Teenagers and college-age young adults know all kinds of things others don’t: Cool, unheralded musical artists. Fascinating web sites. Scintillating new books. How? They are so wired into one another – through cell phones, email and instant messaging – that they seem to absorb information through their pores. And it’s clear many are looking for spiritual meaning outside their parents’ tradition.
The new buzzword for reaching out religiously to this group is multimedia – using music, videos, the web, print and more, often all at the same time. The feel is energetic and edgy. The theology ranges from conservative to liberal. Will these efforts help ground this generation in age-old faiths? Will it help them form their own traditions? Time will tell.
Why it matters
Young people may not want information so much as meaning. In most cities, congregations are using multimedia, lights and sound to appeal to “Generation Net.” And ministries and outreach programs using cutting-edge technology are proliferating.
Questions for reporters
• What are congregations in your area doing to attract teenagers and college students? What is edgy and new? What’s working?
• Is religion flavored with hip-hop a trend in your region? What about geek-tinged hipsterism? Or alternative rock, or straight-out pop?
• What religious web sites, webzines, blogs and other multimedia are teens favoring?
• How does the presentation change the message?
National sources
CHRISTIAN
• Cameron Strang is president and founder of Relevant Media Group of Orlando, Fla., which targets 18- to 34-year-old Christians across denominations. He publishes RELEVANT magazine, a daily web site and Relevant Books. Read a June 23, 2004, USA Today story. Contact 407-660-1411, Cameron@relevantmediagroup.com.
• Pastor Rob Bell is featured in the NOOMA series of 10- to 14-minute films on DVD with spiritual teachings aimed at teenagers and college-age adults. Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., meets in a former shopping mall that can seat 3,500. Bell wrote Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2005); Zondervan also is distributing the films. Contact Karen Campbell, 616-698-3246, Karen.campbell@zondervan.com.
• Tommy Kyllonen, who also goes by Urban D., is a hip-hop artist and lead pastor at the Tampa, Fla., Crossover Community Church. The church’s ministry is the hip-hop culture, and worship combines music, dance, visual arts and other media. He has recorded five albums, performs concerts and is writing his first book, about hip-hop and the church. Contact 813-935-8887, urband@flavoralliance.com.
• The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush, an American Baptist minister, is associate dean for religious life at Princeton University. He is the author of Teen Spirit: One World, Many Paths (HCI Teens, 2004) and writes a teen spirituality advice column on Beliefnet.com – “Ask Pastor Paul” – in which he answers teens’ questions on subjects from the spiritual implications of tattooing to abstinence to interfaith dating. Contact 609-258-6245, praushen@princeton.edu.
• The Rev. Kenda Creasy Dean is assistant professor of youth, church and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. A United Methodist minister and parent of two teenagers, she served on the research team for the National Study of Youth and Religion. She is the author of several books on youth and the church, including Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004) and co-author, with Ron Foster, of The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul-Tending for Youth Ministry (Upper Room Books, 1998). Contact kenda.dean@ptsem.edu.
• Chap Clark is an associate professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and directs the seminary’s youth ministry programs. Clark immersed himself in the life of a public high school in Los Angeles County, working as a substitute teacher and conducting ethnographic research there, and convened discussion groups with teenagers around the country for his book Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Baker Academic, 2004). Contact 626-584-5608, cclark@fuller.edu.
• T. Suzanne Eller of Muskogee, Okla., an author and speaker with a ministry to teens and college students, has a blog and a web site. Contact tseller@daretobelieve.org.
• Laurie Whaley Roe is vice president of Thomas Nelson’s Nelson Bibles, which publishes youth-oriented BibleZines, including REVOLVE, the complete New Testament for teenage girls in a magazine format, and REAL, a similar product for the hip-hop crowd. Contact Cameron Conant, 615-902-1284, cconant@thomasnelson.com.
• Jennifer Swanson is spokeswoman for LIFE TEEN INC., an international Catholic youth ministry that produces videos and a web site. Contact 480-820-7001, jswanson@lifeteen.com.
JEWISH
• Jewish rocker Rick Recht of St. Louis considers himself an educator as well as a musician. He plays more than 125 concerts a year, has recorded four Jewish albums and one secular one, and is at work on a movie and web sites. Contact 314-991-0909, rick@rickrecht.com.
