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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then on YouTube and on our <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> website and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
What’s really going on in the faith lives of young Australians? - with Graham Stanton
We explore the findings of the Your Story Research Report — a significant national study that listens to the voices of more than 400 young people as they reflect on their spiritual journeys.
We find out who and what has, and is, shaping young people’s faith from their childhood, though to adolescence, to right now.
There are insights into the eight “faith journeys” —from Embracing to Reconstructing to Disengaging— highlighting the importance of relationships, trust, and belonging in shaping faith over time.
Plus advice for churches, families, and schools on how to nurture young people in ways that are both personal and sustainable.
Graham Stanton is Director of the Centre for Children’s and Youth Ministry. He lectures in Practical Theology at Melbourne’s Ridley College.
Download the Your Story Research Project: https://www.convergeoceania.com/yourstory
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Speaker 1:What is really going on in the spiritual lives of young people? It is the pastor's heart, it's Dominic Steele, and Graham Stanton is with us, a key author of a new report surveying 400 young Australians about their faith journey, finding out who and what has and is shaping their faith from childhood through to adolescence to right now. Graham Stanton is one of the people behind the research project. He's director of the Centre for Children and Youth Ministry and Lectures in Practical Theology at Melbourne's Ridley College. Graham, as you've gone into the stories of all these young people from across Australia, from all sorts of backgrounds. What's it done to your pastor's heart?
Speaker 2:I think it's this overwhelming sense of privilege of being led into young people's lives and experience. So it's renewed my appreciation for the contribution that young people have to make, the depth of challenge that they're facing. So it's made my heart more both excited about what young people have to offer, more empathetic about the sorts of challenges that they face, deeply appreciative of what these young people have been willing to share with us.
Speaker 1:Now, everyone's an individual and everyone's got their own story. Yes, but you were able to kind of crystallise the journey that the 340 young people had been through into eight, if you like, reasonably identifiable pathways, and we'll put them up on the screen. And we're starting on the left, from Christian households and non-Christian households, and we're ending up on the right, with well embracing somebody, embracing faith, persisting, wavering, coasting, fading, rejecting, refusing, distancing. Give us the overview first, and then we'll get you to break it down for us, sure, sure.
Speaker 2:I mean the overview. Firstly, like you notice, the words are perhaps a little bit inelegant, Like we're trying to talk about people who are on a journey and the journey is continuing, so not people who have embraced faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:They are currently embracing faith, they are currently persisting in faith, and so on. So we were looking for words that would capture that sense of journey and process. And then this sort of looks like a timeline. It's really not, although in one sense it sort of is, but it's that idea that… I thought it was a timeline.
Speaker 2:Well, not a timeline in the sense that it's not like young people told their story in this way.
Speaker 2:They didn't say, oh well, I came from a Christian household, then I faced a faith challenge, my spiritual engagement is this, but I do have this ongoing religious identity.
Speaker 2:Rather, these are the elements that, in one sense, is a way of differentiating these particular styles of narrative. But these came from a whole bunch of open-ended questions, as young people described the beginnings of faith, sense of ownership, sort of challenges, high points where they think it's going now, anything else they wanted to tell us. All of that was coded and reflected on and read and reread and reread again and out of that we came up with this way of being able to make sense, of a way of looking that made some meaningful distinctions is what we're talking about here. That made some meaningful distinctions is what we're talking about here. So I think one of the key things to notice is the influence of faith challenge in a young person's faith narrative. What they tell the faith challenge has a big impact on the kind of narrative they have and you also see the impact or the result that that faith challenge had For some their faith challenge, which is moderate and high.
Speaker 1:My mother dying or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yes, although what was interesting was not so much the challenge itself but the intensity to which they described it. So a young person might say something like oh yeah, so what happened in my early years? I had a difficult time at school. My mother died. I had a whole lot of friends, but I was really into sport and you listen to that and you think, oh okay, mother dying seems to just be alongside difficult time at school.
