Sheldon Thomas from Target Against Gangs and former gang member Gavin McKenna talking about the deeper issues surrounding the recent riots in London and around the country.
First broadcast on 10 Aug 2011 on the Sky News Channel.
Found this clip from King of the Hill really interesting.
Is the problem that Jesus was too packaged-up with youth cultural baggage, or that the Dad wasn’t willing to accept a kind of Christianity because the culture around it was too alien to him?
What do you think? Was there a need for less contextualisation/inculturation or more tolerance of a different culture?
Thanks Rethinking Youth Ministry for the clip.
As a postscript: Does the church lose young people when they grow up because they grow out of the cultural fads that we’ve wrapped Jesus up in in trying to reach them, or because we fail to fully contextualise the gospel in a way that makes sense for their own culture?
Jesus' death killed the consumer
Just occasionally the Resurgence blog comes out with something insightful and thought-provoking. This is one of those:
God’s action in the world never revolves around the immediate satisfaction of wants and needs. His action is focused on reconciliation. The amazing news is the God of the Bible incurred all the cost of reconciliation himself. He paid our debt in full to restore us to his family. And when we see the God of the heavens lay aside his wants and needs to serve us, we can make the much smaller sacrifice of laying aside our own.
Contextualising this into a consumerist culture, you could argue that Jesus allows himself to be consumed on the cross - the price for our consumer debt - in order for us to be free of the dissatisfaction of a life bound by consumerism.
Don Miller (writer of Blue Like Jazz) has also been posting some interesting ideas on Consuming vs. Creating on his blog this week.
For some of my own thoughts on consumerism, see my dissertation from last year: Christian Community in a Consumerist Culture.
Introducing the Chemo - Teen Sub-Culture Hybrid?
In our local secondary school yesterday, one of the young people we were chatting to described themselves using the label “Chemo” - meaning half Chav and half Emo.
Urban Dictionary describes the Chemo as:
A hybrid of the classic stereotypes “Chav” and “Emo” When mixed together you get a “Chemo” a “Chav” who dresses like an “emo” but still has “Chav” tendancies.
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The most common type of chemo tends to listen to ‘emo music’ such as MCR and Fallout Boy, but still dress chavy. (longsdale hoodies, trackies ect…)
It’s interesting, but I guess inevitable that hybrids of different teen sub-culture groups have developed (see also Choth, Swemo and Changsta).
An increasingly individualised culture must mean that individuals are increasingly unwilling or unable to be sorted into sub-cultural groups. These groups, sometimes called homogeneous units, seem to me to be becoming heterogeneous and teenagers seem to be increasingly willing to create close friendship groups which are made of people from across different social groups.
Some questions:
- Are sub-cultures and stereotypes the same thing?
- Does an increase in the number of youth sub-cultures inevitably mean that there will be too many variants for it to be worth studying them as groupings? (Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle obsolete?)
- Do all the members of a sub-culture have to be a perfect fit for it to be worth understanding that culture as a group, rather than as a group of individuals?
Any thoughts?
Teen Role Models: Who They Are, Why They Matter
Teenagers’ preferences and tastes greatly influence America’s cultural identity. The people teenagers look up to as their role models matter a great deal in determining the shape and substance of the next generation of churchgoers, consumers and citizens. A study conducted by Barna Group among a national sample of teenagers gives new insight into whom teens select as their role models and why those individuals captured their attention
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The “Who”
So who do teenagers name as their role models? Even while limiting the answers to non-parents, family members still comes out on top. The most commonly mentioned role model is a relative—37% of teens named a relation other than their parent as the person they admire most. This is typically a grandparent, but also includes sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles.
After “family,” teens mention teachers and coaches (11%), friends (9%), and pastors or other religious leaders they know personally (6%). Notice that a majority of teens indicated that the people they most admire and imitate are those with whom they maintain a personal connection, friendship, or interaction.
Beyond the realm of the people they know personally, entertainers (including musicians and actors) were named by 6% of teens, followed by sports heroes (5%), political leaders (4%), faith leaders (4%), business leaders (1%), authors (1%), science and medical professionals (1%), other artists (1%), and members of the military (1%).
The high-profile leaders most commonly named were President Obama (3%) and Jesus Christ (3%). Other “celebrities” mentioned by multiple teenagers in the study included entertainers Tyra Banks, Rob Dyrdrek, Lady Gaga, Demi Lovato, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. The only athletes who earned multiple mentions were LeBron James, Peyton Manning, Michael Phelps, Mike Tyson and David Wright. In the spiritual domain, besides Jesus, teens were most likely to admire Mahatma Gandhi and the Pope. Social and business leaders garnering teen attention included Walt Disney, Bill Gates, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The writers who captured the imagination of teens included Yumi Tamura (Japanese Manga artist) and Alan Moore (English comic book writer).