• Yosef I. Abramowitz is publisher of JVibe, a new magazine for Jewish youth that is produced by Jewish Family & Life Media. Abramowitz is founder and CEO of JFL. Contact 617-581-6804, yabramowitz@jflmedia.com, or Michelle Cove, editor, mcove@jflmedia.com.
• Amy L. Sales is associate director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. She has studied Jewish life on college campuses and the experience of teenagers at Jewish summer camps. She is co-author of How Goodly Are Thy Tents: Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences (University Press of New England, 2003), for which she visited 20 summer camps in 2000. Contact 781-736-2066, sales@brandeis.edu.
• Rabbi Hayim Herring is director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), an organization based in Minneapolis that works to renew the American Jewish community through congregational innovation and leadership development. He helped conduct a study called “Shema: Listening to Jewish Youth,” examining the attitudes of Jewish teens in the Minneapolis area toward Judaism. Contact 612-381-8840, hherring@starsynagogue.org.
MUSLIM
• Abdul Malik Mujahid is founder and president of Soundvision.com, a web-based resource for Muslims with a teen section and multimedia products. Read a 2000 Dallas Morning News article posted by Soundvision. Contact 708-430-1255 ext. 405.
• Amir Hussain is a professor in the religious studies department at California State University, Northridge, but during the 2005-06 academic year will be teaching in the theological studies department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Hussain has taught courses about contemporary Islam and about religion and film, and can speak about the role that faith plays in the lives of Muslim young people. Contact 818-677-2741, amir.hussain@csun.edu.
• Ted Swedenburg is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He has done research on popular music, including Islamic and Middle Eastern influences on rap and hip-hop music, and he hosts a world music show on the radio. He can speak about the impact that Muslim young people are having in the world of music. Contact 479-575-6624, tsweden@uark.edu.
• Visit the web site for the Muslim Students Association, which lists chapters on college campuses across the country.
BUDDHIST
• Diana Winston of Berkeley, Calif., teaches meditation at Buddhist retreat centers and to classes of teenagers. She also leads retreats for Buddhist teenagers and young adults and is the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens (Perigree Books, 2003). Contact 510-527-4729, info@wide-awake.org, or through Adrienne Biggs, 415-453-4474, Adrienne@biggspublicity.com.
• Buddhist Gateway has a teen area. Contact Press-Ads@Faith.com.
HINDU
• Hindu Gateway has a teen area. Contact Press-Ads@Faith.com.
• Visit the web site for the Hindu Students Council, which links to chapters at colleges across the country.
NEW AGE/NEOPAGAN
• Sarah M. Pike is an associate professor of religious studies at California State University in Chico. She has written about New Age and neopagan religions and is working on a project about teens on the margins of American culture. Contact 530-898-6341, spike@csuchico.edu.
ACADEMICS
• Lynn Schofield Clark is an assistant research professor in the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder and directs the Teens and the New Media@Home Project, which studies how young people use new media technologies. She also is the author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media and the Supernatural (Oxford University Press, 2003), which is based on extensive interviews with U.S. teens and considers how presentations of the supernatural in the media help shape the religious views of teenagers. Contact 303-735-5632, Lynn.Clark@Colorado.edu.
• Christian Smith is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-principal investigator for the Youth and Religion Project. He is the author, with Melinda Lundquist Denton, of a new book summarizing major findings from that study called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005). Contact 919-962-4524, cssmith@email.unc.edu.
Background
WEBZINES, ETC.
• Focus on the Family publishes Brio for teenage girls and Breakaway for teenage guys, and broadcasts a live call-in radio show, Life on the Edge.
• Christianity Today publishes Campus Life, which is available by email subscription.
• Beliefnet hosts teen discussion boards about a range of faiths.
POLLS AND SURVEYS
• See summaries of research findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion, funded by the Lilly Endowment and based at the University of North Carolina. From July 2002 to March 2003, the researchers conducted a random nationwide telephone survey of 3,370 teenagers ages 13 to 17 and their parents, and followed that up with 267 in-depth interviews with teenagers in 45 states. Among the findings: Teenagers seemed remarkably conventional in their religious views, and there wasn’t much evidence of “spiritual seeking” or exploration. But even teenagers who considered religion important were not very articulate in talking about their faith – they have a hard time explaining what they believe.
