Pamela Erwin
Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2010, 240 pp., $34.99
One problem with being in this career for 23 years is I occasionally get a swelled head and think I know everything. It is not a career choice that fosters longevity. I’ve learned to ignore the people who say, “When are you going to be a real minister.” I will sit in the back of the room at workshops and think, “Yeah, I learned that my fifth year. What else do you have to teach me?” This attitude does require the occasional dope slap. Now and then, a book or a class comes along and makes me remember there is a deepness to this job. It requires continuous education.
A Critical Approach to Youth Culture just slapped me upside the head. It is a textbook, make no mistake about that. This is not a book you read on Friday to help get ideas for your Sunday meeting. This is a Monday morning with coffee book. Turn off your phone and get away from your computer. It’s time to go back to school.
It would be easy to think you could dismiss this book. Youth culture changes daily, so a book about youth culture must be out of date before it made print. Right? This resource will train you to look at the culture—whatever it is at the moment—and use it to understand the youth in your group. The book is not at all remedial. Those looking for the next variation on “Shuffle Your Buns” will be reaching for the Advil pretty quickly. (I took three.)
You’ll will be studying:
The Ethnography of Youth Culture (Yeah, I had to look that one up, too.)
Exosystem and Mesosystem
The Salience of Religiosity
Etic and Emic
Are you still with me? If you didn’t flake out in those last few lines, then you need this book. You need it because your are dedicated to the idea of getting your youth to know God and are willing to seek out the best ways to make that happen.
Think of it as a coach, teaching you to open your eyes and see, why your group behaves the way it does and how the members should respond to the world around them. It’s more than a How-to-respond-to-X lesson. It’s a workshop in a book that will help you see X coming.
