My Response To "There's No Such Thing as Youth Culture."

I loved this post. I've also thought about it off and on today since I've read what David wrote, and here's my thoughts in a nutshell. One definition of culture I found on dictionary.com is "the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group." I guess you could argue that there is a youth culture but here's what I've found in my short 8 years in student minsitry. Youth Culture is just the culture you're in.

Since I've moved to Dallas, I've noticed that the culture here is more fast paced than any place I've ever lived, people are more scheduled than I've ever seen, and sabbath is hard to come by. That's the culture here, and our students are living in it. I wouldn't call that youth culture, I would just call that our culture here in Dallas. I wouldn't even call Halo, Facebook, or text messaging specifically youth culture because I know tons of parents who are on Facebook, and lots of dads that love Halo (and they're pretty good at it). And to spend a lot of time dividing things up into subcultures like cutters, emo, jocks, and band geeks is, I agree, a waste of time.

Every week I see kids that are cutters that play sports, and somehow manage to play in the band or do drama. What do you do with that? What subculture is that? Yesterday I had a home schooler tell me that he had a knife pulled on him at his homeschool co-op. That's not what I would call home school culture. That's why I agree with David when he says that our students are "undefineable." And all of these kids can come together regardless of what they're like. It's because every single person was created to have relationships with other people. Regardless of whether they're a Christian or not. Our students are quick to see past differences because God has put a passion in them to get to know others. So if they're all hanging out with each other, do we really have jocks and chess club champions? I don't think so, but I'm going to stop wasting time talking about culture, and go build relationships with our students and leaders.