Speaker 1:But sport was the big thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, Somebody else might say, in my middle adolescent years I got an email from a friend of mine and I was completely floored and for the next month I was in a time of spiritual wilderness. And you'd think at an objective level, mother died. That must be a significant faith challenge. Getting an email from a friend, that must be a minor one. But no, we were actually paying attention to the way that young people narrated these experiences. So a narration of saying there was something that was quite significant as a challenge For some, that prompted them to a greater spiritual engagement, and so a persisting type story. For others it was sort of resulted in a decline in faith, and so you end up with a wavering or even a rejecting narrative. So that's sort of you put these building blocks together and it's a way of beginning to sense what's going on for people. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:I mean, I meet Christians today who have never had, if you like, that faith challenge that you're talking about, you know, and sometimes I think, oh, I just don't know, I don't know if it's been tested properly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Did you feel that? Well, that's the embracing narrative. Yeah, and it's hard to say okay, A, because we're relying on young people's self-report as they tell their story. That's what's really quite critical in this work.
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe the best way is to get you to take us through each of these ones, so you're on the embracing one, sure.
Speaker 2:So the embracing. It's a young person who, as they tell their faith story, they don't talk a lot about faith challenge. It's more the sense of you know, I came from a Christian home and I just love Jesus and my youth group is great and my parents have really supported me. There's been difficult times.
Speaker 1:I want to be that parent and have a child in that group.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. They like being Christian, they're keen and they're optimistic about the future, which is great. It doesn't mean that they haven't had challenge. It just means that, as they tell their story, the sort of challenges that may be present don't seem to be overly significant. That's certainly not something that they dwell on. Unlike those who are persisting, they would say, yes, I am Christian, I'm looking forward to remaining Christian and I've had these positive experiences and there was this challenge in my life. This challenge was quite significant in some sort of way, but I've worked through it, unlike the wavering, like the persisting. There's been a challenge, but that challenge has begun to threaten their faith, their confidence. As a result, they're sort of wondering where is this taking me? So they are still Christian, but it's perhaps under threat. And you can sort of see why when you look at the sort of challenges that they narrate. The coasting, on the other hand, they are more like the embracing. They tell a story that doesn't have lots of faith challenge, but their faith is not growing, it's declining or low, and that word they're sort of coasting along.
Speaker 2:One step on is those who. Their faith is now fading. They've got the same sort of background story Things have been positive, low, declining spiritual engagement, but they've no longer identified as Christian. They've taken the next step. It's not that, yeah, look, my Christian life is sort of okay. It's like, yeah, look, I used to be that and I no longer am, but they've faded out of faith. Unlike the rejecting, the rejecting have had a particular challenge that has led them to reject their faith. There's something more intentional about what's going on here. Now you go down to the bottom and you've got these two narratives that come from people that aren't Christian. They've never been Christian.
Speaker 2:Why did they bother to fill in the survey at all? Well, a number of them were at Christian schools, right, and so it was in the context at all. Well, a number of them were at Christian schools, right, and so it was in the context of a Christian studies class, something like that. There are others. There are a number of people who are in this category who are connected with a youth group. They may still be part of a youth group. They might have been invited by a friend. They come along because it's a thing to do on a Friday evening. There were also Christian youth mission agencies, so like youth drop-in centres, that did this as well, and so you have people who are. They have no contact with faith, but they are around the Christian community, which is another thing to recognise about this that the young people that we connected were all through Christian organisations. None of this is pretending to offer a statistically significant sample of the Australian population youth population.
Speaker 1:Now, as I read the report, one of the things that I mean I don't know whether it frustrated me or it was kind of the elephant in the room was the issue of the content of the faith, because you were speaking about faith and journeys with faith. But I've been working with my assistant minister today on a sermon that he's going to give in a few weeks' time on the cross being the stumbling block.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking are we actually talking about the same thing here, or is the content of faith that we're talking about the same thing? What's your, your, take yeah, because it's quite a broad group that's behind the study.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sure that that's right, and one of the things that we were trying to move away from was the kind of snapshot research that asked a young person what, what are your beliefs and practices today? Do you believe in god, do you believe in the divinity of Jesus? Do you go to church, Do you pray? And you get that slice in time. That's what's happening right now and we were trying to get this sense of journey and therefore we consciously chose we're focusing on faith as the process of believing rather than faith as the content of what is believed. And that distinction there's a Latin phrase for it. I'm sure some theologians would remind us fit is qua, fit is quae credita. I forgot.
Speaker 1:Do you remember that? Yeah, I don't remember it either.
Speaker 2:But one means one thing, one means the other. Right yeah, Faith is the act of faithing, the act of believing and one of the content of what you believe. Now it turns out that there were some people, some young people, in our sample that were answering these questions in terms of a non-Christian faith, like they were embracing a Hindu faith, or I think there was a couple of Islamic faith.
