My cultural observations and theological reflections reveal that digital platforms have proven to hold tremendous power in shaping adolescent stories about self and others. Evidence supports that prolonged screentime overstimulates the mind and emotions while denying the body rest. Social media by design has a goal to manipulate its followers. In this counterfeit story, teens become consumers who are grafted into the narratives of others and never face the reality of their own struggles. Social media offers a brief escape from reality but like any addiction, it feeds rather than heals human brokenness.
Good News Amidst Brokenness
The unprecedented rise in anxiety and depression among adolescents suggests they need an alternative story that addresses human fragility and brokenness and one that can also offer healing and wholeness. The desperation facing teenagers requires the healing power of a crucified God who identifies with the hurting. The gospel story is one that anchors love and truth in a person who triumphed over all aspects of darkness having severed the chains that bind humanity. The gospel of peace is a story filled with hope and new beginnings and by sharing life with teenagers and learning their language, I am opening a future with a new imagination of what God’s manifest reign may look like among us.
Young people are in distress. Suicides among rural youth are more than twice the rate of teens living in urban settings and this gap is widening among females. [1] One in two adolescents suffers from anxiety and depression and the numbers continue to climb.[2] In addition, death by gunshot has surpassed vehicle crashes to become the number one killer of American youth in recorded history.[3] Three young people who regularly attended the teen center committed suicide and two of those deaths were by firearm. With this evidence, I am challenged to view the gospel of peace as the necessary starting place in my conversation and service to adolescents in anguish.
I understand the gospel to be the story of God’s unfolding kingdom program, instituted with power through Jesus’s death for sins, resurrection, and exaltation as King. Through the gospel of peace, and the inauguration of his kingdom on earth, God is reconciling humanity to himself while making it possible for believers to live at peace with others (Eph 2). The gospel has been God’s intent from the beginning and peace is a prominent descriptor.
Many young people do not believe God cares about them. Therefore, communicating the richness of shalom/peace requires the message to be comprehensible. Charles Kraft, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Intercultural Communication in the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, suggests in Issues in Contextualization, “communication is not the transmission of meaning…Meanings are not transmittable, not transferable. Only messages are transmittable, and meanings are not in the message; they are in the message-users.”[4]
Here, the interpretation of my message by others supersedes my intended meaning. If I am misunderstood, I must learn where I miscommunicated and confront my failure. Humility in this endeavor is absolute. Kraft has his critics, but hopefully we agree that what I do and what I say must align. That is, if I tell a person who has physical needs that God loves them but I do nothing to help them in their circumstances, then I have failed to love them. My actions authenticate my values.
Imagining a Gospel-Oriented Incarnational Mission
Incarnating the Gospel Using the Contextual Theological Method
I never understood the phrase incarnational ministry during the first twenty-five years of ministry. Therefore, to be incarnational was a vague concept. I have learned that to be incarnational is to recognize and live as one sent to proclaim the gospel and to love others by being present with them. Jesus was sent by the Father and He sends us as his extensions of grace, mercy, and love into the world.
The incarnational approach to ministry is person-focused,[5] therefore, to open space in the teenage culture means imitating Jesus who became present in the lives of broken people. Jesus’ life and ministry serve as the believer’s example of how to love God and our neighbor (Matt 22:37-39). The issue is not merely whom I am called to love, but how my neighbor receives love. The appropriate expression of love is one that those I am serving will interpret as love”[6]
The presence of God and the power of the Spirit are necessary for the gospel of peace to be realized. Missional leader Al Tizon, in Whole & Reconciled, describes a proper kingdom vision when he writes, “God has called the church that formed in Jesus’s name to testify to that same shalom—the whole and reconciled gospel—by the power of the Spirit.”[7] God is missional and always working toward reconciliation and therefore, my task is to discern where he is at work and to join him there.
God extends himself into the broken places and beckons his people to participate in his sufferings by participating with other's sufferings. And this is fueled by the hope that comes through the power and promise of resurrection life (Rom 1:16; 1 Cor 15; Phil 3:10). “God’s incomparably great power for us who believe is the same power that he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms (Eph 1:20).”
Godly power is a participatory power that shapes an imagination for God’s ongoing mission as his people take the presence of Jesus to the lives of others. Godly power is not power over but is power with. Every godly attempt to be missional must submit to the mission of God, and God’s mission is to bring to the world his good news of reconciliation, redemption, and resurrection established through Jesus. God’s mission for his people is to participate with him—as an embodied witness in what he is doing. To discover where God is working ahead of us will be accomplished by manifesting an incarnational presence in our neighborhood. It is here that we will learn where God is at work so that we may join him.
[1] Emily Caldwell, “Ohio State University study for Science Daily.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150309123954.htm (accessed 4/18/22), See also, Time Magazine: https://time.com/3737574/suicide-urban-rural/ (accessed 3/20/22), New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/small-towns-face-rising-suicide-rates.html (accessed 3/20/22)
[2] Center for Disease Control. “Annual Report Preliminary Wisconsin 2019 YRBS Results (High School Version) https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/sspw/pdf/YRBS_2019_Summary_Report_DPI_Web_Version.pdf (accessed 4/20/2022).
[3] Aria Bendix, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/guns-leading-cause-death-children-teens-rcna25443?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma&s=07&fbclid=IwAR3SIz09Rz4qHn8_OraWI5NnWKXLdFtWsuZX5xcVtYuZJ7rRC3QA4Pre4v8 (accessed 4/22/22).
[4] Charles H. Kraft, Issues in Contextualization (Littleton: William Carey Library, 2016)31.
[5] Charles Kraft, 33.
[6] Charles Kraft, 37. His use of insider refers to those within a given culture. “Contextualization is the expression of Christian meanings and commitment in the cultural forms of the cultural insiders,” 73. See also his preface where the meaning of insider is elaborated.
[7] Al Tizon, Whole & Reconciled, Gospel, Church, and Mission in a Fractured World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018)80.