In my last youth position, I did a monthly segment called “Late Night with Jason,” which was essentially a rip-off of Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show. I owe 100 percent of the success of my pretend talk show to modern technology. How else could I project quirky news clippings on the large screen and morph my students’ faces with one another to see what it would look like if they got married and spawned offspring? Once a month, a little technological “know-how” afforded me the opportunity to pretend I was the next late-night superstar — and the students loved it.
As technology has continued to develop and expand over the years, my ministry to young people has reflected this trend. While in the ’80s and early ’90s an overhead projector was the most sought-after device for youth ministry, by the late ’90s the video projector was on every youth worker’s wish list.
Nowadays, by combining a laptop, some multimedia software, and a video projector, we can make our songs, message texts, and announcements look as if they were lifted right off MTV. While I’ll admit that there is something tempting about all the technical gizmos available, it does make me wonder: “At what point have we gone too far?”
My fear is that technology is becoming a crutch in North American youth ministry. Have we reduced our tactics to “any means necessary” to draw kids into our programs under the guise of hearing the gospel? I know my attendance was up whenever I put on “Late Night with Jason.” Ironically, the time I poured into my techno-savvy programming was often at the expense of my message and good old-fashioned prayer.
It forces me to wonder why young people are attracted to our programs. Does Christ really need a marketing team or an agent to spiff Him up for mass consumption, or is the Spirit sufficient to reach the hearts of our younger generations? How are we supposed to compete with a consumer culture without embracing the same tactics that make marketing so successful? What if technology, with all its bells and whistles, is not necessary after all? Perhaps simplicity and an authentically different community are what teenagers are really looking for in a spiritual milieu.
Brothers of Taizé
This past summer I had the opportunity to observe, research, and participate in an unassuming, techno-free youth ministry located in an ecumenical monastic community in France. In a little village in the Burgundy region of the French countryside sits the community of Taizé (tay-zay). What began with the vows of four men to a life of simplicity, celibacy, and a communal life in Christ has blossomed into one of the most unintended “youth ministries” of the past century.
Over one hundred men who call themselves the Brothers of Taizé form a community that hosts well over 30,000 young people in the three summer months alone. The young people come on spiritual pilgrimages from around the globe, seeking something greater than what they think their existing ecclesial institutions offer them. At Taizé, the young people sleep in tents and simple barracks, work daily, eat plain foods, attend prayer for an hour three times a day, and participate in Bible studies and discussion groups. Without utilizing the techno-savvy tactics that have become associated with North American youth ministry, this humble group of ecumenical monks has influenced the lives of countless young people over the past 40 years. This unfamiliar and non-technical paradigm for youth ministry begs us to ask the question: Why are young people drawn to Taizé? Moreover, what can American youth ministries learn from it?
At the heart of Taizé’s ecumenical fellowship, we find one man’s vision to create an authentic Christ-centered communal life. This one man was the late Roger Marsauche-Schultz, who simply is called by those who knew him “Brother Roger.”
In 1941, after studying theology for four years in Lausanne, Roger published a few small brochures outlining several facets of a Christ-centered communal life together. These brochures prompted two young men to knock on Roger’s door, soon followed by a third. They all lived in Switzerland in a flat owned by Roger’s family until after the war when they began a new life together in the French countryside, in a village called Taizé.1 In the years that followed, many new brothers joined this little community.
Soon the Brothers of Taizé were making trips out of their little village to bring aid to people in both rural and urban areas. They began forming “fraternities” of brothers in other cities that sought to be “signs of the presence of Christ among men, and bearers of joy.”2 As their work spread throughout Europe, their austere community slowly became known. Young people in their late teens and early 20s began migrating to Taizé in order to see firsthand what communal living was really like. Realizing that young people seemed especially drawn to their community, in 1966 the brothers organized their first international youth meeting.3 It would be their first intentional endeavor to minister directly to young people.4
French Lessons
Since 1966, thousands of backpackers have ascended “the hill” to take part in the extraordinary communal life at Taizé. What is their secret? The brothers themselves have been unable to pinpoint exactly why young people gravitate to their community to pray, work, eat, and live with them. Perhaps their secret lies in the fact that they offer young people a quantitatively different community. In comparing Taizé with the technosaturated youth ministry culture found in North America, two facets emerge.
First, Taizé offers young people simplicity. Repeatedly the young people I spoke with in Taizé confirmed that its simplicity was a refreshing alternative to their normal lifestyles. The entrenched fun-loving, techno-savvy craziness that is commonly associated with youth ministry is completely void in Taizé. They have no projection screens for the words of their sung prayers; rather they use individual songbooks. They have no fancy lighting, but simple overhead lights accented by hundreds of candles.
