1. AGE-GROUPS AND DISCIPLESHIP
The issue to be explored in this section is how discipleship differ from age-group to age-group, ie. from children to teenagers to young adults. This has a bearing on what methods and strategies will be used to disciple them.
A. Children
At first sight, discipleship of children seems to be neglected in local churches. However this is not the case. Both formal and informal opportunities for discipleship are provided through the church: (1) Formal - a number of ministries within the church are aimed at educating children spiritually. The importance of Sunday School classes should not be overlooked. Here a teacher disciples a small group of children through relationship building, role modelling, teaching and guiding. Such contexts are idea for starting to disciple children in the faith. (2) Informal - within the life of a local church community children are discipled informally through the role models who live the faith (unfortunately both good and bad models are available); through their interaction with Christians across various generations and though messages and ministry aimed at them within other age-specific or age-inclusive ministry (such as church services). It must be remembered that the nature of the child is essentially corporate. While formal contexts of discipleship are highly important, the child is learning and growing in the faith through their presence in the faith community. They are spending a lot more time studying the lives of adults within the church than they are studying their Bibles. Adults must be spiritual examples as well as teachers.
With all age groups, faith relates to all aspects of a person's development:
(1) Intellectual Development
Children are primarily concrete thinkers - they have not yet acquired the ability to engage in abstract thinking, even though they may do so at times. This will impact on what leaders seeks to teach children about the Christian life and their relationship with God, as well as the way in which they teach. Stories are particularly effective in teaching the content of the faith to children, but they do need help in applying the message of the stories to their own lives.
(2) Social Development
The life of the child is centered within the family. Although they are starting to move into the world, and engage with friends at school and in the community, their primary sphere of influence is the family. Youth leaders will need to take the family into consideration when discipling children. They should equip Christian parents to disciple their children in the faith (this was the model given for discipleship in Deuteronomy 6), and provide 'surrogate parents' or other discipling opportunities to disciple children of unchurched parents.
(3) Faith Development
According to faith development theory the key emphases in children's faith development are: the home is a key context in awakening and informing faith; they develop an understanding of God by projecting ideas from adults they encounter; they understand and accept what they are taught uncritically; they copy what others believe without making these beliefs their own; and the imagination and rituals are important in faith development.
Youth leaders need to develop ministries which may seem tangential to developing the faith of children, but which are actually at the heart of children's ministry, ie. providing extensive pre-marriage and pre-child-birth counselling; assisting couples to keep their marriages healthy; developing skills for parenting and faith training; helping parents create rituals for their children; providing mentoring relationships between older and younger parents; encouraging parents to model the faith for their children; ensuring all ministries keep the imagination of children alive through music, arts, drama and creative movement; providing nurturing ministries for children during church services rather than babysitting; etc.
Key items for further consideration: How are children invited into membership of the local church? When should children be baptised? What contexts are provided in which children are able to minister? What methods are followed in encouraging children to help fulfil the Great Commission? How are children incorporated into the worship, fellowship and service of the church? What strategies or methods can be developed to equip parents to disciple their children? What strategies or methods can be developed to disciple children from unchurched homes?
B. Teenagers
At the teenager ministry level specific ministries of discipleship are introduced and referred to as growth groups; cell groups; Bible studies; etc. The teenage years are years of difficulty and change as they have embarked on a process of becoming adult. The process includes a move from dependence; through counter-dependence; to independence; and finally to inter-dependence. This journey is at the heart of much of the teenagers' developmental crisis. A number of crises affect the faith of teenagers, including: the pressure from their peers, their alienation from institutions, the process of separating from parents, the rebellion needed to individualise and their search for meaning which often leads to disillusionment. Teenagers feel deeply about their beliefs and values, but often their actions do not give an accurate witness to their beliefs. The energy they expend in coping with the changes brought on by the onset of puberty can often hinder their ability to grow spiritually. The following insights are gleaned from a developmental understanding of adolescence:
(1) Intellectual Development
Teenagers have learned to 'think in a new key'. They have grown from child thinking, which is concrete and accepting, to adolescent thinking which is abstract and questioning. It is now that they begin the process of questioning everything that they have been taught, even those things that they have come to believe. This is a vital process in their development towards adulthood.
(2) Identity Development
To choose Christianity is to choose a new identity for oneself. As James Marcia has written, there are four possible ends to the adolescent's process of identity formation: (a) the Identity Diffused person never experiences an identity crisis and refuses to make a commitment to a particular set of values and beliefs; (b) the Identity Foreclosed person fails to experience an identity crisis but succeeds in making commitments, however, since the individual has never asked "Who am I?" the values to which the commitment is made usually were passed on forcibly, typically by parents; (c) a person in Identity Moratorium is working through the crisis but has yet to make commitments; and (d) the desired state, Identity Achieved, exists when the adolescent has both resolved the crisis and made the commitment to their own chosen identity. Leaders force teenagers into identity foreclosure when they tell teenagers that the faith is absolutely believable and true, but they must not question it. Leaders should provoke critical examination of Christianity within a safe environment.
