1.5. SECTION B: A SOCIO-CULTURAL FRAMEWORK FOR VIEWING YOUTH MINISTRY
This section deals with giving the youth minister a framework within which to think about the social and cultural forces that are shaping young people's worldviews. Again, the treatment of this subject is not prescriptive but is offered as a way of developing a socio-cultural lens through which to view youth ministry. The section begins with an overview of society and societal structures and trends and moves on to practical steps the youth minister can use in understanding socio-cultural forces.
Social contexts shape all of us. Society is defined as a social community; the general body of persons or communities living within a particular geographical area which interact together to maintain the functions of that society. This is a rather simplistic definition for a very complex concept. It is necessary to understand that man influences society and in turn society influences man. Man develops societies according to his morality and his core belief system and these societies and their various structures in turn influence man and his future generations living within that society.
1.5.1. B.1 Societal Structures:
Task 1 (for your consideration): List the various structures in place in modern society which enable society to function (e.g. Education Structure). As you list them, consider the impacts that these structures have on young people. Consider how changeable or variable these social structures may be and think about how this inconsistency affects the young person.
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Social, family and cultural structures interact to influence the development and well being of children and young people. You may have listed some of the following structures as you considered the task above. (Please note that there is no definitive answer to the task, as you may have mentioned various sub-structures which I may fail to mention. All of which though, are essential to consider if they impact the development of young people.)
1.5.2. Family Structure: - The family is God’s building block for society. God’s description of Himself is relational. He calls His church, ‘the family of God’. How tragic today that the bedrock of our society is crumbling! Isn’t it sad that on a popular SABC educational programme for pre-schoolers we see the following portrayed as typical families: a little girl saying how lucky she was that she could live in her Mommy’s house in Durban for a while and in her Daddy’s house in Cape Town for a while; a child who shares that she lives with two Mommies; the child from a single-parent home; and the child from a home with a mother and father figure. We have yet to see the full impact of the effect that the crumbling family structure is to have on our youth.
Why do you think Satan attacks the family unit with so much force?
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What are the implications of us losing this battle to Satan both now and in the future?
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1.5.3. Political and Government Structures:
Society’s structures and its people are coordinated by the government, which has authority. You need only look at the after-effects of the Apartheid government in South Africa to realise that the effects of politics upon young lives is enormous - affecting generations of youth.
1.5.4. Cultural Structures:
Cultural practices can have an impact on the overall well being of a population. Cultural structures include those institutions that maintain cultural traditions and language.
1.5.5. Economic Structures (Employment and the work environment):
This includes infrastructure for the production and distribution of both goods and labour. Employment status and working conditions affect the economic opportunities of parents as well as their ability to carry out the responsibility of parenting. Employment status can also affect the development of healthy relationships between children and their parents. These factors therefore impact the development of young people negatively.
1.5.6. Legislative Structures:
These structures pass and apply laws by which citizens must live. When we consider the decline of morality today and the many God-dishonouring practices which are now legal, we must wonder at the effect these practices will have on the lives of our youth. George Barna the founder and president of the Barna Research Group, and best-selling author of such books as The Frog in the Kettle and The Second Coming of the Church offers some insight into the effect on young people of declining morals :
“Whether you realize it or not, your view of moral truth is at the core of your worldview… the dominant American worldview of young adults can be summed up in one Word: ‘whatever.’ Without the clarity and consistency of absolute moral truth, we are reduced to doing what seems right, what feels good, what produces the least resistance and what provides the greatest personal fulfilment. Naturally, our unconscious dismissal of absolute morality and ethics has produced a plethora of attitudinal and behavioural changes, including the reforming of our values.”
What we believe (about God), determines who we become. Why is it so important that we teach students Biblical truths?
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List some beliefs you see being modeled by your students which are contrary to the Word of God.
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1.5.7. Educational Structures:
These structures include the societies’ educational and research institutions and the bodies that govern them. It is clear that levels of education, the policies and curricula of the educational system directly affect young people.
1.5.8. Military and Law and Order:
These structures seek to provide internal safety and security of the society and protection of the country’s borders. When this structure fails, many of the other structures fail with it.
1.5.9. Religious Structures:
Places of worship and their sub-structures which encourage the worship of God or the worship of God’s. They often teach a system of religious beliefs and practices.
