' and 'them' phenomena in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, Camden, Washington D.C., and San Antonio.

He says:

"Anyone who visits in the schools of East St. Louis, even for a short time, comes away profoundly shaken. These are innocent children, after all. They have done nothing wrong. They have committed no crime. They are too young to have offended us in any way at all. One searches for some way to understand why a society as rich and, frequently, as generous as ours would leave these children in their penury and squalor for so long -- and with so little public indignation. Is this just a strange mistake of history? Is it unusual? Is it an American anomaly?"

Later, he quotes Lord Acton - who wrote a century and a half ago that:

"In a country where there is not distinction of class... a child is not born to the station of its parents, but with an indefinite claim to all the prizes that can be won by thought and labor. It is in conformity with the theory of equality... to give as near as possible to every youth an equal state in life... (Americans) are unwilling that any should be deprived in childhood of the means of competition." (p.83)

When I witnessed a 10 year old boy walking out of a room which billowed out a cloud of marijuana, I was struck senseless! How does this kid have an equal opportunity?

Never before have I felt more convinced of my calling to take all the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources I have - and dedicating them to raising up generations of leaders who will give up their dream to make it in 'Manhattan' to help kids make it in the South Bronx.

Where do you live? What savage inequalities exist in your community? What are you going to do about it?

Ghandi summarized it nicely:"We must become the change we seek in our world."

Steve

The Resilience Revolution - Discovering Strengths in Challenging Kids

The Resilience Revolution: Discovering Strengths in Challenging Kids focuses on giving at-risk youth the most important factor in their success: a positive adult connection. This positive connection helps youth build resilience, the ability to preserve through and recover from adversity.

Larry Brendtro and Scott Larson use scientific research on resilience to reframe challenging behavior as pain-based behavior. The authors carefully describe practical strategies adults can use to help young people overcome their pain and develop resilience through:

> Building trust to meet the fundamental human need to belong
> Identifying innate talents and nurturing problem-solving skills
> Redefining "responsibility" to empower youth
> Instilling a sense of purpose and generosity toward others

With support from adults who believe in their possibilities, youth can experience positive relationships, discover hidden talents, solve problems creatively, and find a fulfillinf purpose for their lives.

Chapters include:

1. Kids in Pain
2. The Road to Resilience
3. Building Trust
4. Nurturing Talent
5. Promoting Power
6. Instilling Purpose

This book ties closely to Howard Garder's work on nine mutliple intelligences. They say in their book, "Everyone is smart in all nine ways to some degree. But you may be stronger in one or more of them. Knowing where you are strongest can help you understand yourself better and learn better. Knowing where you are not as strong can show you areas to work on. As you learn and grow, you will become stronger in each area. One way to be smart is NOT better than another, just different!" (p.140)

To get a sense of this book, check out Brendtro and Larson's article on The Resilience Code: Finding Greatness in Youth.

This new book from Brendtro and Larson comes highly recommended!

Steve

Imagine There Were No Gangs

Imagine the world
filled with perfect families,
Children, husband, wife
And there would be no death.
We would have everlasting life.
Imagine there were no gangs.

Aya McNeary quoted in Shirley Brice Heath and Milbrey McLaughlin's Identity and Inner-city Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender, p.27

Iona and Peter Opie - Studying Children on the Playground

Iona Opie (b. 1923) and Peter Mason Opie (1918–1982) were British collectors, publishers, and archivists of children's folklore. Peter Opie was president of the anthropology section of the British Association in 1962–1963 and of the British Folklore Society in 1963–1964. The husband-and-wife team began their research together in 1944. Their first major work was The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951; 2nd edition, 1997), a collection of more than five hundred rhymes, songs, nonsense jingles, and lullabies. For each item the known facts about origin, variants, non-English equivalents, and earlier publication are stated. In the introduction, the Opies outline a suggestion for a general categorization of children's rhymes. This volume stands out as one of the standard collections of English-language children's rhymes.