• Read the preliminary results of a national study of spirituality in higher education. A pilot survey released in 2004 found strong interest in spiritual matters among third-year college students. It is part of a broader, longer-term study funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles, included the responses of 3,680 undergraduates at 46 diverse colleges and universities from around the country.
• “OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era” — a survey of almost 1,400 youth ages 18 to 25 that included Christian, Muslim and Jewish youth and a mix of races and ethnicities – explored attitudes about faith, politics and volunteer service. It found a “strong and intimate” connection between religious faith and volunteerism. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed volunteered in their community in the last year, but only 14 percent did so regularly. The 2004 survey was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
WEB SITES
• A 2003 ReligionLink tip on teens and the Internet includes national and regional interview sources.
• Learn about a road trip that a group of reporters ages 11 to 16 took in 2002 to talk to teenagers across the country about spirituality – interviewing, among others, Maggie, a Buddhist teen in Texas, about reincarnation; Vidisha, an 11-year-old in Nashville, about Hindu prayer; and Alexis, a 15-year-old Baptist-turned-Catholic from New Orleans who was the only person in her family who went to church. The trip was organized by Children’s PressLine, a media organization in New York City that trains young reporters.
• The Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project, based at San Francisco Theological Seminary and funded by the Lilly Endowment, worked with more than a dozen Christian congregations – Baptist, Catholic, Mennonite, Lutheran and others – as well as youth ministry leaders to explore contemplative practices such as centering prayer and walking labyrinths in working with teenagers.
• The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding is a nonprofit group that tries to help parents and other adults better understand youth culture.
ARTICLES
• Read a 2004 Religion News Service story explaining some of the research findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion. It’s posted by Beliefnet.
• Read a Sept. 3, 2004, Associated Press story about Seventeen magazine starting a new section on faith. It’s posted by TheFashionSpot.com.
• Read a Sept. 26, 2004, Indianapolis Star story (posted by ReligionNewsBlog.com) about techniques congregations are using – from basketball to fire pits – to try to draw more teenagers to worship.
• Read an Associated Press story about the religious views of the “millennial generation” (born starting in 1982). It’s posted by Beliefnet.com.
• Read a June 2002 story from AsianWeek.com about Generation M, an annual interfaith conference organized by Muslim youth that uses hip-hop music and poetry to teach people about Islam and tolerance.
• Read an account of a Hindu Global Youth Conference held in Washington, D.C., in 2000 and interviews with teenagers who attended a Hindu summer camp outside Chicago.
Regional sources
IN THE NORTHEAST
• Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook is an associate professor of feminist pastoral theology and church history at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. She is a former director of young people’s ministries at the Episcopal Church Center and is the editor of Disorganized Religion: The Evangelization of Youth and Young Adults (Cowley Publications, 1998). Contact 617-868-3450 ext. 544, skujawa@eds.edu.
• Dean Borgman is professor of youth ministries at Gordon-Conwell seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. He’s also founder and director of the Center for Youth Studies there and worked for years with Young Life, including with at-risk and troubled youth. He is the author of Hear My Story: Understanding the Cries of Troubled Youth (Hendrickson Publishers, 2003). Contact 978-468-7111, dborgman@gcts.edu.
IN THE EAST
• The Rev. Stephen W. Pogue and rap artist Kurtis Blow founded and lead The Hip Hop Church, which holds services at Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion Church in New York City. Contact SPogue@hiphopchurch.org, KBlow@hiphopchurch.org.
• Lisa Miller is associate professor of psychology and education at Teachers College at Columbia University. She has studied the spiritual development of adolescents and has found that having a spiritual grounding – believing in a higher power – can help teenagers deal with crises, resist peer pressure and stay away from drugs and alcohol. Her work includes extensive study of adolescent spiritual experience and the ways in which family, community and policy can support spiritual development in young people. Contact 212-678-3852, lfm14@columbia.edu.
• William D. Dinges is associate professor of religious studies in the school of theology and religious studies at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is a co-author of Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) and can speak about the views of teenagers and young adults toward the Catholic Church. Contact 202-319-6890, Dinges@cua.edu.