List some of the other religions practised within your community; how do these influence your students experience of the living God?
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1.5.10. Health and Social Service Structures:
Health services contribute significantly to well-being. They function to maintain and promote health, prevent disease and to restore health. For disadvantaged youth, social services should ensure that basic needs are met and that the young person has every opportunity to develop according to a healthy developmental norm.
The factors below, while not main societal structures, are also thought to influence young people within society:
1.5.11. Income and Social Status:
These are the most important determiners of health. Evidence shows that people at each level of the income scale are healthier and have longer life-expectancies than those at the level below. Countries in which incomes are more evenly distributed have a healthier population in terms of life expectancy, quality of life and mortality rates. Family income directly influences children’s development. Poverty can negatively affect a child’s physical and mental health, cognitive and social development and academic achievement.
1.5.12. Social Environment:
Primary and Secondary support systems are essential for children. As a result, they thrive in safe, secure and supportive communities in which they have the support of family, friends and neighbours.
1.5.13. Natural and Built Environments:
Physical factors in the natural environment (e.g. air and water quality) directly impact health factors and well-being. In the built environment, factors such as the design of communities can influence social interaction and safety.
Task 2: After reviewing the list of structures above, spend some time thinking about the context within which you minister. Answer the following questions:
Are there any structures not listed that have an effect on your young people? If so, list them here.
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Which of the structures (within the context of your young people) stand out in terms of having a more profound effect on your young people than the other structures?
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Does an understanding of societal structures and the forces they exert on young people help in ministering to them? How?
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Do you need to initiate or change anything in your ministry based on an understanding of the current societal structures that influence young people? If so what?
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1.6B.2. Trends in Society:
Society is the soil in which our children grow. The youth worker needs to carefully analyse this soil - its components and its makeup. Look to the trends and pressures that currently exist within the society in which your young people are developing. These trends are not necessarily universal to all societies and they are generally not timeless. The ministry of the youth worker needs to be constantly up-dated in order to remain relevant to young people. For example, if young people are listening to a certain style of music, ensure that you are sourcing Christian alternative styles of that music. Do not fall into the common trap of remaining about 5 years behind the current secular trend shift.
Task 3How can you as a youth worker stay in touch with various trends and pressures which influence your young people?
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“Youth ministry begins when a Christian adult finds a comfortable way of entering a student’s world.” (Dunn.) To identify trends and pressures influencing your teenagers ensure that you are exposing yourself to what they are being exposed. Remembering always to balance this with the call of Christ “not to conform to the pattern of this world” and to be “in the world but not of it.” Ensure that your ministry remains current by exposing yourself to multimedia. Know and research the music they listen to, the movies and television programmes they watch, the websites and chat rooms they access, the playstation games they play and the youth magazines and books they read.
(Who would have imagined a couple of years ago that I could include “books they read”. Just when it seemed that reading was a dying recreation, the young teenage market was hit with the emergence of a new trend - Harry Potter and with it a renewed interest in witchcraft and wizardry and the workings of magic spells. Older teens, from certain societal groups, have been attracted by the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. This renewed interest in reading is a fine example of the fact that trends are often not universal or timeless.)
Observe young people as they interact with one another, listen to their conversations, watch youth magazine shows, observe their dress, spend time with them - support their school and sport events, read current books on youth culture and trends, stay alert to magazine programmes which give statistical information about young people and their trends, ask your young people questions, interact with other youth leaders and draw from their experiences. Perhaps most importantly, hold a magnifying glass to the society in which they live and analyse every aspect of it acutely. Research it and identify current trends and predictable trends which could emerge from it. It is vital that you know the world of your youth.
Using the above methods, I have included a brief synopsis of various influences affecting young people today. Please note that entire books are written on this subject and so my brevity certainly does not do the subject justice. In addition, remember that any trends or forces that I have identified may not be universally acceptable and they are generally not timeless. With this in mind, I encourage you to identify trends and pressures that are relevant to the youth to whom you are ministering.
1.6.1. Music:
All popular music has the power to influence the values, attitudes and behaviour of young people. Just as teenagers are asking the all important, “What is life all about and how do I approach it?” popular music and the media step in to answer the question. MTV is telecast into 231 million households in seventy-five countries, more than any other satellite programme (Dobson).
