This article first appeared in the May/June 1996 print journal.
An Alternative Bridge Over the Parent-Teen Culture Gap
Go to a seminary and tell the registrar you want to prepare for overseas missionary work, and you’ll probably be told to take classes in cross-cultural communication and contextualizing the gospel.
And seminaries increasingly suggest that if one wants to improve his or her prowess in domestic missions or evangelism, one should take those kinds of classes. The reason: it actually takes a bit of creativity and know-how these days to explain biblical Christianity to residents of America—a country that once may have been heavily influenced by Christian concepts, but no more.
Now comes Walt Mueller, a former youth worker who argues that Christian parents need to use cross-cultural communication when they’re sharing their faith with another hard-to-reach group: their own children.
“We need to equip parents to serve as cross-cultural missionaries so they can pass on their faith to their kids,” says Mueller, president of the Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania-based Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.
Mueller’s mission as a goodwill ambassador between parents and youths has culminated with in-depth studies of popular culture, in which he searches young people’s music and movies for signs of spiritual hunger and struggle. His mission also takes him to churches, where he helps parents understand how they can love their own children. And recently, it’s taken him to public schools, where he helps educators deal with the same questions parents face.
Along the way, Mueller wrote Understanding Today’s Youth Culture (Tyndale, 1994), which won a 1995 Gold Medallion Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.
“We have a niche,” says Mueller of his four-year-old organization. “We’re really working hard to give a Christian perspective and analysis of contemporary youth culture, and, by doing that, we draw people deeper into the faith.”
Mueller, a graduate of Geneva College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, formerly worked with youths and college students. Now he works primarily with parents. But ironically he believes he’s having a greater influence on young people today than in the 1980s when he was a youth worker in Pennsylvania (Oakland United Methodist Church in Johnstown) and Florida (Kendall UMC in Miami).
Neither Practical nor Biblical
“I believe I’m making a far greater impact on the lives of teenagers now than when I was working face-to-face with kids in a church,” Mueller says. “Over the years I’ve become convinced that the traditional model of youth ministry—working with teenagers and trying to keep parents at arm’s length—isn’t practical or biblical. Instead I’m trying to help parents fulfill their primary role as spiritual nurturers of their children.”
One of the most troubling questions parents face is, “Why won’t my children embrace the faith I have tried to pass on to them?”
Mueller saw that question answered at one of his Parent Education Seminars, which are typically held at churches and are designed to help parents bridge the cultural gap with their children.
“We were in an affluent area of New Jersey,” says Mueller. “During one part of the seminar we have kids and parents talk face-to-face. But before they get together, we ask both parents and kids to write down questions they would like to ask members of the other group.
“Of course many of the parents wanted to know why children seemed to reject their faith. I’ll never forget how one girl answered that question: ‘We’ve seen the emptiness of your lives, and we don’t want that.’ The parents just sat there dumbfounded. They didn’t get it.”
Mueller knows that adolescence is a difficult and awkward time during which kids enter into periods of intense questioning. “They’re putting everything to the test, including their parents’ faith, to see if it will work for them and whether they want to make it their own. But I talk to lots of teenagers, and when they look at their parents, what they see is blatant hypocrisy. What they see is a whole evangelical subculture that is satisfied by ritual, comfort, materialism, and keeping the world’s problems at arm’s length. And they don’t want to have anything to do with that.”
Turned off by a Christianity which, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, enshrines “personal peace and affluence,” and dismissed by their parents as nuisances, many young people turn elsewhere for guidance and affection.
One place many teens turn is popular culture. So perhaps it’s no surprise that unchurched American youths love the music of Alanis Morissette, a popular vocalist who Mueller calls ” the musical mouthpiece of a generation of angry young women.”
But many Christian parents would be surprised at how much their own children like Morissette. Mueller says her popularity—and that of numerous other recording artists, movie stars, and pop culture celebrities—is due to the fact that, unlike many parents, Morissette meets young people where they are.