• Rabbi Eve Rudin is director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Kutz Camp, the national teen leadership program for the Union in New York. The Union’s youth program offers leadership and social action programs (called Mitzvah Corps), summer camps and opportunities for Jewish teenagers to travel to Israel and connect online. Contact 212-650-4070 or 845-987-6300, erudin@urj.org.
• Jon Pahl is an associate professor of church history at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadephia. He has written about young people and violence and is the author of Youth Ministry in Modern America: 1930 to the Present (Hendrickson Publishers, 2000), which examines youth ministry in four traditions: Lutheran, evangelical Protestant, Roman Catholic and African-American. Contact 215-248-4616, jpahl@ltsp.edu.
• Chris Boyatzis is a developmental psychologist who teaches at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. He has studied religious and spiritual development in families, including how teenagers talk to their parents about religion. He’s also worked in an area he calls “God in the Bod,” looking at how young people’s spirituality affects their body image and tendency toward eating disorders. Contact 570-577-1696, boyatzis@bucknell.edu.
• Read a 2004 Episcopal News Service article (scroll down for article) about a hip-hop mass in the Bronx.
IN THE SOUTHEAST
• David F. White is visiting assistant professor of youth and education at Candler School of Theology at Emory University and director of research for the school’s Youth Ministry Initiative. He’s done research on alternative approaches to youth ministry. Contact 404-727-9315, dwhite7@emory.edu.
• Frederick Edie, a United Methodist minister, is assistant professor of the practice of Christian education at Duke Divinity School. He also is director of the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation, which each summer invites high school students to live for two weeks in an intentional Christian community at Duke. Contact 919-660-3540, fedie@div.duke.edu.
• Neil Howe is a historian and economist who writes about generational issues. He is co-author, with William Strauss, of Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (Vintage, 2000). Howe is host of FourthTurning.com, an online forum on generations and history. Howe and Strauss say Millennials, born in the 1980s and 1990s, are optimistic, positive and engaged – they want to make a difference. Contact through his speaking and publishing company in Virginia, LifeCourse Associates, or howe@lifecourse.com.
• Rodger Nishioka is an associate professor of Christian education at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. He is the former coordinator of youth and young adult ministries for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Nishioka can talk about why many young people are absent from the pews and about what young people want church to be like. Contact 404-687-4659, NishiokaR@CTSnet.edu.
• Steve Matthews is youth minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Va. St. Paul’s has been one of the partner congregations in the Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Contact 804-643-1219, smatthews@stpaus-episcopal.org.
IN THE SOUTH
• John P. Bartkowski is a professor of sociology at Mississippi State University. He has conducted research on religion and families and can speak about how teens’ religiosity affects their involvement in risky behaviors, such as using drugs, and their social relationships, particularly dating patterns. He is working on a book about the distinctive religiosity of teenagers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Contact 662-325-8621, bartkowski@soc.msstate.edu.
• Carol Lytch works at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary as coordinator of a Fund for Theological Education program (with funding from the Lilly Endowment) that gives high school students opportunities to learn about religion and theology. She also is an adjunct faculty member in practical theology and the author of Choosing Church: What Makes a Difference for Teens (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004). Contact 502-992-5434, carol.lytch@mindspring.com.
• Read a June 11, 2005, Courier-Journal article about a hip-hop service.
IN THE MIDWEST
• Pastor Phil Jackson conducts twice-monthly hip-hop worship services at Lawndale Community Church in Chicago.
Read a Feb. 18, 2005, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly cover story. Contact 773-762-6389.
• Andrew Careaga is the author of eMinistry: Connecting With the Net Generation (Kregel, 2001). He is manager of public relations for the University of Missouri-Rolla and a volunteer youth pastor at Salem Faith Assembly Church in Salem, Mo. Contact andrew@eministryonline.com.
• Paul Hill, formerly a Lutheran parish pastor, is director of the Center for Youth Ministries at Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. He has been a church camp director and helped plan national events for Lutheran youth, and specializes in ministry with teenage boys. Contact 563-589-0341, phill@wartburgseminary.edu.
• Rhys H. Williams is a professor of sociology and head of the sociology department at the University of Cincinnati. He is doing research on immigrant college students, including their attitudes toward religion and spirituality. He is also co-director of the Youth and Religion Project, funded by the Lilly Endowment, which did field work in the Chicago area to see how religious institutions can meet the needs of teenagers and young adults. Contact 513-556-4717, rhys.Williams@uc.edu.
