Nutty About Neurons: Youth Ministry Workers Are Champions of Neural Pathways!

My brain has been excited lately, and the reason is neurons—those connections in the brain that serve as its wiring system. Recent discoveries concerning neuron development should revolutionize the way we think about ministry with early adolescents.

Brain docs can see all kinds of stuff in our heads they weren’t able to see even two decades ago. One of the things they’ve discovered is this nutty and wonderful process the brain goes through just prior to and after puberty.

In the two years before puberty, the brain goes on a neuron development spree. Whee! I can almost hear those 10-year-old brains screaming with pride and glee. Watch me grow millions of extra neurons! Ha! In fact, I’m going to grow millions more than I’ll need in adult life! Just try to do THAT! And off go their little brains, growing extra neurons like crazy.

Then comes the tsunami of puberty, overriding any other physiological process currently in motion. And—this is the peculiar new fact (anyway, our awareness of it is new)—the process reverses itself. Over the next few years, millions of extra neurons fade away to nothingness, completely eliminated.

And, just how does the brain choose which neurons to eliminate? It’s not random, as you might guess. Jay Geidd, one of the leading researchers in this area, calls it the “use-it-or-lose-it principal.” He means that the neurons (or neural pathways— meaning combinations of neurons working together to create pathways for thought) that are used get to stay. Those that are not used, buh-bye.

HARDWIRED FOR FAITH
OK, stop. Think for a minute. We who are passionate about early adolescent ministry just got handed one whopper of a confirmation of our calling, as well as one whopper of a confirmation of our responsibility. Here’s the kicker: How young teens use their brains (for our context, think of it as: how young teens use their brains to think about faith) hardwires their brains for the rest of their lives. It’s an irreversible process.

(To be fair, I’m probably using a bit of hyperbole here, but it’s still somewhat-to-mostly true.)

Holy cow! Do you see the implications of this? I actually see some of them, but I have to give it a couple more years of thinking to fully unpack it, I think.

Here’s some of what I’m thinking right now, though. This seems to scientifically confirm my anecdotal observations over the years: that the young teen years are absolutely critical to lifelong faith development. How kids learn to think about faith during these formative few years is absolutely vital.

FAITH-FORMING TIME
So what do we do with this? We must think long and hard about how we utilize the tiny amount of faith-forming time we have with middle schoolers. While “content” is always a part of learning (and faith), the young teen years are not optimal for content-driven teaching, it would seem. Instead, we need to be passionate about helping kids exercise their “speculation muscle” (that’s my visual nature in action there).

It’s also imperative that we help parents understand this stuff. They’re the ones who have the spiritual responsibility for their kids; and they have so much more opportunity to influence this development than we do in our few hours each week.

Ultimately, I believe this research is showing us who care about middle school students that we need to become champions of neural pathways. That’s a pretty cool calling. And it would be fun on a business card!