Fun centred youth culture

Wow, it has been almost a year since I did my last blog, it wasn't a purposeful pause in blogging I just didn't have anything to write here for a while.

But here is a thought. I am marking some student essays at the moment, the students are required to talk to a couple of adolescents and get their perspective on spirituality and faith and the things that have informed their spiritual growth. The one thing that keeps coming up as a decider for adolescents is 'fun'. Whether or not something is fun seems to be a huge indicator in whether or not a young person chooses to take part, this is nothing new I know, we all do it! But, fun also seems to be a key indicator to choosing a faith commitment and a type of spirituality to follow, again, nothing new I know, we all cater to it in our youth ministries.

Here is the problem, I don't see fun as a part of the message of Jesus, I don't see fun as the core message of the Gospel, in fact, it would seem to me that a lot of the fun young people talk about is at the expense of others having enough of life's basic necessities and at the expense of any real relational connection wiht people outside of a young person's own mono-culture or group of friends... both of these seem to me to be at odds with the Gospel. Perhaps an argument could be made for fun being an aspect of 'fullness of life" which is a part of the Gospel message but my hunch would be that most adolescent and youth group 'fun' does not fit into Jesus' category of 'fullness of life'. (does someone want to blog a run-down of 'fullness of life'

Of course, the real problem is that we pamper to this fun-centred cultural expression of N.Z. youth in our Christian churches... "come along, it will be fun", is probably the most common expression I hear youth workers say when they are trying to convince young people to attend their fun-filled event! Who-ever said, "come along, you can help someone else", or "come along, you can learn more about the offensive Gospel" (I think that would have some attraction too).

So, how do we critique the fun-centred culture of our youth? Of course this is all tied into individualism and egocentrism (a current conversation with my students is around the impact of egocentrism in youth culture and adolescent spirituality) and our world is very self focused, somehow in Christian youth work and indeed in all kinds of youth work we need to critique this approach to life for adolescents, and please, please, please stop pampering to a self indulgent culture of "I have to have fun"!