Everything about their facilities — dress, food, and work — is simple. Simplicity in worship provides adolescents with the environment, space, and time to hear the still, small voice of God. In an age where popular culture bombards young people with neverending multimedia stimuli, simplicity is welcomed with open arms and a longing spirit. It would serve all of us in North American youth ministry to consider the virtues of simplicity. We have bought into the lie for far too long that young people want a second-rate version of MTV programming.
Second, Taizé expects young people to be active participants within the boundaries of their community; thus, spectators are few and far between. Upon the guest’s arrival at Taizé, the brothers expect young people to sign up for a work team.
They immediately give each young person responsibility over a job in the community. While youth have some choice in the type of work, Taizé’s guests accomplish all of the work that is required to operate this community. As a result, it is a young person who is preparing your food, serving your meal to you, collecting and washing your utensils, sweeping the meeting rooms, welcoming guests, cleaning the bathrooms, handing out song books in the prayer times, and accomplishing an innumerable mount
of other tasks on the grounds. In short, a young person is engaged in service from the moment he or she steps into the village. In Taizé’s prayer times, there is no visual candy to titillate the senses and turn participants into passive receivers.
In fact, the aesthetics of the community operate on two principles: simplicity and beauty. Both principles are aimed at drawing the young person into prayer. In the end, the ascetic nature of the church and the simplicity of their chants would fail to live up to the flash of my “Late Night with Jason” show; but this is the point. The young people are not spectators, but active, worshiping participants with responsibilities in the community.
When we offer young people technosaturated worship, we often turn them into spectators. In some youth ministries, we even give them café tables from which to view the show. Young people already assume the role of spectators in too many areas of their lives. If they want to numbly watch MTV, they can do that in their homes lounging in a La-Z-Boy. If we truly desire them to encounterChrist, we must move them from being spectators to participants.
The Best of Both Worlds
In Taizé, young people encounter the opposite of everything the marketing consumer culture seeks to sell them. This unique community embodies a countercultural ethos not simply for the sake of being different but to be like Christ. Ultimately, Taizé offers young people an escape from the trappings of a marketing culture. The question we must ask ourselves is, do we? Or, do we offer them a second-rate version of what popular culture seeks to sell? Why do kids come back to our groups? For the 15-foot screen and laser light show? Or because in our youth groups they find a radically different way of life that meets their deepest needs?
I am not suggesting that we turn North American youth ministry into monastic communities and abandon all forms of technology. While candles and darkness have gained popularity over the past few years, Taizé’s simplicity and style should not become the newest trick in our bags. Trust me, no one wants to get an “old-school” newsletter or calendar in the mail or to go back to hand-writing songs on overhead transparencies.
Part of communicating the gospel is translating it into the particularities of the local culture. We live in a technosavvy age, and consequently it is inevitably part of who we are. In the end, we must be intentional about how we use technology in ministry; and we must stop trying to compete with MTV. The message we proclaim does not need to be bounced across a screen with a moving, scenic background; rather it needs to be demonstrated in an authentic embodiment of God’s people.
In short, we need balance between being techno-savvy and simple. Adolescents long for something substantially different from what popular culture can offer them. In the end, the marketing industry only wants their disposable income; whereas we long for them to encounter the living God. Removing some of the noise will help facilitate that process. Furthermore, young people need to be engaged as active participants in all practices of worship and responsibilities in our faith communities.
Through this involvement, they will cease to be passive receivers; and greater opportunities to encounter Christ and embody his mission will arise. Our utilization of technology should never turn our students in to spectators or, for that matter, our youth workers into demi-god talk show hosts. While I think my face might look good projected on a 15-foot screen, we have a greater mission at stake.
“We must remember that technology will not solve our problems. As Christians, our purpose is not to compete with this world; it is to offer an alternative vision of how life is to be lived. We must first be an honest and vibrant Christian community. Then, and only then, we will be able to use technology to help enhance our ministries. The path to God does not go through a video projector.” —Alan Stucky, youth pastor and seminary student, Buhler, KS
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Jason Santos is currently a M.Div. student at Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s been an international speaker and youth minister for the past eight years in Chicago,
London, and Bonn, Germany. He and his wife, Shannon, have one son named Judah.
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1 J.L.G. Balado, The Story of Taizé, (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981), 34.
2 Ibid., 47.
3 Ibid., 65.
4 By 1968, they were hosting over 1,800 young people, from all different backgrounds andcountries, at their various gatherings. Ibid., 66.
