The following article is reprinted from the November 2003 issue of Tri-State Voice.

From Irrelevant to Revolutionary: a 21st Century Continental Congress

It's all about relationships. So said fifty youth workers from around the country who convened at the National Leadership Forum in New York City last month to explore why evangelical Christianity is increasingly irrelevant to urban youth culture.

Teens don't just think we're out of touch and condescending (although those are very real issues). They don't just find us corny or passé, with music, movies, and literature that lack production value (more real issues). More fundamentally, they've concluded that we simply don't care, at least not enough to meet them on their terms.

The result is an era when 86% of teens nationwide claim to be Christian but only 4% are evangelicals and only 6% believe in absolute moral truth; when 33% believe that "most adult Christians are hypocrites"; and when 46% of high school students are actively seeking love in sex, 33% in the last three months.

The determined pursuit of meaningful relationships: that's the key to unlocking the mysteries of youth culture and teenage angst? Hardly profound, but very hard. Relationships require work and consume time and resources, especially if they are to produce the kind of authenticity that teens crave. But it's in the transparency and relevance of genuine relationships - with self, parents, family, teachers, peers, and mentors - that ineffective, status quo responses to prevailing youth problems will give way to something transformative, substantial, and real.

The consensus among the Forum's Youth Track participants - youth workers representing diverse geographies, constituencies, and ministry traditions who shared in common an unrelenting desire to see cliché Christianity replaced by an authentic variety - was that too often evangelical youth ministry ends at lip service. We employ the rhetoric of outreach without the resource, the language of revolution without the commitment of time or the cultivation of relationships that will make it possible.

How then should such relationships be facilitated? The Track's mandate from Mission America and Concerts of Prayer, the Forum hosts, was both to define the problems and propose strategies for change. For ten unconventional hours of passionate prayer, discussion, debate, and strategizing, minus the usual trappings of a "how to" conference (no workshops, seminars, or keynote speeches), the delegates grappled with this question and unanimously arrived at four essential conclusions.

First, established ministries and leaders must replace the popular myth that "young people are the future" with the truth that they are "the church of today who hold the future." All too common in our churches, the myth produces well-meaning adults who might intend to inspire future calling, but do so at the expense of present purpose. It provides cover for condescension, and directly contradicts Biblical precedent, including Paul's admonition to Timothy to let no one look down on young people.

Second, the Church must commit to empower youth leadership and integrate youth ministry into the life of the larger Church body. Too often, youth ministry is viewed as a stepping stone to something more, with youth groups ghettoized into junior congregations with de facto junior holy spirits. Even worse are senior leaders who treat youth workers as threatening, and senior congregants who disdain them as "too young." Genuine empowerment requires an investment of resources and a willingness to release authority to people on the frontlines who engage teens everyday, especially peer leaders, as well as grace to cover their failures.

Third, evangelicals must embrace and facilitate meaningful mentoring relationships that are lifestyle-based, not programmatic. Too many spiritual Joshua's are leading people into the Promised Land without preparing a new generation of leadership for sustainable success. Further, at a time when 19.6 million kids live without dads in their homes (and 23.2 million live in homes without either or both parents), we must follow our heavenly Father's lead in becoming fathers to the fatherless, while maintaining accountability and integrity.

Fourth, the Church must resolve, in no uncertain terms, to engage the culture holistically. The question must no longer be "should we engage," but "how do we engage," recognizing that Jay-Z, Britney, and MTV exert more influence on teen values than the church does because they have become better fishers of men than we are. As perverse as some of their songs and lifestyles might be, they nevertheless identify with kids' pain and address their needs in language they understand and a forum they frequent, while we have evacuated the forum in order to entertain ourselves.

Finally, the Youth Track looked to history for perspective on how to actually produce revolutionary results. In 1774, our nation's original freedom fighters met in the first of a series of Continental Congresses to coordinate a collective response to tyranny. Rather than presume to be experts, they confronted new and historic challenges with outside the box thinking, audacious resolve, and a determination that ultimately declared independence in 1776 and birthed the grandest socio-political experiment in history.

So too the Track participants recognized that their time together might well be a 21st Century catalyst for a potentially grand spiritual experiment. They covenanted to collectively educate the larger evangelical community of their findings, and to be available to serve Mission America's constituency and other ministries who desire to move beyond the verbiage of revolution.

- Jeremy Del Rio, Esq., executive director of Generation Xcel and youth pastor at Abounding Grace, chaired the design team for the Youth Track. For more information on the Youth Track's outcomes and next steps, email: info@generationxcel.com.

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Additional articles by Jeremy available online:

Why I Support the Billy Graham Crusade (and Pray You Do Too) (March 2005)
Things We Don't Talk About (February 2005)
X Factor: Redefining a Generation for Xmas (December 2004)
An Embarrassment of Riches: Economic Injustice and the Church (November 2004)
Wake Up from Slumber: Civic Hypocrisy and Voter Dysfunction (October 2004)
A Letter to My Son on Father's Day (June 2004)
Fight of the Fatherless (May 2004)
Let's Talk about Sex (April 2004)
Beyond Passion: Living a Crucified Life (March 2004)
Losing Races: A Dream Deferred (February 2004)
A Crisis of Zeroes: Engaging NYC Public Schools (September 2003)
WWJD (What Would Jay-Z Do): Engaging Youth Culture (August 2003)
The Joshua Paradox: Establishing a Meaningful Mentorship Model (July 2003)
Young People are NOT the Future: Embracing the YW8? (Why Wait?)™ Generation (June 2003)
Thanks to Heroes (September 2002)
A View from Ground Zero (September 2001)
By Any Means Necessary: Free Hot Dogs and Youth Evangelism (July 2001)
Ground Zero Photos (Photography)

Visit HERE for more Xcel Original Writings.