How can the spiritual needs of a new generation go deep?

|PIC1|'There's so much for my young people that I wish had been there when I was younger. But when the wind blows the roots aren't deep enough to keep them standing firm.' I heard this time and time again during my 15 years of youth ministry everywhere I went.

Every visionary youth worker or youth pastor seems to have one main itch when it comes to discipling their young people - how do I get the roots deeper? As we know, the roots that bring nourishment to the rest of the body are embedded in the Word of God brought alive by the Holy Spirit. So how do we get those roots deeper?

There have been some amazing 'disciplinary revivals' for want of a better term over the past 20+ years of youth ministry. And they have revived areas of faith in Christian youth culture in a big way.

Worship

Worship has been revived for many young people over the past few years. This has not been just a stylistic change. It has restated many important elements of worship that may have been neglected over time. The models that have brought in this change have also sought to draw worship out of the church service and into a Jesus-focused lifestyle.

Prayer

The 24/7 prayer movement has massively altered the way young people pray and think about prayer. This model made prayer edgy again and accessible ¬- allowing experience and expression of prayer to be delivered with a consistent focus for a period of time.

This also resulted in the prayer expressions of young people leading others to pray and engage more. It is a revived discipline that has also found its way into many of our own youth groups and churches.

Social action and mission

With new worship models driving a life of worship the profile of social action and mission in the UK and abroad has increased. Many large initiatives such as Message 2000, Merseyfest, Soul in the City London and now Soul in the City Durban, not to mention Slum Survivor, 24 hour Famine and Stop the Traffik have helped young people re-engage with their world.


And the Bible?

These 'discipliniary revivals' are fantastic and have done so much to enrich and disciple our young people. But it seems the Bible has not been through that process.

A new season

However, a new season is emerging. Young people seem hungry for depth of teaching; they want to understand what the Bible means. While there is an important place for 'point of view' teaching, rooted in Scripture but not necessarily unpacking its depth there is now a growing hunger for the deep things of God's Word.

With this new season, we have seen things like the Nooma DVDs take the youth work world, and the church, by storm. Questions like, 'What did this Scripture mean to the first people who heard it?' open up God's Word in fresh ways.

Bible Society is passionately committed to seeing this hunger for depth met for young people. We are launching initiatives to help young people engage with Scripture. We are committed to supporting youth workers and working with them to find models of engaging with Scripture that have an impact.

The Poverty and Justice Bible

One of the first steps is The Poverty and Justice Bible. For young people who are already plugged into social action and mission, this as an exciting aid to help them understand God's heart for the poor. When it comes to fighting poverty and justice, God got there first. Worship that fails to address issues of poverty and justice us not worship at all. As Tony Campolo puts it, 'Faith without commitment to justice for the poor is a sham.'
End the waiting

We are also engaging young people with the desire to make the Bible heard all over the world. When young people love and value Scripture themselves, they will long to help other people find that depth and truth. So we hope we will be able to encourage them as they find new and creative ways of communicating the Bible to our culture here in the UK.

Also, with half of the world's languages still not having even one book of the Bible available to them, we will strive to work with young people to set the truth free around the world. This has been the case with our End the Waiting project at Spring Harvest this year, in which young people helped to fund the release of a Bible in Pijin for half a million people in the Solomon Islands.

'You will know the truth and the truth will set you free'
John 8.32