27th April, 2006

MARK SAYERS

We are turning into a massive youth culture. A society in which being young is an attitude not an age. Overall this social wave is going to radically affect how we run and structure our congregations. Planning how we respond now is key for the life and sustainability of many of our churches. But I hear you asking, ‘What has happened to the whole concept of young people growing up getting married, getting a real job and a hair cut when they hit their 20s?’ Welcome to the world of the twixter. In Japan they are called 'freeters', in other countries ‘Peter Pans’, and they are changing our culture.

YOUTH CULTURE? Sayers says that 'twixters' spend most of their money on music, fashion, travel and entertainment and adds that their peers are "everything to them". PICTURE: Jurgen de Clercq (www.sxc.hu)   "What has happened to the whole concept of young people growing up getting married, getting a real job and a hair cut when they hit their 20s? Welcome to the world of the twixter."

Twixters are young adults who range in age from late teens to mid 30s. They move from job to job, see themselves as part of youth culture. Romantic and sexual relationships to them are fluid and non-binding, except when it comes to their connections with their parents, with whom often they share a co-dependant relationship. They spend most of their money on music, fashion, travel and entertainment. Their peers are everything to them, and if they are going to get married at all, they will do it late. For most twixters marriage and children change very little of their desire to be part of youth culture.

Married twixters are terrified by the enormity of their commitment, and many see no moral issue with text-flirting with people who are not their spouses. They have managed to turn child-rearing into a consumer exercise in social competition. Twixter families are not like Leave It To Beaver. Dad is on the Playstation 2 while looking after the kids and mum, like a 'desperate housewife', is pounding the pavement to get back her pre-baby figure to fit into those skin-tight jeans she saw on sale last week. There are already twixters in their 40s and all trends are pointing to the fact that they are not going to grow up...ever!

At the other end of the spectrum are the tweens. Tweens are children aged 8 to 12 who are influenced by teenage culture. Marketers now realize that if you want to sell products to children you need to treat them like teenagers. For example, the teen magazine 17 is now aimed at girls aged 12 to 13.

Children are reaching puberty earlier and experimenting with sex and substances at an earlier age than ever before. Tween’s first memories of pop music are of Britney Spears gyrating to the beat, a suggestive hint of lingerie showing from under her school uniform as she sings "Baby, hit me one more time". This is a generation of children who have seen in their lifetime Tween idol Jessica Simpson transform from virginal Christian music artist to a secular mega star. Christian pop is now gone for Simpson who in her video turns washing a car into a highly erotic act in nothing more than a wet string bikini and a few strategic bubbles. When these girls dream of being a princess it is no longer Snow White or Princess Diana it is amateur porn star, celebrity consumer and heiress Paris Hilton.

But hang on don’t sack the children’s and youth pastors just yet, it gets even bigger! One of Australia’s leading futurists and demographers Bernard Salt is talking about the ages between 43 and 58 as being the new teen years. The middle-aged are ‘living it up’ before they move into their twilight years. They are spending up their kids' inheritances on ipods, plasma TV's and travel. Emptynesters are ironically moving to the same hip inner-city neighbourhoods as their children, not because they want to be close to their kids, but just for the coffee. Companies like Harley Davidson make millions from selling a youthful rebel dream to the middle-aged. Middle-aged divorcees reinvent themselves with hip new outfits and attitudes. The Rolling Stones still sell out stadiums even though they are in their 60s. English demographers are shocked by the amount of people in their fifties taking up smoking, binge drinking and night clubbing. It seems that 30 is the new 20, 40 is the new 30, 60 is the new 50, and so on, you get the picture!

The youth quake is hitting but are we ready? I decided to take of all this information to Wyanand de Kock, Tabor Victoria’s assistant principal who is an expert in the area of faith development. Wynand studied under James W. Fowler whose book Stages of Faith is seen as the classic work on the stages of faith that Christians move in throughout their life. Here are Wynand’s reflections on how we as Christian leaders need to react to the youthification of our culture:

· WAKE UP! We need to acknowledge the changes that are going on. Getting angry about them will change nothing. We need to accept this is the time and place that God has called us to faithfully worship in.

· Faith development is no longer a clear linear process. Today faith development is cyclical. The pattern is this - we encounter a crisis, we struggle with the crisis, we find a way forward and move on having integrated what we have learnt. Then we encounter a crisis and we must start the whole process again. This new pattern must inform how we teach and disciple.

· No longer can we have individual faiths, our faith must be communal. We need other who can help us to resist the cultural pull to revert to adulescence!

· Being ‘with-it’ today has far more cultural pull than being wise. We must be careful not to sacrifice being ‘with-it’ for wisdom.

· We can’t just ask how this youthification of our culture is affecting the people we minister to, we must ask how it affects us. How are we as ministers and leaders being affected by the pressure to remain ‘with-it’ rather than ‘wise’?

Mark Sayers is the director of the Hub, an initiative of Tabor College Victoria with the aim of providing research, commenteray and insight into today's culture and the pertinent issues affecting the lives of young adults.

~ www.hubbubcommentary.blogspot.com/

~ www.tabor.vic.edu.au/

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