In his seminars with parents, and in a recent issue of his newsletter, Mueller featured Morissette’s music and her lyrics of bitter regret. Her song “Perfect” describes the anguish of a child who is told to be good, try harder, and put on a pleasing façade for a watching world:
How long before you screw it up
How many times do I have to tell you to hurry up
With everything I do for you
The least you can do is keep quiet
Be a good girl, you’ve gotta try a little harder
That simply wasn’t good enough to make us proud
Some Christian leaders would cite Morissette’s music as a reason for a new battle in America’s culture wars—or as another example of how bad today’s music is (and how much all God-fearing people should stay away from it).
But while Mueller thinks some contemporary music is less than stellar, he believes pop music is only a symptom of young people’s problems, not a principle cause. “Many parents are looking for scapegoats, and music is an easy target,” he says. “The easiest way to avoid dealing with your children’s problems is to blame them on somebody else.”
Mueller, who’s been influenced by thinkers like Schaeffer and culture-watchers such as Al Menconi and Quentin Schultze, is critical of other evangelicals who describe popular culture in predictably conspiratorial terms.
“I remember the Jacques Cousteau TV specials when swimmers would dive into the water with sharks,” he says. “But before the swimmers jumped into the water, they would throw in a bucket of chum. The chum—bloodied fish parts—created a feeding frenzy.
“I would say that some Christians who savage popular culture are nothing more than evangelical chum merchants. They churn the water, everybody goes nuts, but nothing’s ever accomplished.”
Mueller says he’s talked to many parents who hear the horror stories about pop culture. Often their response is “to circle the wagons and raise their rifles.” But hiding our heads in the sand is the wrong approach, Mueller says. Youth workers should help parents instead to demonstrate that Christianity is relevant to popular culture and that the gospel has the answers for which young people are desperately looking today.
“Those [friends of your] kids you don’t want around the house just may be the very kids who need to be there and need the type of ministry you can give—because they may not be getting any love in their houses,” he says. “Perhaps parents could view their children’s friends as lost souls who are wandering here and there, and reach out to help them.”
Case in point is Mueller’s own house, where there’s talk of building a family room addition in back. “We don’t want to fill the room with furniture and TVs. We want to fill it with kids,” he says. “We want it to be a place where teens in this area can come and be themselves. Will it be noisy? Yes. Will there be pizza stains on the floor? Yes. But it’s a way of having a gut-level ministry to kids.”
Mueller believes that through such ministry, Christians can help kids who are searching and questioning—and maybe even challenge the influence of Alanis Morissette.
Or as he writes in Understanding Today’s Youth Culture: “The degree of influence that the world has on our children depends greatly on how involved we become in their lives.”n
A Piece of Mueller’s Mind
To Parents:
•Your kids need you.
One of the things I’ve learned by listening to teenagers is that your kids need you and they want you. I know that’s not always what your kids are saying. Often it’s, “Hey, get out of my face.” But when that happens, it’s because the wires between their hearts, brains, mouths, and bodies are crossed. Usually those signals don’t indicate what’s really going on inside. Don’t let negative signals turn you away. Instead stay close to your kids and make yourself available to them.
•Encourage their questions.
I’ve talked to kids who wanted to ask their parents questions such as, “Mom, why is rock music bad?” or “Dad, why is the Bible true?” But unfortunately some parents are appalled that their kids would ask such questions. Some even respond by saying, “Don’t you ever ask a question like that again.” If we don’t answer their questions, they’ll seek answers elsewhere—like from the media or music. And this means that our kids could get answers from people who still haven’t got the answers themselves. Don’t get upset with your kids—answer them.
•Watch their world.
Do everything you can to be in touch with their changing world so that you’re better equipped to take the unchanging gospel into that world. Talk to them about their music, the movies they see, the TV shows they like. Follow Paul’s example on Mars Hill (
To Youth Workers:
•Focus on families.
I believed that because I was the youth pastor, I was the only one who was called by God to lead kids to spiritual maturity. But that flies in the face of what God says about the role of parents in
•Go deeper.
Keep reaching out to kids with fun and games, but go a little bit further and teach kids to think. Too often our youth programs stir up the fires of young people’s feelings, but when they grow up, the fires go out and they’re left with no substance to their faith. Occasionally I look around at some of the adults who’ve come from our Christian youth programs. Now they’re all grown up but they don’t know how to think. Sure they can razor-blade shaving cream off a balloon, but they have real difficulty seeing how faith shapes their lives.