Studies show that in the 1960”s the family was the greatest influence on teen values and behaviour, followed by the school, friends and peers, and then the church. These institutions were generally in agreement on basic values and provided a relatively unified voice in their influence on teens. In the 1980”s friends and peers were the greatest influence, followed by the family, then the media and finally the school. The church was no longer on the top four list! These institutions also agreed less on basic values, thus presenting mixed messages to the youth. Walt Mueller wonders what the data would look like today. He comments that, “The overwhelming acceptance and popularity of MTV would boost the media’s influence to the top of the list. Friends and peers, immersed in and influenced by the same media voices, would drop to number two, the family to number three. School would stay at number four” (Mueller).
1.6.2.Prominent themes in music today are:
Sexual Promiscuity and Sexual Perversion: Explicit lyrics and pornographic videos send the message to our teens that anything and everything is permissible. Reading the lyric sheets of today’s CD covers leaves one shocked and nauseated - graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex, violent sex, homosexual and bisexual sex and even incestuous sex and bestiality abound. God was outraged at Sodom and Gomorrah - He must be weeping now!
1.6.3. Violence: I walked in on a group of young teenagers (around 14 - 15 years of age) who were listening to CDs in their classroom during break time. The violent nature of the music that they were listening to shocked me. One of the CDs was by Dr. DRE - four of the songs on the album had been censored and one of the song titles was F… the police. The songs were a mixture of sex, violence and drug abuse. Another of the CDs they were listening to was by bad boy rapper, Eminem.
In 1953 Eddie Fisher sang the popular song, “Oh, My Papa” a sentimental song which honoured his father. In 1968 The Doors released the song entitled “The End” in which Jim Morrison fantasized about killing his father. Twisted Sister released “We’re not Gonna Take It” which referred to a father as a “disgusting slob” who was “worthless and weak.” He was then blasted out of the window of a second story building. A horrific song by Suicidal Tendencies entitled “I Saw Your Mommy” included some of the following lyrics, “I saw your mommy and your mommy’s dead… chewed-off toes on her chopped-off feet I saw her lying in a pool of red; I think it’s the greatest thing I’ll ever see - your dead mommy.” Ice-T and Body Count produced the shocking, “Momma’s Gotta Die Tonight”. It sold 500,000 copies and the lyrics included graphic description of the rapper’s mother being burned in her bed and then being beaten to death with a baseball bat and finally the mutilation of the corpse into “little bitty pieces.” (Source: Dr. James Dobson, Solid Answers,p291 -295) Popular music went from the inspiring, “Oh, My Papa” to “Momma’s Gotta Die Tonight”. How much worse will it become?
1.6.4. Substance Abuse: There are many songs out there glorifying drug abuse - “Jagged Little Pill” by Alanis Morrisette, “Fly” by Sugar Ray, “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind, “Budsmokers Only” by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Chumbawamba.
Other themes include:
1.6.5. The Occult (bands such as KISS and Marilon Manson);
1.6.6. Political commentary and social concern (bands and singers which take part in events such as the World Aids Day Concert hosted by Nelson Mandela in which U2’s Bonoand stars like Johnny Clegg, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, and Beyonce, among others, took part);
1.6.7. Hopelessness:
1.6.8. Rebellion
Late night viewing of MTV will take you into an audio-visual world of sexual perversion, violence, hatred and at times pure occult. Secular songs which are clean and wholesome are extremely rare.
1.7Task: Go down to your local music store. Before you go in take a look at the posters in the shop window. Go inside and ask to listen to those cd’s you see advertised in the window. What bands/groups are they? What was the lyric content like? Also go look at the top 10 CD section. What bands are there, listen to some of the songs and report on what you found.
1.8Other Media:
1.8.1. Television: I questioned a group of middle-class teenagers about the number of television sets in their homes. Only one teenager had no television set in the home (by her parents’ choice!); the majority of the teenagers (over 70%) had more than one TV set in the home and many of them had a TV in their bedroom. Teenagers are watching shows like Friends, Dawson’s Creek, Seventh Heaven, The Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, Everybody Loves Raymond, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons and The X-Files.