By Jeremy Bixler

The headline jumped out on the front page of the April 12, 2010 Kansas City Star:  KC Police Brace for Return of Unruly Youths to Plaza. The story read:

"Police were expecting trouble last weekend, but not of the magnitude that was delivered when as many as 900 juveniles swarmed the Plaza streets and sidewalks. Police think texting and social media played a role in the wave of youths…. The youths “were destroying property, pushing people as they walked down the sidewalk and spitting on people,” Police Capt. Donna Greenwell said. “It was just mass chaos and mayhem.” …Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said the entire city needs to confront the issue of young people not having enough wholesome weekend evening activities. “It’s everybody’s responsibility,” said Sanders Brooks, who represents the 3rd District, in the heart of the city. “It’s going to take council people, the private sector, parents and the faith-based community.”

This news story is evidence of a growing and noticeable problem: youth are being abandoned by adults in our culture. Study after study shows that youth have been left to fend for themselves and forced to create some structure of a shared culture (For more on this, a good resource is Chap Clark’s book Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers). The problem with this is that with the absence of responsible adults, those gaps are filled inadequately and the youth suffer developmentally as a result.  This results in incidents such as what occurred at the Country Club Plaza.  How do we regain the trust of an entire generation? I propose that we do so by practicing sincere authenticity. Adults in the lives of youth are too often not seen as authentic, and trust is lost as a result. They ask the question: “Why should I trust you when all you have done is abandon me?” We reconcile that question by practicing authenticity.

What Youth are Saying about Authenticity

I recently conducted an informal survey of a number of youth and asked four specific questions. Here is a summary of their responses:

What is Authenticity?

Andrew: “Authenticity is when someone is "real" with you. They tell you how it is. No sugarcoating or anything. The whole, real, raw truth.”

Katherine: “It means to be genuine. For a person or a thing to be authentic, it can't be a mirror of something else. It has to be all its own, not trying to be like someone or something else.”

Can you tell when someone is being inauthentic?

Jennifer: “I think if I know the person well enough to know their real selves, I know when they are acting inauthentic.”

Tim: “Usually, but many people have been inauthentic for so long that they can lie way too well about it. It can be easy to tell if someone is being inauthentic, though, by their body language and facial expressions, or even the way they respond.”

Do you think pastors are authentic?

Katherine: “The majority of them? No. I think that any more, pastors don't have something special about them. And I'm not saying that's technically a bad thing, I just think they have become monotonous, teaching the same things they were taught, nothing new or their own.”

Sarah: “I think most pastors are, at least they SHOULD be. They can't just be talking the talk, but they have to be walkin' the walk. Being a pastor should include being an example for others, so they have to be real with what they preach about.”

Do you find that you respect someone more when they are being authentic?

Mark: “I would say I try to respect people no matter how authentic they may or may not be acting, but I definitely appreciate them more as a person when they act authentic.”

Tim: “YES! The more authentic they are, the more authentic I feel I can be. It shows that they aren't afraid to tell it like it is, even if people would look down on them. It is a sign of a trustworthy person, someone I can confide in and probably not be judged by.”

Youth are longing for real, authentic adult involvement in their lives, and they can tell when a sincere effort is not being made.  Time and time again, the students I surveyed said it is possible to be authentic with someone once you get to know them. This points the way to a basic understanding: authenticity is not possible outside of relationship.  We must strive to build relationships with youth that are centered on authenticity.

Authenticity in the Bible

"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:33-37, NIV)

Let’s take a look at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the specific section on taking oaths. Jesus begins his teaching by hearkening his audience back to Old Testament law.  People in the ancient world would often invoke the name of a deity in order to make a vow or promise more solemn.  The Old Testament law forbade the taking of false oaths; promising in the name of God to do something and then not do it. Or put more simply, using the name of God to be inauthentic.  Oaths only have meaning in a world where falseness reigns. They are dangerous as they make some speech more honest than other speech. Here, however, Jesus teaches us to not be of this fallen world and to choose to be honest in all we say and do, as if we are constantly under an oath to Him.  Authenticity is God-Talk. It is choosing to stand up for the truth in all we say and do. By being authentic, we are choosing to follow God and not the world which lies and distorts the truth.