The path-breaking The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) efficiently refuted the idea that the growing impact of mass media and the entertainment industry would inevitably extinguish children's own, genuine traditions. Leaving the parent-guarded nurseries behind, this unexpurgated collection of jokes, riddles, rhymes, rituals, beliefs, and secret spells provides a vivid testimony of multitudinous children's traditions thriving in streets and school yards. The material is grouped into categories and presented together with folkloristic and historical comments, as well as international comparisons.

Unlike many of their predecessors, the Opies collected schoolchildren's lore directly from six- to fourteen-year-olds and not from adults reminiscing about their own childhood traditions. Their method of work foreshadowed a paradigm shift in folklore research in the 1960s that emphasized the study of contemporary folklore and fieldwork among representatives of a culture rather than text analyses of archival material. They conducted large-scale surveys during the 1950s and 1960s, with contributions from 135 state schools throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, and tape-recorded children in playgrounds all over Britain during the 1970s. The mass of information collected provided material for a further three books, all on children's games: Children's Games in Street and Playground (1969), The Singing Game (1985), and Children's Games with Things (1997), the last two of which Iona Opie produced after her husband's death, as well as publishing her own playground observations as The People in the Playground (1993). Aside from their work on children's folklore the Opies also dealt with FAIRY TALES, most notably in The Classic Fairy Tales (1974). The Opies' in-spiring example contributed to the emergence of children's folklore as a thriving field of research within folklore studies

The Opie Collection of Children's Literature, housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, was originated by the Opies as a private research library in 1944. Upon Peter Opie's death in 1982, Iona Opie decided to place the collection, then amounting to twenty thousand titles, in a public institution. The transfer to the Bodleian library was made possible by a national fund-raising campaign (led by Prince Charles) and by Opie's donation of half the collection. The largest single category is made up of twelve thousand bound volumes of children's stories and nursery rhymes. Other substantial categories include primers, alphabets and other instruction books, chapbooks, comics, and children's magazines. Some eight hundred of the titles were published before 1800, including among other rare books a 1706 edition of The Arabian Nights and an early printing of Robinson Crusoe. The collection is accessible to the public in microfiche form.

Invisible Children: Crisis in Uganda

Invisible Children Inc. is dedicated to educating the children of Uganda, as well as raising awareness of what the U.N. has deemed "the greatest emergency in the world today involving children."

Kyle sent me this link earlier today and made me aware of a campaign taking place on April 29, 2006 where people are going to be sleeping in parks as a way of raising awareness of the situation going on in Uganda.

Check out this report from the Human Rights Watch site, and this report from UNICEF.

Let's do something about this!

Steve

Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture

The concept of "ludology" (or the study of play) has recently become quite a popular concept in academic fields. This is largely due to its use in the emergent field of video game studies. Many of these studies draw on the work of the Dutch academic, Johan Huizinga who wrote the now classic text, Homo Ludens in 1950. This book has become a standard in understanding the nature of play in our culture.

In preparation for exploring the 'play' ground of youth in at-risk communities, I thought it would be beneficial to share just a bit of the first chapter of this key work. Play is a common element in both humans and animals. It seems to be something God created us all to naturally do... And even in the most violent and hostile environments - whether a war-zone, an impoverished community, an inner-city street, a post-industrial town... we find kids playing... Something us adults should maybe try to do a little more! (actually, which we probably already do, but deny!)

I was reminded of this recently when we were in inner-city Newark with Project 1:17 for 10 days. While there, a bunch of the young teens would go onto the (gang-/drug-infested) streets to throw a football around. These same kids one day went to the local 'playground' to play, but ended up being assaulted at gun-point (!) and robbed - being forced to lie face-first on the cement-floor of this 'kid-friendly environment'.

