When I first spotted the photo on the pages of Entertainment Weekly in 1999, I felt validated. I had been telling folks for a long time that I believed somebody somewhere had come up with a fool-proof formula for creating young pop stars and dropping them successfully into the pre-teen world. It was 1999; and Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, and Jessica Simpson were all following the cookie-cutter formula and experiencing different levels of success.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2005, and I’m the fly on the wall at a conference for marketers on how to successfully market to children ages 2 to 12. While there, I sat in on a seminar featuring the woman from Virgin Records who takes credit for creating and masterminding Britney Spears and her meteoric rise to fame and fortune.

The seminar was titled “Grabbing Kids’ Attention in a Competitive Marketplace: Creating the Next Pop Icon.” Finally, I was going to learn the secret formula from someone who had actually enlisted and refined it.

After showing us a video of the next up-and-coming young male mega-artist Virgin hoped to launch later that spring, the seminar presenter showed a clip that documented Britney Spears’ evolution as a pop star. She then went on to tell us what the record company did when they first met Britney back in 1998.

“The first step,” she said, “is to put her out in the public eye and portray her as the all-American girl.” The reason? She’ll grab the attention of kids and gain the approval of mothers, those gatekeepers and pocket-book-holders who first need to embrace Spears as wholesome and healthy if there’s any hope of selling music, tickets, and merchandise to their kids. The kids in her target audience, by the way, were as young as 4 and 5 years old.

But that’s not enough. Pop stars — to be enduring, we were told — need to maintain “edge.” As kids grow and change, their tastes change, as well. Consequently, if Britney Spears stays the same, she’ll wind up being nothing more than “so yesterday.” Because kids are in the  process of breaking ties from Mom and Dad, they want their own music and their own stars. Our seminar leader told us that Spears, by design, was initially a darling of mothers of young girls. It was all part of the master marketing plan to establish and sell the Britney Spears’ brand. But as those young girls grew up, they didn’t want to be listening to music that soothed Mom’s ears and worries.

So, Britney started the process of going over the edge, reinventing herself like Madonna — over and over again. In the words of our friend from Virgin, Britney’s success — and the long-term success of any pop star — is that “she’s constantly pissed parents off!”

What’s all this got to do with youth culture today? That the next up-andcoming young male mega-artist Virgin Records introduced in the spring of 2005 has gone on to become the latest pop heart throb among children and teens. His name is Chris Brown; and his relatively innocent brand of music has gotten him all over MTV, the radio airwaves, and teen magazines. He’s sold millions of albums and had numerous hit singles.

The formula worked again. My hunch is that if you keep on watching Chris Brown, you’ll see it all pan out one more time. If the market allows it, tomorrow’s Chris Brown will be singing and living a new “map” to a vulnerable and easily swayed young audience.

Going Beyond the Latest Phenom
All this makes me think we need to evaluate music more deeply and describe it beyond being good or bad. It’s about thinking “Christianly” and biblically about kids, their culture, the impact their culture has on them, and interacting with the realities we discover in a manner that will lead to change in young people’s hearts. What does this mean for me if I’m ministering to students today?

First, don’t ever fall into the trap of believing that “youth culture” only shapes and influences teenagers. Long before they ever reach middle school, puberty, or your youth group, they’ve been deliberately and systematically pummeled by a marketing machine that seeks to sell product — and is even more effective at selling a worldview. You can’t forget that perhaps the greatest power music has is to serve as a “map.”

Consequently, Britney and Chris teach powerful lessons about which values, attitudes, and behaviors are considered normal, right, and desirable. Their lessons shape what kids think about vocation, sexuality, God, material things, authority, family, etc. As a crosscultural missionary, you need to know the cultural landscape the kids in your community navigate every day. Remember, the younger the kids who live in the landscape, the more powerful  that landscape is as a life-shaper. You need to not only know it, but also know it better than they know it themselves.

Because kids are marinating in pop culture from the time they’re born, it will already have become a part of who they are before you even welcome them into your ministry. By knowing their culture, you’ll know them. You’ll also know what values and beliefs to challenge from the perspective of a biblical life and worldview.

Your high school students might not be listening to or embracing Chris Brown (or any other individual artist popular among children and preteens); but you can bank on the fact that, right now, your future high school students are.

Second, you can support and assist parents by helping them understand the power and particulars of the emerging youth culture. Remember, you are not called to be the primary provider of spiritual nurture to children and teens — unless, of course, you are raising them yourself. But you do play a valuable role as one who assists parents, supporting them as they struggle to point their children and teens to lives transformed by and lived in the presence of God. Parents find it especially helpful when you inform them of trends and realities to which, quite frankly, most of them are oblivious.

Finally, communicate to your youth ministry kids how they are being manipulated. One of the greatest downfalls of the church and youth ministry over the years has been our unwillingness and inability to teach young people how to be wise and discerning in their interactions with media and marketing culture.
 
In addition, we can instill in them a healthy skepticism that is prone to ask hard questions of marketing and media, rather than so willingly swallowing all of marketing and media’s answers to life’s big questions. Your investment in teaching them how to be wise and discerning now will pay great dividends for years
and generations to come.

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Walt Mueller is president of the Center for Youth/ParentUnderstanding and the author of ‘Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture‘ and other books.