Speaker 2:But such a small part of the sample, statistically it would be irrelevant. We excluded them from the study, from the study right Everybody else. They are talking about embracing Christian faith or refusing Christian faith.
Speaker 1:There was in the report a gendered difference that I picked up between young men and young women and I first thought it was significant. But you're saying it's not that significant.
Speaker 2:The difficulty was that there are a large number of young people who didn't indicate gender, so we don't know whether more boys or more girls didn't indicate gender.
Speaker 1:That's right, it did actually. I mean, we've been talking for a little while about how something seems to be going on with young boys. Have you noticed that too?
Speaker 2:young boys, not so much the gendered thing in my experience of boys rather than girls, but certainly generally a sense of a greater….
Speaker 1:Revitalised faith or revitalised interest in?
Speaker 2:it Revitalised interest or a willingness to have these sorts of conversations? Right, yeah, you know that. Recognition that the new atheist thing that didn't work, that's gone. Yeah, the secular project has not delivered. And what else is going on? Is there something about the post-COVID world that just made people hang on? Stop what's going on here? Yeah, so that, I think, is there.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go to some of the things here. You were saying relationships are central. Now, that's not a surprise for us in Christian ministry, but what have you found out? Flesh out that argument.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the one thing of the kind of relationship which is central. That was quite interesting to us and so we talk about, about relationships convenient acronym relationships of acceptance, of belonging, ownership, understanding and trust, that these were five dimensions of the positive relationship that came out. Whether the young people were embracing or persisting in Christian faith or rejecting and refusing the sorts of when they spoke positively about Christian people, then the values in those relationships coalesced around these five themes.
Speaker 1:So what are you saying to the parent or the youth group leader that they need to learn from that point?
Speaker 2:It's a handy set of ideas to keep in your mind. And where might we get it wrong? Yeah, yeah, Well, I think so. Acceptance is there. Do young people have that sense of you accept me, whatever I say, whatever I do, or are there conditions? And now, of course, we have a sense that we're persuading young people to a certain way of life, we're offering the gospel of Jesus to them. I do want them to say yes to Jesus, but do they have a sense that I will only be, Graham will only like me if I say yes to Jesus. If I don't, then our relationship is over. Or if I don't do these things that he expects, then our relationship is done.
Speaker 2:That kind of tenuous belonging that young people are alert to. They want to know do you actually accept me? Do I belong here? Or is this your place and I'm here on your agenda? Provided I fall in line, then I can belong. Or am I actually welcome here, not just in the room, but in the circle? Do you recognise and this is a big one do you recognise my ownership of my spiritual choices, the whole theme of how young people respond to the use and misuse of power and the recognition of a young person's agency, particularly in matters of spirituality, was all the way through. We were considering making it a sixth key finding and instead have separated out power and agency as a theme that runs through all of the things that we've been saying very clear in this ownership piece within the relationships.
Speaker 1:So what do you do about power struggles between kids and leaders in youth group? I mean, I'm not talking about particularly even spiritual issues, just I want half the girls to go over here and half the boys to go over there, and you know we'll have. And then one of the kids says hey, girls, let's all come over here. Sure Just defying their youth group leader. No, if you want to come to our youth group, you've actually got to follow, or what? What would you say there as a youth group coach?
Speaker 2:I would say that there's a whole lot more going on in that relationship with that young person than just this act of defiance. It will say something. Say something about the relationship that's going on here. And there's a danger, isn't there?
Speaker 1:Because when you were, saying acceptance before and I was thinking, oh, I've got this discipline issue in the back of my mind, yeah, so keep going, yes.
Speaker 2:And I mean when we come to talk about the discipling pyramid.
Speaker 2:Thing there is a space for, and there will be need for, challenge, even confrontation, of saying, well, actually, no, this is how it's going to be, but you're not going to be able to say to that girl, no, we need to do this now. And look, if you're not going to do this, then this is not really going to work out for either of us, is it? You'll be able to do that if you have a good relationship of acceptance, belonging, a history of emphasising and affirming her agency, that you have a sense of you are trying to understand her and her experience and she trusts that you have her best interest at heart With those sorts of things in your relationship. Then you can ascend what we call the discipling pyramid and go up to a place where there is a challenge, there's a confrontation, even.