When this occured, these kids didn't stop playing. They didn't decide to stop playing footbal. They just now played 'on the street' outside of The Salvation Army house - the only 'safe' play-ground in the neighborhood...

Play is good. It's vital. It's something which we do. It's something which is therapeutic. And as a result, it's something which is vital for youthworkers to understand (academically, practically, psychologically, - even theolgically!) when working with at-risk youth.

Enjoy!

From Ch.1: Nature and the Significance of Play (with a focus on children's games)

"In culture we find play as a given magnitude existing before culture itself existed, accompanying it and pervading it from the earliest beginnings right up to the phase of civilization we are now living in. We find play present everywhere as a well-defined quality of action which is different from "ordinary" life." (p.4)

"To our way of thinking, play is the direct opposite of seriousness. At first sight this opposition seems as irreducible to other categories as the play-concept itself. Examined more closely, however, the contrast between play and seriousness proves to be neither conclusive nor fixed." (p.5)

1. All play is a voluntary activity.

2. Play is not 'ordinary' or 'real' life. It is rather a stepping out of 'real' life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own.

3. Play is distinct from 'ordinary' life both as to locality and duration... It is 'played out' within certain limits of time and place. It contains its own course and meaning. (pp. 7-9)

"Inside the play-ground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. Play demands order absolute and supreme." (p.10)

"Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside 'ordinary' life as being 'not serious', but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means."

Constructing and Re-Constructing Childhood by Allison James and Alan Prout

Allison James and Alan Prout have written the seminal text, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood (1990). In it, they refer to the nature of the social institution of childhood as being "...an actively negotiated set of social relationships within which the early years of human life are constituted. The immaturity of childhood is a biological fact of life but the ways in which this immaturity is understood and made meaningful is a fact of culture... It is in this sense, therefore, that one can talk of the social construction of childhood and also, as it appears in this volume, of its re- and deconstruction. In this double sense, then, childhood is both constructed and reconstructed both for children and by children." (p.7)

This New Paradigm of Understanding Childhood has at least six key features:

1. Childhood is understood as a social construction. As such it provides an interpretive fram for contextualizing the early years of human life.

2. Childhood is a variable of social analysis. It can never be entirely divorced from other variables such as class, gender, or ethnicity.

3. Children's social relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right, independent of the perspective and concerns of adults.

4. Children are and must be seen as active in the construction and determination of their own social lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live. Children are not just passive subjects of social structures and processes.

5. Ethnography is a particularly useful methodology for the study of childhood. It allows children a more direct voice and participation in the production of sociological data than is usually possible through experimental or survey styles of research.

6. Childhood is a phenomenon... (that) engage(s) in and respond(s) to the process of reconstructing childhood in society. (p.8) (See Kyung-Man Kim's explaination of Anthony Giddens' theory of the double hermeneutic)

It would be beneficial to have a look through this book before attending the seminar of The Playground of Youth in At-Risk Communities.

Steve

The Social Competence Paradigm: Explanation by Ian Hutchby and Jo Moran-Ellis

"Over recent years, what can be described as a 'competence paradigm' in the sociology of childhood has emerged...

The main thrust of this research is to take issue with the perspective on children and childhood propounded by developmental psychology, and by socialization theory in mainstream sociology, in which children are seen as the objects of overarching social processes by which they move from being non-adults to being adults.

Without denying that human beings develop over time and in describable ways, nor that appropriate social behaviors are learned and not natural, the competence paradigm seeks to:

> Take children seriously as social agents in their own right; to examine how social constructions of 'childhood' not only structure their lives but also are structured by the activities of children themselves

> Explicate the social competencies which children manifest in the course of their everyday lives as children, with other children and with adults, in peer groups and in families, as well as the manifold other arenas of social action." (Ian Hutchby & Jo Moran-Ellis in Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action, p. 8)

Wikipedia Definition of Human Agency

In preparation for the visit of Jo Moran-Ellis, I am posting a definition of human agency from wikipedia. This is an important concept from social philosophy which is vital to understanding what we will be discussing during this Tuesday's The Playground of Youth in At-Risk Communities seminar. (If you live near NYC and want to come - for FREE, click on the link for details!)

