Imagine your church was suddenly transported to Bangladesh during one of your worship services. You closed the door, sang a few songs, listened to an inspiring message, and opened the church doors to discover you were in a village on the other side of the world. One of your deacons would probably pull the door closed and hope Scotty would beam you back to your own neighborhood. But, when you opened the door again, you would still be in this completely different land with a completely different culture. The women’s group might decide to organize a pot-luck in the fellowship hall. After all, no one would be going home to the cafeteria today. Where would they go to buy food? What would they find to buy? And how would they pay for it?

Of course, someone who was a little more spiritually minded than the rest of you would eventually suggest that if you have been placed in this new place with these people, God must intend for you to share Jesus with them. But, how would you talk to them? I don’t really know what language they speak in Bangladesh, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t English. How would you share with them in a way they could understand?

The situation might not be as far-fetched as all that. I mean, I doubt any of our church buildings are going to grow wings and start flying around the world. But, in a sense, this has already happened to us. While most of us weren’t looking, we were transported into a culture that is very different from the one we grew up in. Our communities are more multi-cultural, less churched, more skeptical, and less connected than they have ever been before. We may use the same words as those who live outside our church buildings, we don’t really speak the same language. We don’t look at the world in the same way as those around us. And we have had to learn to adapt just to fit into this new culture. And while this is true for us as adults, it is even more true for those of us who are seeking to reach teenagers for Christ.

Walt Mueller has said that there are two things we need to understand about youth culture: “1) Its rate of change is speeding up, not slowing down–and if we hesitate, stand still, don’t stay on top of the rapid changes, we’ll be left in the dust; 2) Not only are there more voices taking up space in youth culture all the time, but they’re also getting louder, more attractive, and more convincing.” According to Mueller, when we do youth ministry today we are involved in a missionary expedition. Our churches have been dropped into an alien culture and are seeking to reach people speaking a language we often don’t speak living in a culture we seldom fully understand.

So, what do we do? One option would be to give up. We can teach the kids whose parents bring them into our youth group, who have learned to live in our culture and be satisfied that we get to make a difference in their lives. Or, we can engage them within their culture. How do you do that? I believe it requires three disciplines: Listen. Watch. Understand.

Listen. When I was in the Philippines, my biggest problem was that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was teaching a group of Philippine youth leaders how to teach youth, but I wasn’t even sure what it was like to sit in a Philippine Bible class for teenagers. So, I raised principles and asked, How would that work in your culture? And I listened. Ask students what influences drive the decisions that are made by teenagers today. Ask them how teenagers respond to our pre-packaged approaches to evangelism. Ask teenagers what their friends spend time talking about, thinking about, doing. And listen.

Watch. What TV shows are your students watching? What movies are they going to? At camp last year, the preacher asked students who were the biggest heroes they saw at the movies. The girls in the group yelled out, Edward . . . the vampire from Twilight. But, not really the Edward from the movies. The one from the books. What? Teenagers don’t read. We all know that. Apparently we don’t know the things we know. And have you read the book that most of the girls in your youth group are reading?

Understand. Understanding their culture is not the same as endorsing it. However, we should be very careful about ridiculing the culture our teenagers live in. The culture has marked them deeply. They may have to reject parts of their culture to truly follow Christ, but the journey begins when we truly understand the influences that drive their view of the world.

We have opened our church doors and we are in the middle of a different culture. I suppose God must have wanted us to reach this culture with his love and his forgiveness or he wouldn’t have dropped us in this culture. So, let’s get to work. Let’s figure out how we can speak eternal truth into this culture so that youth can be reconciled to God.