The Upper Room’s spiritual growth resource for young people, Devo’Zine, has a new website here with a range of things that will interest young people, youth leaders and teachers. The Upper Room is an activity of the United Methodist Church in the USA.
Clearly it’s designed to be interactive in terms of young people exploring spirituality and sharing their insights and creativity.
Young people seek intimacy and transcendence through technology. This is an authentically spiritual quest.
After a very long wait, the Australasian Theological Forum (ATF) has finally published Interface, Vol 14, No. 2. Titled “Theology and the Body” and edited by Stephen Garner, Lecturer in the Theology at the University of Auckland.
I have an article in the journal titled ‘Young People, Technoculture and Embodied Spirituality’. It’s now a couple of years since I wrote it, so it’s a bit weird going back to read it.
“Young people’s innate desires foir intimacy and self-transcendence are bound up in their daily use of technology. These spiritual yearnings are embodied insofar as they are located within, rather than in opposition to, adolescents’ physiological and psycho-social development, and are further embodied in their personal media practices or habits. The body has long been a significant theme in in relation to the well-being of young people… Rather than seeing in teenagers’ media use the desire for physical or psychological escape from the world, we might instead recognise their longings for connectedness and meaningful self-expression. ‘ (more…)
An Anglican School in northern New South Wales has conducted research regarding the beliefs and attitudes of its students towards religion and spirituality. Fr Glenn Loughrey, Chaplain at Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School, designed and conducted the survey with 569 students from years 5-12 (the school is a co-educational K-12 school).
Students were asked a range of questions about ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ meant, how much their understandings of religion and spirituality influenced their lives, their own beliefs, and their family’s religious background.
Staff and some parents also competed the survey.
Glenn says, “Spiritual, as I use it here, is about more than the practice of one specific tradition or the acceptance of the tenets of a particular faith stream. It refers to the opening up of the students, individually and as a community to the Other, that which is greater than themselves.”
It’s a pretty interesting set of data, which in many ways correlates with some of the “Spirit of Gen Y” research. ie. Religion is external, about morality and church. Spirituality is internal, subjective, self-constructed and yet relational.
In response to the survey, the school made a range of changes to its programming – its RE curriculum, retreats and contemplative practice, spiritual direction, a ‘gap year’ option, and pastoral care initiatives.
The School is open to other schools using the instruments developed and comparing results if they wish. For more information, contact Glenn who blogs at redshoeswalking. His blog in itself is really interesting – designed for parents and students to engage with their spiritual lives.
You can email Glenn here if you want more info about the survey.
Here’s a new US study by the Barna Group about why young people leave the church.
The study identifies 6 key reasons. In summary, the church is experienced by young people who were part of it as over-protective, exclusivist, anti-science, overly moralistic, shallow or irrelevant, and unfriendly towards those who doubt.
I wonder if an Australian study would be that different?
A symposium on children and spirituality was recently held at the Centre for Theology and Ministry in Melbourne. Hosted by the Uniting Church, the event featured input by Dr Glen Cupitt from the University of South Australia, Dr Brendan Hyde from Australian Catholic University (Melbourne) and Claire Pickering from the Christian Research Association. Papers from the event can be downloaded here.
Here’s an interesting paper by Adam Possamai from the University of Western Sydney about different forms of religion in participatory electronic culture. 2007 so its a bit dated, but interesting nevertheless. Possamai talks about hyperreal religions - “that is a simulacrum of a religion partly created out of popular culture which provides inspiration for believers/consumers.” He explores four groups of people:
1. Active consumers of popular culture leading to the practice of hyper-real religions.
2. Focussed consumers of popular culture leading to a sharing of characteristics with hyper-real religions.
3. Casual consumers of popular culture leading to a sharing of characteristics with hyper-real religions.
4. Religious and secular actors opposed to the consumption of popular culture leading to the practice of, or to the sharing of characteristics with, hyper-real religions.
Download the paper (217kb PDF)
“Xtreme Community” is a video series and study guide designed for youth and young adults. Produced by the Uniting Church, South Australia, it is designed to help new groups start up by focusing on what makes a small group work.
