We, individuals in my parish, have been going through the discernment process for a program to engage and connect young people with their faith, life, and parish called “Journey to Adulthood,” or J2A for short. I must say that I think this is one of the best of numerous curricula or programs I’ve seen. It is based on solid developmental principles, thorough, flexible, and hits what I think are all the right targets. The question, of course, is whether this particular “system” or program is for us. The overall emphasis is for adults to enter the journey with young people as they navigate their movement into adulthood. Simply to be with them, offer guidance, be real and honest – nothing done to the young people, nothing but high expectations of honesty and forthrightness, and within the Faith.
One of the questions I put to the discernment committee is this, “What does a youth ministry in an Anglo-Catholic parish look like?” (To clear some things up, this particular parish is traditionally Anglo-Catholic, not because of some misplaced love of ceremony or desperate clinging to tradition, but because of a lived ethos that comes only from the ancient and deep practice of the Catholic faith in its Anglican expression.) What does a youth program in an urban setting, with young people who are scheduled to death, that have every opportunity and cultural expression available to them, in a church that has a lived tradition of the faith development of young people taking place primarily in the home (which isn’t really happening these days, for a variety of reasons), in a physical plant that was not designed for a “youth group?”
Our common notion of “youth programs” or “youth groups” come from a programmatic point-of-view that is not very old – perhaps from the 1950’s onward. Our expectations of a youth group and the Christian formation of young people come from the same place where we developed our misplaced expectations of education in general – parents have given over to the schools the responsibility of raising their children for things temporal, and in the same way they have given over to the Church the responsibility for the faith development of their children. Both are misplaced! Both will and are resulting in failure, but only time and a complete collapse will bring us back to reality and from our adult self-centeredness.
Anyway, parents, for the most part, have reneged on their primary role of overseeing the adult development of their own children (educationally, professionally, emotionally, and spiritually). That is a hard thing to say, but having worked for over 20 years with young people in higher education and faith development, I find it to be true in far too many cases (with definite and numerous exceptions, of course). So what do we do as a parish? Try to take the place of family and parents? It doesn’t work, or at least it doesn’t work very effectively. Kids aren’t stupid. They see too many parents that do or say one thing, yet expect differently of their kids. This is their example, and the follow it.
So, in this parish, with its history, and the trajectory of youth in this day and place, I don’t think an idea of “youth group” is the direction we should go. Not that J2A isn’t excellent – it is excellent for a time and place, which I don’t think is here and now. Perhaps an adaptation? I don’t know.
Whatever we decide to do, a re-emphasis on home and family-based youth faith development/Christian formation is essential. We, as a parish, must provide support and help for the parents, but the primary locus of development must remain in the home and by the parents/family. We also must do what is necessary to make younger parents feel capable of working with their kids – teach them, guide them, support them, hold them accountable.
The question remains – How do we do this? I keep coming back to some form of the monastic tradition – of postulants and novices and vows and Rules of Life. To something that is real, ancient, mysterious, honest, and quite counter-cultural.