• Jeffrey Kaster is an adjunct professor of theology and directs the Youth in Theology and Ministry Program at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. – a program that many of the teenagers who attend it call “God camp.” Students come each summer to learn more about theology and the Catholic faith. Kaster also has written about what Catholic teens need to know about sex and homosexuality. Contact 320-363-2620, jkaster@csbsju.edu.
• Roland D. Martinson is a professor of children, youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. He has written books on parenting and youth ministry and has been involved with the Faith Factors project, a 10-year longitudinal study of the factors that lead young people who are Lutheran and Baptist to remain involved with their faith traditions. Contact 651-641-3207, rmartins@luthersem.edu.
• R. Stephen Warner is professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is co-director of The Youth & Religion Project, funded by the Lilly Endowment. The first phase of that project involved talking to college students of different religious, ethnic and racial backgrounds about their experiences with their religions. A second phase involved observations of youth-oriented events in more than 50 Chicago-area religious institutions. In the third phase, researchers accompanied Christian, Hindu and Muslim families to their religious institutions to understand better how these institutions served their needs. Contact 312-996-0990, rswarner@uic.edu.
• The Rev. Anthony Vinson is director of the Youth Liturgical Leadership Program offered by the Office of Vocational Development at the St. Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Ind. The program works with high school and college students and sponsors “One Bread One Cup” conferences to bring Catholic teenagers to a deeper understanding of the liturgy, and created an online community. Contact 800-634-6723, vocdev@stmeinrad.edu.
IN THE SOUTHWEST
• Tex Sample is coordinator of The Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles, in Goodyear, Ariz., and the author of Powerful Persuasion: Multimedia Witness in Christian Worship (Abingdon Press, June 2005). Contact 623-536-7976, texsample@cox.net.
• Wesley O. Black, professor of student ministries at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has written about diverse approaches to youth ministry and can talk about what works – and doesn’t work – in ministering to teenagers in churches. Contact 817-923-1921 ext. 6240, wblack@swbts.edu.
• Mark Regnerus is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has done research on the influence of religion on adolescent behavior, including the influence of teens’ religiosity on delinquency, whether they stay in school and what they think about sex, for example. Contact 512-232-6307, regnerus@prc.utexas.edu.
• Patricia Howery Davis is an associate professor of pastoral care and counseling at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She is the author of Beyond Nice: The Spiritual Wisdom of Adolescent Girls (Fortress Press, 2000). Contact 214-768-2167, pdavis@smu.edu.
• Fred Lynch, a youth evangelist, is the former youth minister at City on a Hill, a nondenominational congregation in Albuquerque, N.M., and founder of UrbNet, the Urban Youth Workers Network. Contact 505-514-9955, flynch@gmail.com.
IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST
• Richard W. Flory is an associate professor of sociology at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and a research associate at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He has done research on adolescents and religion, including the importance of rituals for young people. He is co-editor, along with Donald E. Miller, of GenX Religion (Routledge, 2000) and in 2003 helped create an interactive, multimedia art display about young people finding faith. Contact 562-903-4846, Richard.flory@biola.edu.
• Mark Yaconelli is director of the Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project at San Francisco Theological Seminary. He has worked to develop a contemplative approach to youth ministry and can talk about adolescent spiritual development, youth ministry practices within mainline churches and teenagers’ responses to ancient disciplines such as silence and solitude, as well as contemplative practices such as lectio divina and centering prayer. Yaconelli says the question he’s heard young people ask most is: Do you know how to stay alive? Contact 415-451-2879, ymsp@sfts.edu.
• Kara Powell is an assistant professor in youth and family ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and executive director of the seminary’s Center for Youth and Family Ministry. She has worked in college and youth ministry and is co-author of the youth curriculum “Good Sex” as well as “Help! I’m a Woman in Youth Ministry.” Contact 626-584-5547, kpowell@fuller.edu.
• V. Bailey Gillespie is a professor of theology and Christian personality and executive director of The John Hancock Center for Youth and Family Ministry at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. He can talk about Valuegenesis, a major study of Seventh-day Adventist youth in North America. Contact 951-785-2000 ext. 2256, bgillesp@lasierra.edu.