Details can be found at Growing Disciples, a website hosted by the Uniting Church SA.
Here’s session 4 of the youth worker/leader training from NCYC 2011 run by Craig Mitchell and Duncan MacLeod.
Session Four at NCYC looked at media, communication and technology in the lives of young people. We had some equipment problems (ha!), so this summary covers what we did and some of what we didnt do!
Quotes about Media & Technology
We discussed a range of quotes about media & technology. Here is a selection:
Postmoderns are not looking for information about God. We are suffering from an information overload. (Michael Slaughter)
A computer on every desk and in every home. It will be more than an object you carry or an application you purchase. It will be your passport into a new, mediated way of life. (Bill Gates)
Electronic media are a life or death issue for the church because electronic media are the language of our culture. (Michael Slaughter)
Cyberculture is so focused on the here and now that it implicitly rejects the human need for a long-term vision, let alone a moral compass. (Quentin Schultze)
Every member of society, including every child, will have more information easily at hand than anyone has today. I believe that just the availability of information will spark the curiosity and imagination of many. Education will become a very individual matter. (Bill Gates)
There is a sense… in which the cultural needs of each generation are really quite similar. Every generation needs to hear the good news that God is with us in the cultural medium of its own language-of-the-heart. (Daniel Benedict & Craig Miller)
Information technology becomes a means of manipulating the world to get what we want. (Quentin Schultze)
`See’ not `read’ is the word for this generation. (Michael Slaughter)
A house is an intimate companion or, in the words of the great twentieth-century architect Le Corbusier, ‘a machine for living in.’ … By explicitly indicating allowable interruptions, you will be able to re-establish your home – or anywhere you choose – as your sanctuary. (Bill Gates)
Cyber is the New Sex
We showed one of the Coronet films “How Popular Are You?” from archive.org
We explored the idea that adult concerns about young people’s autonomy, sexuality and productivity are now focused on their use of electronic media & communication technologies.
Here’s the third youth worker/leader training session from NCYC 2011, led by Duncan MacLeod and Craig Mitchell.
The third professional development Bible Study at NCYC this week focused on a community-faced approach to discipleship.
The workshop began with a conversation starter in small groups focused on the experience of an exiled people in Jeremiah 29:4-14. A group of people find themselves uprooted from their familiar environment and placed within another community. Jeremiah instructs them to work for and pray for the welfare of their new wider community. Small group members used this as the stimulus for talking about their own local context. Each person was invited to draw/write a prayer on a blank piece of A4 paper and to tape it to one of the wire lockers on the side of the room.
We spent some time reflecting on some of the work we need to do help us engage effectively in our communities. In particular we spent time reflecting on our understanding and modeling of relational missional discipleship, and our capacity to partner with others in our community. We used stories from Emerald in Central Queensland, from the Mission Stories DVD, to reflect on the ways we build relationships as an expression of our faith. We drew inspiration from stories from Redcliffe Uniting (Lifelife, Youth Space and Amity Place), Townsville (Stable on the Strand), Blue Care and Maleny Uniting, and Glebe Rd Ipswich (World Vision Kids Hope, Gleaners and Habitat for Humanity). (more…)
Here is Duncan Macleod’s post from NextGens on i January 2011:
Session Two at NCYC focused on generational capacity in congregations, with self awareness as a key focus. The workshop is being run during the Bible Study stream, attended mostly by adult volunteers interested in professional development.
We began with Psalm 139, and a prayer from David Grant’s book, “Grant Us Your Peace”, Chalice Press, 1998. The prayers included this selection:
“Lord God, your probing, your thorough discernment of our being, gives confidence. We are taken deeply seriously, worth the careful examination, valued in spite of, because of all our actions, thoughts, hopes, idiosyncrasies”.
We took a look at the way our values are formed through childhood, through the teenage years, and throughout adulthood. The John Lewis commercial, “Always a Woman”, found online at The Inspiration Room, demonstrated the sense of continuity between our early and later approaches to life. (more…)