In the Bible we also see calls to authenticity:

• When Titus calls the church’s leaders to hold firm to the message (Titus 1:9)
• In Paul’s hardships (2 Corinthians 6:3-13)
• When the believers were all together and had everything in common (Acts 2:42-47)
• In David’s laments (throughout the Psalms)
• When Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8-12)
• When Paul presses on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us (Philippians 3:12-14)
• And in countless other places…

There is a clear mandate in the Bible to be authentic in what we say and do. It is modeled for us in the writings of David, the life of Jesus, and the ministry of Paul. Authenticity is key to the life of a believer. It is a natural response to the freedom we have in Christ!

Authenticity and Faith Development

James Fowler’s Faith Developmental Theory is a developmental framework similar to those founded by Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg.  What makes Fowler’s theory unique, though, is its focus on the development of religious faith. In the theory, the stage that comes to pass during the years of adolescence is entitled Synthetic-Conventional Faith.  Personality becomes a conscious issue in this stage and identity becomes a great concern of adolescents.  One large limit of this stage is its lack yet of the adolescent taking a third-person perspective that holds both self and others within the same frame.  This means that in the self’s obsession with conformation and identity, the self does not yet have the ability to view relationships from a viewpoint outside of themselves.  This makes it extremely difficult to make decisions that benefit everyone. Adolescents are largely incapable of evaluating circumstances outside of themselves.

The connection to authenticity here lies within the information that adults choose to divulge to adolescents.  By and large, they can tell when an adult is not being authentic.  Pairing this with their inability to see outside of themselves, it is vital for adults to help them see outside of their circumstances by sharing personal stories. The temptation here, though, is to sugarcoat the stories in an attempt to make the adult look better or to shield the adolescent from the belief that the personal story is one to be followed. Now, it is always important to consciously and intelligently evaluate what is divulged, but we do the youth a great injustice if we assume they will discover our own stories to be licenses to misbehave.  Rather, if we are truly authentic with them, they will hear what we are trying to tell them in our stories and be better able to evaluate their circumstances beyond the boundaries set up by their egocentricity.  Further, if we are truly authentic, we are able to ask questions of them that go beyond casual acquaintance.  By asking hard questions and answering theirs in return, we can be their advocates and allow them to successfully maneuver this stage in both their psychosocial and faith development.

Authenticity in Relational Ministry

Relational ministry has been a buzzword in youth ministry circles for decades.  Relationships are the key to a transformative youth ministry that practices soul tending.  Andrew Root, though, would argue that relational youth ministry as is currently accepted does not work because it carries with it inherent motives that go against the very fabric of relationships.  In his book Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, Root explains “Relationships have become so normal and regular that we have stopped noticing them, stopped wondering about the power of relationships in themselves. Instead of seeking to touch the mysterious inner reality of relationships we have too often settled for using relationships as a means to influence kids toward certain ends” (pg. 10).  Relationships that are dependent upon an expected outcome are not authentic relationships in the vein of the Incarnation.  Authentic relationships desire nothing more than to be with one another, with no ulterior motive. This means my relationship with the youth is not diminished if they make a decision I disagree with. “What is needed is for the adult leader to be an authentic human being with and for the adolescent, opening his or her unique person to the adolescent, inviting the adolescent to share in his or her life,” Root says (Pg. 202).  God revealed himself through the Incarnation and God will continue to do so through our incarnational and relational living with adolescents.