Here's the definition:

"Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world on a collective basis, usually through democratic means... Human agency entails the uncontroversial, lower claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world. How humans come to make decisions, by free choice or other processes, is not at issue.

Human agency invests a moral component into a given situation. If a situation is the consequence of human decision making, persons may be under a duty to apply value judgements to the consequences of their decisions, and held to be responsible for those decisions."

The Sociology of Childhood by William Corsaro

One of the most significant texts on the sociology of childhood is William A. Corsaro's The Sociology of Childhood.

In this book, he argues two major points:

A. "...Children are active, creative social agents who produce their own unique children's cultures while simultaneously contributing to the production of adult societies.

B. Childhood - that socially constructed period in which children live their lives - is a structural form... we mean it is a category or a part of society, like social class and age groups. In this sense children are members or incumbents of their childhoods.

For the children themselves, childhood is a temporary period.

For society, on the other hand, childhood is a permanent structure form or category that never disappears even though its members change continuously and its nature and conception vary historically." (Corsaro, p.3)

Chapters include:

PART ONE: The Sociological Study of Childhood
1. Social Theories of Childhood
2. The Structure of Childhood and Children's Interpretive Reproductions 3. Studying Children and Childhood

PART TWO: Children, Childhood, and Families in Historical and Cultural Context
4. Historical Views of Childhood and Children
5. Social Change, Families, and Children

PART THREE: Children's Cultures
6. Children's Peer Cultures and Interpretive Reproduction
7. Sharing and Control in Initial Peer Cultures
8. Conflict and Differentiation in the Initial Peer Cultures
9. Preadolescent Peer Cultures

PART FOUR: Children, Social Problems, and the Future of Childhood
10. Children, Social Problems, and the Family
11. Children, Social Problems, and Society
12. The Future of Childhood

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone involved in work with children. For a great review, check out this site.

Steve

Reclaiming Our Prodigal Sons and Daughters Chapter Four: The Broken Community - Relationships at Risk

a. Dorothea Dix
b. Urie Bronfenbrenner, founder of the Head Start program and the Ecological Systems Theory
c. Urie Bronfenbrenner's death announcement
c. Head Start program - Official site
d. National Head Start Association

Families on the Edge
a. Barbara Huff and the Myth of the Bad Parent
b. Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health
c. Judy and Jack Balswick The Family: A Christian Perspective
d. Linda Lantieri and Janet Patti's Waging Peace in our Schools

Estranged from School
a. Linda Lantieri's Building the Peace: The Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP)
b. Mark Harris' Before Push Comes to Shove
c. Herbert Needleman, Julie Riess et al Bone Lead Levels and Delinquent Behavior
d. Lili Garfinkel's Juvenile Justice

Destructive Peer Influence
a. The GATE Program (Gang Awareness Training Education)
b. Frederic Milton Thrasher The Gang
c. Chicago Gangs
d. National Youth Gang Center
e. William I Thomas' The Unadjusted Girl
f. William I. Thomas Bibliography (hyperlinked articles)
g. Don Pinnock and Cape Town's Gang Culture
h. Michigan Gang Research Project
i. Jack Kirkland's CYC Net (South Africa)

Comment A: "While parents cannot completely control who their child chooses as friends, in most cases, young people gravitate to peers who do not pose a major threat to their values. Contrary to popular thinking, most teens remain strongly bonded to their family, have values similar to their parents, and turn to their parents in times of stress... But when adults are not a prominent force in the lives of children and youth, then the peer culture, the gang, the cult, and the culture of the street can gain a powerful hold over children's lives." (p.50)

When reading this chapter, I was reminded of the importance of a holistic strategy when working with at-risk youth. I have been thinking about this particularly in relationship to gang involvement. I love Brendtro and Larson's connection between the disintegration of the family and the emergence of gang culture. It goes to show that our work can't just be with the child, but must be beyond that - with the family, the community, the socio-cultural context.