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The “Why”
Respondents described a wide range of reasons why they named a particular role model. The most common rationale (26%) was the personality traits of that person (e.g., caring about others, being loving and polite, being courageous, and being fun were some of the characteristics mentioned most often). Another factor in teens’ thinking was finding someone to emulate (22%) or that the teen would like to “follow in the footsteps” of their chosen role model.
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What it Says
David Kinnaman, who is president of the Barna Group, offered four insights about the current mindset of teenagers based on the findings:
1. For better and worse, teens are emulating the people they know best. More than two out of three teens identify people they know personally as their primary role model. Many parents and youthworkers fret about the role models of the next generation. Yet, one reason to remain hopeful about the development of young people is their reliance upon the people they know best: friends, relatives, teachers, pastors, and coaches. At the same time, that reality underscores the insistence of many parents that they influence the people with whom their child associates, in order to be sure that their kids are surrounded by people modeling positive values and life choices.
2. Teenagers’ role models reveal that teens want to get ahead, accomplish goals, overcome obstacles… and be encouraged along the way. For all the talk about the social consciousness of the next generation, their role models are rarely selected because of a person’s service or sacrifice for others. Young people, like most other Americans, choose their role models because those people are achievers and because they help teenagers feel better about themselves. None of these aspirations is necessarily misguided, but the focus tends to be uniquely American: on tasks and self, rather than on God and others.
3. Spirituality is only of modest concern to the aspirations of most teens. Teens rarely identified spiritual mentors. Moreover, few teens consider issues of faith, religion or morality when deciding whom they will try to emulate. Even among young Christians, their role models are virtually no different than other teenagers. (The only exception is an expected outcome: those teens actively involved in a church are slightly more likely to identify a spiritual or faith leader as one of their models.) While other Barna research shows that teens are active spiritually, that behavior generally does not influence the “who” and the “why” of teens’ role models.
4. Outside of their personal relationships, teen role models reflect a broadening mindset. The next generation selects its heroes from a wide spectrum of both people discovered through both the global stage and micro-niches. The menu of celebrities crosses multiple sectors, ranging from skateboarders and MTV hosts to international graphic novel artists, scholars, social innovators and historic leaders; from teen idols to celebrities who came of age in the 1960s. The eclectic nature of the role models they embrace is not new but the diversity of pools from which they choose those models is atypical. Their choices are substantially affected by media imagery and exposure.
Self-promote to survive
There’s a real danger in today’s culture, especially if you’re a young person in some kind of creative industry - I even feel this as a church leader - that in order to survive and become successful, you need to end up becoming obsessed with promoting yourself.
I don’t like it.
I really don’t like the person it turns me into, the way it encourages me to relate to other people, the way it feels sometimes like it could take over my life.
Three dangers of pursuing a lifestyle of self-promotion:
1. You become firmly rooted as the centre of your world.
Everyone else becomes a supporting character in the play of your life.
2. You end up with fans rather than friends.
The art of relating is forgotten, replaced with endless networking.
3. You rob yourself of the chance to be content with who you are.
Our identity becomes rooted in showreels and portfolios, rather than in who we are and what we mean to the people we care about.
Christian Community in a Consumerist Culture
My dissertation for those who were interested in reading it.
Christian Community in a Consumerist Culture - James Henley
Young Adults: Change or Conservation?
A couple of different things (books, emails…) have come together over the last few weeks that have caused me to think more about young adults and change. Ages 18-25 is a stage which we so often relate to the concepts of transition and change - leaving home, developing independence, starting work etc.
Recently, though, I’ve been wondering just how true that is - and whether young adults are as up for change as they have been historically.
Is today’s emerging adulthood about change - or is it actually about conserving a sense of stability in a world of change?
That’s the surprising conclusion that Christian Smith and Patricia Snell seem to reach in their book (Souls in Transition) about the spirituality of emerging adults. Their research suggests that, contrary to popular thought, young adults are more interested in maintaining and conserving whatever worldview/spirituality they have rather than in broadening their horizons and adopting new beliefs.
What do you think? Do today’s young adults thrive on change, or are they desperate for stability?
Have young adults lost their revolutionary edge?
A.J. Jacobs on Unitasking
There’s an ongoing joke that I’m an avid unitasker - mainly because of my ability to ‘lock on’ to a single task or focus and phase out of everything else around me.
To find out more about unitasking, and about why multitasking steals away precious time and steals your focus, check out this great excerpt from A.J. Jacobs’ new book published in the Guardian.