(3) Social Development
For adolescents peer groups are central. They are in a stage in which their faith is acutely tied to the expectations and judgments of significant others, most of whom are outside the family. Most early adolescents possess faith they have borrowed from their families and are in the process of transferring ownership. At this stage they begin to borrow faith from the peer group to which they most closely relate. The importance of the church youth group is significant in this process.
(4) Faith Development
Teenagers are in the middle of a crucial faith development process. They are probably at the most important stage where they must develop a first-hand faith. They must develop a faith that is not their Sunday School teacher's, their parents' or even their friends', but a faith that is individual and unique to their relationship with God. According to James fowler teenagers must move from stage 3 faith which is second-hand (shaped by interpersonal relationships, ie. synthetic; and shaped by the attitudes of their peer group, ie. conventional) to stage 4 faith which is first-hand (owned by the teenager, ie. individual; and which has been thought through, reflective). Adolescence is a time when faith will probably be questioned because of newfound cognitive abilities (cognitive development), and a need to establish independence from parents (social development). As adolescents reject traditional behaviours and beliefs, youth leaders should support their faith search. The period of questioning is the initial attempt to move beyond borrowed faith to owned and mature faith. In fact, their questioning is a positive act of faith. David Elkind says: "religion changes from an activity (going to church) to a belief system (personal faith), so teenagers reject institutional religion (social) in favour of personal faith (private).
Leaders should expect the following in teenagers: spiritual stops and starts, unsettling adjustments, the need for healthy models, idealistic thinking and criticism, a faith built on emotions, a desire to know right from wrong, a commitment to community, the practise of disciplines, an emerging others-centeredness and a Christ-centred lifestyle. They should not motivate teenagers by guilt, nor equate spirituality with activity, nor expect too much or too little of them. They can help teenagers grow by being a model and a friend, by being aware of their struggles and being ready to serve them without short-circuiting the process. Above all, youth leaders should get youth to think about their faith.
C. Young Adults
A number of different aspects of young adult life affect the way in which they are discipled:
(1) Life Issues
The difference between young adults and teenagers is partly evidenced in the questions that they are needing to answer: What am I going to do with the rest of my life? Who am I going to marry? What will I do for a career? These issues cannot be swept aside, while they are being discipled, rather they should form the backdrop against which they the young adult is disciple.
(2) Life Stages
Young adults represent many more life stages than teenagers, who are mostly in school. They could be studying, working, single, married without children, married with children, divorced, separated, etc. These diverse life stages make a unified approach to ministry among this age group extremely difficult for youth leaders. Discipleship among young adults should probably take place in smaller groups that are aimed at various life stages that young adults pass through.
(3) Faith Development
Young adults are moving through the stage of life where they are testing out their own belief system. They may need to make some adjustments to the values and beliefs they have chosen, but they are no longer held captive to each group of people they socialise with. Their faith is individual and has been reflected on. Although it is owned, they may need help in allowing it to touch every area of their lives. The compartmentalisation of thinking that reached its height in adolescence must be replaced with an integrated way of thinking and living. The way young adults are discipled will differ greatly from that practised among children. While children relate well to formal teaching setting young adults learn more from non-formal relational experiences. Leader should involve them in ministry by provide contexts in which their faith grow while they serve others.
2. GENERATIONS AND DISCIPLESHIP
Writers in the field of generational studies have identified various generations with unique characteristics. For example: (1) Builders - born before 1946; (2) Boomers - born between 1946 and 1964; (3) Busters - born between 1965 and 1983; and (4) Millennials - born after 1983. Two historians, William Strauss and Neil Howe, identified 18 generations of Americans throughout the four centuries of the history of America and discovered that not only did the generations have personalities, but, with the exception of one generation, four generational personality types repeated themselves and followed each other in a fixed order. The four recent generations they identified are: (1) G.I. Generation (1901-1924, age 72 to 95 in 1996), who were moulded by the Great Depression and World War II; (2) Silent Generation (1925-1942, age 54 to 71 in 1996), who followed in the footsteps of the G.I.s; (3) Baby Boomers (1943-1960, age 36 to 53 in 1996), who were marked not only by Woodstock and Vietnam, but also by having to compete with the tremendous numbers in their generation; (4) Generation Xers (1961-1981, age 15 to 35 in 1996), who have grown up in a world of divorce, latchkeys, environmental chaos, and schools where gun shots ring out.
For youth ministry today, two generations are of particular interest:
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