How can we more effectively develop holistic strategies for reclaiming at-risk youth?

Shirley Brice Heath's ArtShow 2 Grow - Adolescents and Social Entrepreneurship through Arts Development

"Through five documentary films and two photograph galleries, ArtShow 2 Grow reveals the social, intellectual, and managerial skills of young people working through their youth organizations to improve the quality of life in their communities.

These young people work with the arts to help create products, events, and public education that sensitize adults to the work of young people promoting nutritional health, local agriculture, and the role of arts in social change."

It's worth picking up this incredible resource which includes the ArtShow documentary (2000); four new short documentaries (2005), and Heath's print copy of ArtShow which explores community development, a resource guide, and a research report on youth learning in community organizations.

I have watched this documentary and worked through Shirley Brice Heath's book. I highly recommend this piece.

Steve

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

This document was drafted on 2 September, 1990 as part of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and has become the seminal document for speaking about the rights of children in the world.

Anyone interested in issues of marginalized youth and injustice would benefit from getting to know these documents. (Also - See Key Terms) They present a clear charter for an ideal which has not yet been realized in many parts of the world - particularly in the United States!

Steve

The Benefit of Asset-Based Youth Development

"The desperate conditions that face the poor call for a revolution in our attempts at a solution ...I have come to see these desperate problems cannot be solved without strong commitment and risky actions on the part of ordinary Christians with heroic faith"

John Perkins

Old Chinese Poem:
Go to the people
Live among them
Learn from them
Love them
Start with what they know
Build on what they have
But of the best leaders
When their task is done
The people will remark
"We have done it ourselves."

Three Universal Felt Needs
1. The Need to Belong
2. The Need to be Significant and Important - to Somebody
3. The Need for a Reasonable Amount of Security

John Perkins, Restoring At-Risk Communities, 1995.

The State of the World's Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible

The 2006 State of the World's Children report focuses on excluded and invisible children who have no access to essential services, protection and participation.

Meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the broader aims of the Millennium Declaration would transform the lives of millions of children who would be spared illness and premature death, escape extreme poverty and malnutrition, gain access to sagfe water and decent sanitation facilities and complete primary schooling.

I believe that our work needs to expand to seriously consider how we can be advocates to challenge this injustice.

Check out this video report.

Steve

Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son

Also see Henri Nouwen's book, The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Brendtro and Larson (p.33):

A son in tattered clothing kneels at the feet of a father who embraces him with both hands. Upon closer inspection of the painting, we can see that Rembrandt painted one hand as the hand of the father and one hand as the hand of the mother.

The hand of the father is one of strength, supporting the son. The mother's hand is one of gentleness, consoling and nurturing the boy. Raising children is a two-handed job that requires both strength and gentleness.

Cross-Cultural Outreach: A Missiological Perspective on Youth Ministry by Paul Borthwick

When I first read this article, I fell in love with it. Because it presents a clear, theological and missiological rationale for developing our anthropological skills as youthworkers. I'll try to summarize some of the major points as this doc. is not readily accessible.

a. Rebecca Atallah's Urbana '96 Presentation: Loving the Poor.
b. Mark DeVries' Family-based Youth Ministry
c. Father Vincent Donovan's Christianity Rediscovered
d. Daniel Offer's The Teenage World: Adolescents' in Ten Different Countries

"Youth ministry is cross-cultural work. Youth ministers require the skills of missionaries, taking biblical truths and applying them to specific cultures..."

Three Foundational Assumptions
It assumes that youth ministry means:
1. Reaching teenagers where they live.
2. Commitment to evangelizing the unchurched.
3. Commitment to integrating youth into the local church.