Speaker 1:So explain to me this discipling pyramid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we found really interestingly that there were some discipling actions that young people spoke about as being really positive, but the same discipling action other people spoke about as being really negative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, was it to do with I'm on the way in or I'm on the way out of Christian faith? No, not at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my parents take me to church every week and it's been great. Somebody else might say my parents made me go to church every week and it was horrible.
Speaker 1:And yet probably the parents' behaviour was similar, identical.
Speaker 2:Perhaps, yeah Well, at least in terms of the action itself. Another one was my dad is a minister and so I can have great deep conversations about theology with him. Another says my dad has lots of biblical knowledge and delights in giving me the answer, making it clear that he has an answer to every question I have. You see, the same thing is going on depth of theological knowledge being brought by the parent to the child. But in one instance you've got that being expressed in a relationship of acceptance, belonging, ownership, understanding, trust. In the other it's about demonstrating the father's own depth of knowledge rather than actually meeting the young person, where they're at and what they're concerned for.
Speaker 1:Next one on the triangle.
Speaker 2:So the layers go from level one, which is very open, where young people aren't being constrained in responding at all, so things like just noticing it's like hi, dominic, nice to see you. So if your name is actually Dominic, as you come through the door of church, that level one thing, you don't have to respond in any particular way. There's no requirement on you to do that Freedom to respond however you want. You go to the next step and sort of you begin to ask questions. So tell me about your week. So now you've got to respond about this particular topic that I've set in my question. You go from there. Next step is that how come you're putting your hand up to your eye like that? Now there's a specific action that I'm questioning and asking about. Now, again, you've got freedom to how you're going to respond there. But we're narrowing down into a thing. And then you get to the top level, the challenge, the confront of look, what you're doing is wrong. I think you need to go over there where we've directed all the other girls to go right, and again they have freedom still to either choose to defy you or not. But we're now at the level of here's a particular request and there's consequences and I think that the popular wisdom has been with young people, you've got to stay down the bottom of the pyramid because they need agency and so on. But that's not what we found. Because they need agency and so on, but that's not what we found.
Speaker 2:What we found was that you can ascend the heights of the discipling pyramid provided that your relationship is one of acceptance, belonging, ownership, understanding and trust. And if you've built this sort of strong relationship, then you have that freedom. And there were young people that would say things like relationship, then you have that freedom. And there were young people that would say things like my church community. They challenged and confronted me about issues in faith and I felt so supported by them that's helped me to grow and mature.
Speaker 2:But others who say you know the chaplain keeps asking us how we are and always suspicious about what agenda they have. So it's like if you have a good relationship, then there's the possibility, still with care, to go up the levels of the discipling pyramid and be more directive, even confrontational, when it's needed. But if you don't have that relationship, then even the lowest levels, even the most passive kinds of actions, can be interpreted negatively. So relationship is we didn't want to say it's all about relationship, because it's not. There's more than that, but the relationship is critical and the relationship is the lens through which young people will interpret.
Speaker 1:I was quite surprised when you got to how engaged, if you like, in the ecosystem different kids were in school, church and youth group, because Christian school played a radically different role to church or youth group. Yeah, Can you just unpack that? Or was Christian school much less effective? How did you?
Speaker 2:read it. Well, I read it, as Christian schools have a much larger pool and there are young people who are at school without choice. They have to go to school and they've been sent to this particular Christian school, whereas they're at youth group, more or less because they want to go A lot more freedom to go to youth group. You notice that when you look at the report there are more people in that rejecting, refusing category in Christian schools, that's what surprised me?
Speaker 1:yeah, More in the refusing, rejecting category in Christian schools than in the church youth group cohort.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then fewer in church and then fewer still in youth group, and it makes sense that, in terms of where are young people required to be, I can understand that a young person who has got no interest in faith. They're required to go to this school. They might even be required to go to church with their family.
Speaker 1:But are they forced to go Friday night or not? Mum and dad might make them sit next to them on Sunday morning. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Speaker 2:Now, what about doubt? It's always interesting when you look at that, where young people fit and the kinds of young people that are in our youth groups and churches and schools, the number of young people who are facing significant faith challenge or have significant faith challenge in their story. And you were going to mention doubt.
