Subscribe
Jason Barker is Currently...
Relevance
Posted on Monday, August 13, 2007 at 9:29 AM by Jason Barker
I read an article last week about research on keeping young adults in church. The article emphasized the widely-known fact that teens will stay involved in a church that - among other things - provides teaching that they can directly apply to their lives. There are a number of assertions in the article with which Orthodox Christians would disagree, such as the assertion that worship services should be styled to fit current teen tastes and cultural trends, but we can nonetheless benefit from considering the importance of life-application in Orthodox teaching.
I have previously written about the need for relevant life-application teaching in Bible studies for teens (I've removed the parenthetical citations for this blog):
First and foremost, adolescents in the process of identity formation — i.e., of developing and asserting autonomy — require information that will constructively contribute to this process: they demand that biblical content be demonstrated as relevant to their lives by clarifying significant issues, addressing individual and social problems, and providing a reliable guide to navigation changes in both the larger culture and the constantly changing youth subcultures. Adolescents engage and interpret the Bible from within the context of events and issues in their lives; the changes they are undergoing — or, if they are experiencing foreclosure or identity diffusion, the changes they are avoiding and the defense mechanisms they are employing to avoid these changes — will influence both their interest in the Bible and the message they are currently able and willing (to use Issler and Habermas’ scheme) to comprehend. When motivated to study the Bible for guidance in their developmental issues, adolescents can conclude, in the words of one teenager, “The Bible is something I live by now. It answers every single question, and addresses every problem I've ever had. Maybe not always directly, but with God working in me, I can find the answer"...
Many Christians find the adolescent demand for relevance in biblical study to be in itself unbiblical and antithetical to Christianity; such individuals believe personal application “domesticates” the Bible and desanctifies the gospel message. In reality, however, studying the Bible to answer adolescent concerns and address identity crises is an intrinsically Orthodox activity: “prophetic” biblical interpretation addresses all contemporary situations — including personal, moral and social issues — to provide “the light of the word of God for correction and guidance.” John L. Boojamra addresses this point when he exhorts religious educators to “begin where people are and bring them to where the Church feels they should be... Any aspect of the Church’s life can be taught as typical of the whole, depending on the people with whom one is working. This, however, means selecting those aspects of the Church’s life that suit the people and, at the same time, are faithful to the given of the Church. This is not pandering to the whims of the people and betraying the Gospel; it is taking personhood, process, and community seriously."
At the same time, as I've warned before, we must be careful to avoid distorting Orthodox Christian teaching to pander to the cultural whims of modern youth (or modern adults for that matter). A website creating satirical "motivational posters" for emergent Christians has created a good graphic lampooning a skewed view of true relevance, "RELEVANCE - Tell me what I want to hear or else shut up and go away." Truly relevant teaching tells its listeners two things: truth they need to hear (which isn't, of course, necessarily what they want to hear), and ways in which to live out this truth in their lives.
Posted in Miscellaneous