Youth Ministry as Missions
Youth ministers undertake a variety of roles.
> As counselors, they address the acute and chronic problems that youth and their parents face. > As teachers, they dedicate themselves to communicating God's truth.
> As sociologists, they examine cultural trends, the media, and other influences on youth and families.
> As theologians, youth ministers endeavor to know God and make him known to youth in conceptes they can apprehend.
> As missionaries, youth become anthropologists, studying the culture that they are trying to reach, and then looking for ways to present the gospel lifestyle in ways that truly connect with culture.

The cross-cultural aspect of youth ministry includes the following issues:
1. Cultural Adaptation
2. Language Learning
3. Sitz-im-Leben
4. Thought-Processes/Decision Making Across Cultures
5. Ethnomusicology
6. Equipping Indigenous Leadership
7. Cultural Bridge-Building
8. Contextualization

Comment A. This document outlines a very clear justification for why youthworkers need to be engaged in the study of culture. This is largely the motivation for why I am studying communication and culture currently. The more clearly we are able to understand people, the more effective we will be in working with them, meeting deep human needs, sharing the love of Jesus and the hope that is found in salvation etc.

However, there are a multiplicity of cultures and the differences which arise mean that there is not one quick-fix answer for understanding youth culture(s). Each one of us need to become anthropologists in our local communities - listening to the voices of the kids and teens you are working with, and challenging the injustices which are unique to your local setting.

What is unique about the people-group, sub-culture, setting in which you are called to engage in youthwork?

Reclaiming Our Prodigal Sons and Daughters Chapter Three: A Rootless Generation

a. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings (1993)
b. Karl Menninger Interview: Forsaking Vengeance and Retaliation

1. Unattached and Adult-Wary
a. Lauretta Bender's The Primary Prevention of Psychological Disorders
b. David Levy's Affect Hunger explored in Adopted Child Syndrome
c. Fritz Redl's Children Who Hate
d. Nancy Gibbs' Murder in Miniature Time Report on Yummy Sandifier

2. Fatherless in Search of an Identity
a. David Popenoe's Life Without Father
b. The National Center on Fathering
c. Glenn Stanton's How Fathers, As Male Paretns, Matter for Healthy Child Development
d. John Snarey's How Fathers Care for the Next Generation
e. Robert Bly's Iron John
f. Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Michaele Weissman's Deadly Consequences

3. Children of Rejection and Rage
a. Anger Management Strategies for Kids
b. Warning Signs for a Teen with Anger Problems

4. Caught in the Web of Chemical Abuse
a. Jamie Carother's Drugships: How Kids Make Relationships with Addictive Behaviors
b. Tammy Bell's The Truth About Relapse

Comment A: Larson and Brendtro suggest that "Communities lack the tools to meet the new challenges presented by youth in crisis. Churches are particularly ambivalent about including youth from challenged families, ostensibly because of a desire to protect 'good children' from the 'bad apple' blight." (p.24)

I am sad to say that I have observed this more than once when I have visited churches/corps where there is ministry to both church youth and after-school youth. We seem to dichotomize our ministries to these folk based on whether they are perceived of as good or bad. This seriously concerns me - because if I can sense that, imagine what the kids from the after-school program think??? This ends up making them feel like second class citizens.

It's very easy for us to fall into the trap of 'throwing the breadcrumbs' to troubled youth. However, we should be doing our best for these teens. Is integration of these types of ministries possible? Or will this result in the corruption of our churched youth?

What are your thoughts?

Comment B: The section on the Fatherless in Search of an Identity really spoke to me. "While many single mothers are closely bonded to their children, both boys and girls are at a greater risk of delinquency in the absence of caring male role models." (p. 30)

Please explore the links I have provided above and look at some of the reports and research on the importance of male role models in at-risk youth's lives. We have an incredible need for male role models who will devote their lives to standing in the massive gap that exists. What are you doing today to help with this pandemic???

