Resource Roundup
Some things I have found helpful lately
This week, I want to pass on some resources I’ve come across recently that I have found helpful or thought-provoking for youth ministry. I plan to make posts like this every 4-6 weeks, as I come across content that I think would benefit others as well.
“Revisiting Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” - I’ve wondered recently what it would be like to interview authors of some old “classic” youth ministry books and ask them about what is still the same and what has changed since they wrote. In this episode of Youth Pastor Theologian podcast, Mike McGarry gets to do just that with Kenda Creasy Dean, author of the 2010 book Almost Christian, which had every youth ministry at the time talking about moralistic therapeutic deism (I remember discussing this book with staff at my first youth ministry job). One of the most interesting insights to me was that the students in the study who believed the tenets of moralistic therapeutic deism have now become the adult Nones.
The teens making friends with AI chatbots - If you’re trying to keep up with how teens are interacting with technology, here’s an important one. Teens are using AI chatbots, sometimes to learn social or mental health skills. Plenty could go wrong, so it’s worth our time to fill the gaps in the needs they are seeking to fulfill through these chatbots.
Goodbye Postmodernism, Hello Metamodernism - I’ve heard the notion that culturally we’ve moved on from postmodernism, but I hadn’t heard anyone try to define what has replaced it. Here, a youth pastor and high school teacher distills for us what scholars have termed “metamodernism,” the new ideological outlook which manifests in apocalyptic hope, inverted worldview-building, and highly narrated identities. It seems to accurately describe some dynamics I have observed.
Regulative Discipleship: Why a Full Calendar Doesn’t Necessarily Produce Mature Church Members - I really appreciate the point made at the end of this article (and I don’t think you necessarily need the regulative principle to get there): that the greater emphasis in our discipleship should be on obeying the commands of the Scriptures rather than participating in programs. Recently, I was asking a pastor how I might get more involved in the church, and rather than directing me to a program, he essentially pointed me to live out the “one another” commands — a refreshingly simple approach which has high probability of being effective in building the community I am seeking. What would it look like to take on the same approach in youth ministry?