Virtually Paul

My Attitude Problem

November 16, 2006 on 3:45 pm | In Bible College, Church, Youth Ministry |

I’m currently working on an essay about “attitudes of young people towards the institutional church” and so far my head is awash with vague grabs at all of the ideas and issues.

So I figured I’d starting blogging on the subject and see where my thoughts take me.  Feel free to chuck me some comments for inspiration.  The essay topic seems to call for a pretty straight-forward approach.  Firstly, define young people in terms of their cultural setting and the needs that arise in them as a result of it.  Secondly, define the institutional church.  Somewhere in the gap between the two, you’d expect that I’d uncover the ‘attitudes’ that exist.  I think I’m going to need to touch on a number of issues to cover the topic properly.

Issue 1:  Societal Changes
There has been a shift in society and often it doesn’t seem like the church has caught up.  Maybe that’s just my attitude to the institutional church though.  The statistical studies I’ve been reading have talked a lot about the increasing number of ‘non-traditional family structures’.  More young people today than ever before live in home environments with single parents or step-parents.  So, how does that influence them?

Issue 2: Postmodernism
It’s a fancy word.  My understanding of what it means is this:
The ‘modern’ era was characterised by a collective belief in science and technology to solve all of the problems of humankind.  Something was valid if it could be explained.  Something could be accepted if there was cold, hard scientific evidence.  In amongst that, allegiance to an institution of some kind was a valued quality.  It all worked rather well for a generation of baby boomers in the suburban churches of the 1970s.

Enter the postmodern era.  These days, scientific rationalism isn’t irrelevant… but it isn’t the answer to everything either.  In the postmodern world, truth isn’t about proof.  Truth is about what works.  “Right” and “Wrong” are seen as relative labels.  Loyalty to an institution during bad times, makes you a sap who should have the backbone to improve their situation.  No one wants to listen to moral pronouncements of right and wrong from the church, from their parents, or from anywhere else.  Science doesn’t have all of the answers and spirituality is once again on the rise.  But in the postmodern era, what works for someone is ‘their truth’.  If you want to have your own religious beliefs, fine… but don’t push their moral framework on to those around you.

Issue 3: What’s the church?
The word ‘church’ has been misappropriated to so many different things, even just in the last 50 years, that its meaning within popular culture has been diluted into an array of stereotypes that range in their connotations, from confusing expressions of ancient religious liturgical practice, to a fundamentalist Christianist lobby group that attempts to influence Government policy for conservative ends.  Even within the ranks of those who regularly participate in the church, I’m not sure how many of them could tell you what it actually is.  If you asked ten different people what the church exists to do, you’d easily get answers that emphasised any number of different things:  community, evangelism, family values, charity, prayer.

Issue 4: Spirituality
Lots of people are interested in spirituality.  It’s just that not many of them want to ask the church about it because they think they already know what the church is going to say.