YouTube Group for Salvo Videographers

With the popularity of viral videos, I've created a YouTube.com group for Salvationist Videographers. Sign-up and post your vids for us to see.

ETA: Here's the address: http://www.youtube.com/groups_layout?name=SalvoVideographers

The Playground of Youth in At-Risk Communities: Play, Social Action and Youthwork with Childhood Sociologist Jo Moran-Ellis

We would like to invite you to Project 1:17 on April 25, 2006 (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM) for a FREE! seminar by internationally renowned UK childhood sociologist and author Jo Moran-Ellis. Jo has co-edited Children and Social Competence as well as Children, Technology and Culture.

She will be presenting a series of lectures around the theme: The Playground of Childhood in At-Risk Communities: Play, Social Action and Youthwork.

During the seminar, we will explore a variety of themes including:

> Thinking About Children Differently
> Play and Playfulness
> Thinking About Play as Peer Culture
> Shared Knowledge and Emergent Communities
> Ludacris
> Children Dealing with Difficulties and Danger
> Play as and Arena for Agency
> Reflecting on the Role of the Youthworker

We would love to have you come and be a part of this event. Please contact our office (845) 368-7276. All are welcome to attend! You can also find more details at our website.

Steve

SimSchool

SimSchool - a Classroom Simulator for Educators

Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture - Chapter Two: There's Something Happenin' Here

Walt Mueller's Supplemental Resources for Chapter 2

Recognizing the Mission Field Under Our Noses
Gerard Kelly's Retrofuture
Paul Borthwick's Cross-cultural Outreach:
A Missiological Perspective on Youth Ministry
George Barna's Teens Change Their Tune Regarding Self and Church

Three Crucial Steps for the Crosscultural Missionary
Jerram Barrs' The Heart of Evangelism
MisLinks Contextualization Page
L'Abri and Francis Shaeffer
Jerry Solomon's What is a Worldview?

1. Know them Individually
> Knowing their unique personality and abilities (nature)
> Knowing their lifetime of experiences (nurture)

Important questions to ask:
a. What is unique and special about their personality?
b. What makes them get up in the morning?
c. What do they value?
d. What are their interests?
e. How do they make decisions?
f. What skills do they possess?
g. What is their socioeconomic background?
h. What is their ethnic/racial heritage?
i. What is their religious background?
j. Is there anything unique about their physical, mental or emotional condition?
k. Where do they live?
l. What is their gender?
m. Who or what is the authority in their life?
n. What have they experienced in their home?
o. What major events have shaped their life, both positively and negatively?
p. What are their hopes, fears, dreams, and plans for the future?

2. Know them Developmentally
3. Know their Changing Cultural Context

James Sire: "A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being."

Comment A "When it becomes obvious they aren't responding to our efforts, we lament the fact that they have turned a deaf ear to the church. But is that really the case? I don't think so. More often than not, their ambivalence to the church is rooted in the fact they can't hear anything we're saying. Because we haven't taken the time to know them and their world, they don't hear or understand any of it. They're not deaf - we're dumb. In the end, we've done an injustice to people whom Christ loves and for whom he died." (p.53)

This quote really resonated with me! It's not an issue of the world being death to who Jesus is - it's our inability to properly represent him that leaves the world with a negative image of God and the church. This illustrates why effective communication is vital to the transltation of the gospel into culture.

How are we able to communicate more effectively to today's youth cultures?

Steve

Kidspeace: Restorative Justice with Juvenile Offenders

Click on this diagram for a better view.

Robin Rader sent to me this link to KidsPeace where they are exploring how organizations like The Salvation Army can connect with a government program for the community reintegration phase of a juvenile justice program.

I think this is pertinent to 1:17 - It is particularly relevant to what Scott Larson and Larry Brendtro are talking about in their book.

The diagram above explores the basic tenents of what they are calling 'restorative justice.'

Enjoy!

Steve