If you had just accepted a call to serve as a missionary to Papua New Guinea, you would be advised to learn everything you could about the culture of the people to whom you were going to minister. For committed youth leaders, the same advice holds true: we must learn everything we can about the young people we are to serve.

Mark Senter, in describing youth ministry, states that ministry to young people “begins when adults find a comfortable way of entering a student’s world.” This is particularly true when it comes to youth culture. Just like our missionary to Papua New Guinea, we do not have to accept all areas of the culture of those to whom we would minister; however, we should not be surprised by what we might hear or experience. If young people are to be comfortable in talking with us, we must be open to the realities of their world.

Five Clearly Visible Revealers of Culture

1. Clothes
2. Music
3. Language, especially popular phrases
4. Hair styles
5. Heroes

Each of us belong to a variety of subcultures (our particular ethnic makeup, our church affiliation, our age-category, etc.). Youth culture, however, tends to be a global culture that intentionally challenges adults, as well as many of the institutions they care about, and personally identify with (i.e. the church).

In North America youth culture is multifaceted. One of the best places to experience the culture is at the local mall as crowds of young people gather to hang out, eat, watch movies, and walk through the shops that want their business. (Note: young people are primary consumers of entertainment and related areas – a fact easily noticeable by looking at the advertising campaigns of those who would sway the youth market.)


Five Other Places to Experience Youth Culture

1. MTV. No longer do young people simply listen to music – they experience it in a variety of visual ways.
2. A current issue of VIBE or SPIN magazines.
3. Observing the rows and rows of video games at the local K-Mart.
4. A local high school. Sit in your car, across the street from the school, either first thing in the morning when kids are arriving, or when school is getting out for the day.
5. Sitting down with a young person and asking some thoughtful questions.

It doesn’t take long to note that the postmodern values (everything is relative,…) that scream from the well-oiled and all-entertaining media machine directed at our young people are often in direct opposition to the Christian values we would share with them.

H. Richard Niebuhr once challenged the church with his view of Christ Transforming Culture by suggesting that the church is to take what the culture offers and transform it into something usable for the sharing of the gospel. The challenge we face as youth leaders is to find appropriate ways to encourage our young to take those things from the culture that can be used to promote God’s kingdom, and to discard those things which can only hurt God’s cause or His people.

Jesus’ involvement in the culture of His day likewise challenges us as we are confronted by our own discomfort with particular areas of youth culture. His example demands that we find new ways to reach the young people of our community who do not yet know Him as we do, amid their wide-range of life experiences and situations.

Mark Senter, The Complete Book of Youth Ministry (Waco, TX: Word, 1989), 10.


“From: ABZ’s of Adventist Youth Ministry”
© 2000 John Hancock Center for Youth and Family Ministry
Permission to copy for use in the local congregation or group.