Authenticity as Holiness

As Nazarenes, existing within the holiness tradition exhibits some unique challenges for authentic youth ministry.  By placing such emphasis upon the ideal of “Christian perfection,” there is an inherent temptation to live inauthentically, because it is often accepted that our faults and failures would diminish the holiness message if they were communicated to those we minister to.  How can we call our congregants to holy living if they are aware of our own struggles? I find guidance in the plainly honest account of Paul:

“When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:21b-25a)

Paul’s description of the two competing natures in no way serves to diminish or lessen the power of holiness. Rather, by admitting the presence of the two warring natures, Paul is only underscoring and emphasizing the true power at work:  the rescuer Jesus Christ!  We must not give in to the temptation of living inauthentic lives as a way of proving our holiness stance. By being true to ourselves we are directly pointing to and attributing the great power of Christ at work in our lives! When I reveal my true character to a student, I am showing that student the great and vast love of Christ – a love that could save even a wretch like me!

Potential Challenges of Authentic Youth Ministry

As with all things, there must be a balance when it comes to practicing authenticity.  Duffy Robbins gives some guidelines for healthy transparency in his book This Way to Youth Ministry:

• Healthy transparency allows students to hear what they need to know; unhealthy transparency tells them more than they wanted to hear.
• Healthy transparency allows students to trust the messenger; unhealthy transparency distracts students from the message.
• Healthy transparency is heard as honest confession; unhealthy transparency is heard as implicit permission. (pg. 109)

Authenticity should never become blatant exhibitionism.  Any display of authenticity must be well-considered and practiced maturely by the minister.  Youth ministry is not a selfish therapy session.  However, we must be very cautious to not swing the pendulum back to the other side and shy away from authenticity and give in to what Henri Nouwen describes in his book In the Name of Jesus as the temptation to be spectacular.  Remember: we are broken people ministering to broken people.  That is a beautiful image and one that should well open the door to the transformative power of Christ in our communities.  We must be able to practice a healthy authenticity that does not point students to us, but rather points them directly to Christ.

We Just Need to Be

An important evaluation question to ask of any youth ministry is “What does a spiritually mature youth ministry graduate look like?” This question points the way to the very goal and outcome of youth ministry.  I believe a spiritually mature graduate of youth ministry is one that can successfully ask questions and refuses to accept easy answers. To be authentic in the life of a young person means allowing them to ask complicated questions that you may not know the answer to, and that’s okay. One of the temptations of youth work is to give simple and succinct answers to the questions of faith, to seem like one is “put together” and knows all the answers. This, however, cannot completely happen in the midst of authentic relationship. We must be okay with not knowing everything and with allowing our students to find these difficult answers for themselves, in their own lives. The beauty of authentic relationship is that they do not have to go on this journey alone! By coming alongside them and meeting them where they are at (in essence practicing the Incarnation), we can journey authentically alongside them. We do not need to feel pressured to know everything. We just need to be. That is incarnational ministry. That is authentic youth ministry.

Jeremy Bixler works in the Global NYI office (Lenexa, KS, USA) on the Youth Ministry Academy and the USA/Canada Nazarene Youth Conference – A World Unbroken to be held in Louisville, KY, USA in July 2011. In addition to having six years of experience in local church youth ministry, Bixler holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in Youth Ministry from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, IL, USA.

Bibliogrpahy

Fowler, James W., & Dell, Mary Lynn.  “Stages of Faith From Infancy Through Adolescence:  Reflections on Three Decades of Faith Development Theory.”  The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence. (Thousand Oaks, California:  Sage Publications, 2006.)

Nouwen, Henri J. M. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. (New York: Crossroad, 1989.)

Robbins, Duffy. This Way to Youth Ministry: an Introduction to the Adventure. (El Cajon, CA: Youth Specialties Academic, 2004.)

Root, Andrew. Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: from a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation. (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 2007.)

Vendel, Christine, and Joyce Smith. "KC Police Brace for Return of Unruly Youths to Plaza." Kansas City Star 12 Apr. 2010.

Discussion Questions

What does authenticity mean to you?

What are some ways to practice authenticity in youth ministry?

Do you find that you have the temptation to seem “put-together” as Bixler mentions?

What do you find to be the key to practicing authentic relational ministry?