Speaker 1:I was about to say doubt, which is really where it sounds like you're going. Yes, I mean doubt is everywhere. I mean we'll put it up on the screen. But that did surprise me that whether you were in the embracing or whether you were in the running away from category, everywhere we had people who doubt was a significant thing, that's right, yeah, so it doesn't mean that every young person doubts because there are some people who don't.
Speaker 2:Some people are so confident in faith that doubt is not a part of their story.
Speaker 1:But it felt like more than 50% did.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right, and it is present. It's present there, in those for whom faith is going really well, in the embracings or the persistings, yep, yep. And I mean less so in the distancing, because they're mostly not interested.
Speaker 1:There's no confidence. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yes, doubt can be everywhere and there are a lot of young people who are dealing with doubt and other faith challenges in our ministries.
Speaker 1:So what do I do if I'm a youth group leader? Senior pastor? Yeah, I'm aware. Now you've told me that now, and so I've got to think okay, there's 20 kids in our youth group, what's your advice to?
Speaker 2:me. Well, the idea that the number one aim of youth group is that it be fun is not going to cut it, is it?
Speaker 1:No, because I'll just be there until I've got my driver's licence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, or the sort of thing that you are offering me is not helping me deal with the genuine challenges that I have. So now we need to pay attention to these challenges. Interestingly, when you get into the wavering, coasting, fading as they talk about the kind of faith challenges they're dealing with, often they're dealing with that just individually. As they talk about this, there's inner reflection on this, but not a lot of engagement with others. So a lot of young people are dealing with these things, but just holding them to themselves, the opportunity to ask and to listen what is actually going on for you and then how might we be able to help you through that?
Speaker 1:becomes an absolute priority. So it sounds like you're pushing me for a more rigorous, if you like syllabus in youth ministry.
Speaker 2:Syllabus perhaps, although the danger with syllabus is that you would just bring an agenda, because that assumes that we know what it is that that their doubts are about. Exactly, yeah, the conversation, it's the conversation and the accompanying. That's what we're really getting at. Okay, and that opportunity to listen and then, as you listen, to be able to not just present an answer, because, again, that doesn't necessarily advance their ownership, does it? Or advance understanding. It's like, oh, you've got this problem, their ownership does it. Or advance understanding. It's like oh, you've got this problem, that's easy, that's easy. Here's this book, read this and it's going to be fine. Rather, tell me more about what that's like for you. We had young people that said.
Speaker 2:My youth leaders recognise the gravity of the questions that I brought and I think often as adults we make the mistake of often really well-meaning young people come with a question and it's like we're so desperate to help. Oh, it's so much easier, it'll be okay In a few years' time, you're not going to care about that at all. That doesn't help them because it makes them feel well, how silly am I. I'm thinking I'm here burdened by something that I'm now being told doesn't matter, is not important, is not going to be a thing, but at the moment this is a thing. So can we enter into their world, recognise that, stand with them in that, so develop that understanding and then begin to ask them so what do you think you could do? What do you think might be helpful? What could I do to accompany you? What other resources do you have that might help you in this space? That kind of spiritual accompaniment, I think, is what this work would lead us towards.
Speaker 1:Final reflections in terms of what you would want youth leaders to change as a result of. I mean, as you survey youth groups around the place and you think, oh, if only they did this, it would just be better. Because of what I've learned here.
Speaker 2:Take more time to listen, ask better questions and spend time listening to the answers To learn how to say tell me more about that, and to do that before we say, oh, I've got an answer to that.
Speaker 2:We do have answers, and we are not saying, or I'm not saying, as a response to this work, that we need to just hide all the answers of the gospel that we have Absolutely not. We do want to offer the gospel, but we want to adorn the gospel with the kind of life that embodies the attractiveness of this. And a key part of that for the Australian young people that we've heard from is they want to be listened to and they want to be respected and have their agency honoured. So to be able to ask those questions and to sit and to really come to an understanding not only, I think, will that serve young people. I think it's going to serve the wider church. It will serve us as well. As you were speaking, I think will that serve young people. I think it's going to serve the wider church. It will serve us as well as you were speaking.
Speaker 1:I think if I could do that in all my pastoral ministry that would probably be a help. Thanks so much for coming in. It's a pleasure. My guest, graeme Stanton. He's been with us. He's one of the lead authors of this new report your Story that's just been released and that's just been released and he is director of the Centre for Children and Youth Ministry and Lectures in Practical Theology at Melbourne's Ridley College. My name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart and we'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
