Youth Ministry Booster
Welcome to the Youth Ministry Booster podcast! The most honest and hilarious podcast in student ministry. Hosted by Zac Workun and Chad Higgins. We are the biggest fans of youth ministry leaders like you!
We are here for you with the humor and the help to engage, entertain, equip, and encourage.
Youth ministry is better together. Learn more @ http://www.youthministrybooster.com
Youth Ministry Booster
Navigating Youth Culture in the Digital Age w/ Walt Mueller
Youth Ministry.. it ain't what it used to be!
The digital revolution has transformed youth ministry into uncharted territory, creating what seasoned experts are calling "a perfect storm" of challenges for today's teenagers. At the heart of this storm lies the smartphone – a device that has fundamentally altered how adolescents experience relationships, rest, and reality itself.
"The culture is catechizing our kids 24-7 through these devices," -Walt Mueller
Special Guest Alert: Walt Mueller of CPYU
There is some reason to raise alarms: trends like teens sleeping with phones, FaceTiming until they pass out, and even gambling online during school lunch periods. This constant digital immersion directly contributes to the sleep deprivation fueling unprecedented anxiety levels among young people. Medical experts emphasize that teenagers need approximately nine hours of uninterrupted sleep for healthy development, yet notifications and digital dependencies make this virtually impossible for many.
In the wake of Jonathan Haidt's must-read book "The Anxious Generation" Zac and Walt discuss how parents increasingly use their children as "status objects" for social media validation, creating crushing pressure that transforms ordinary activities into high-stakes performance arenas. Youth workers must respond with a threefold approach: prophetic influence (speaking God's truth to cultural realities), preventive influence (building appropriate guardrails), and redemptive influence (offering grace when mistakes inevitably occur). Rather than merely aiming for behavioral compliance, effective youth ministry nurtures heart transformation through balanced spiritual formation.
Today's youth ministry leaders function as cross-cultural missionaries who must be deeply grounded in Scripture while simultaneously understanding the complex digital landscape teens navigate. By creating spaces where adolescents can experience genuine community, rest, and spiritual formation apart from screens, youth ministry offers what many teenagers desperately need but rarely experience elsewhere.
Subscribe to the podcast to hear more conversations with ministry leaders who are reimagining how we disciple the next generation in an age of digital distraction and spiritual hunger.
A snap. This is my first time here, Well welcome to Conclave.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Chattanooga. Yeah, this is one of my favorite ways to start the year, and when I saw your name on the list, I texted you immediately and was like can we spend some time together? Yeah, in the midst of the exhibit hall activity.
Speaker 1:I tried to block you, but it didn't work. That's right.
Speaker 2:Blocked and then sent you for my second number and then my third number. Yeah, bit like. What do you think? So far did you get some good food while you're here? What do you know?
Speaker 1:yeah, we ate it. Uh, now I heard it's a chain tupelo honey okay, have you eaten there?
Speaker 2:I have, I love, I love it. We're gonna go out tonight.
Speaker 1:We've been, we've been pretty close just because we've been busy with breakouts and exhibiting over had a full day, okay, so going out for y'all, what do y'all look at?
Speaker 2:so, somebody from the northeast coming down south? What are you looking for? You're looking for? Uh, for a good biscuit, a good grit. Well, that's my wife, okay? Yeah, I've ordered her biscuits a couple places. Okay, love it, love biscuits, yeah um, she's a really healthy eater okay, that's hard to do around here.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, it's hard for me yeah because if you look at me, the hardships that's right yeah, because she's controlled me, and if this is control, you can imagine what it would be if she wasn't.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, sometimes that's right, like to color outside the lines, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so good, yeah, so it's been good. We love Chattanooga. I've been to Chattanooga before and I brought some of our team down. So really, here it's the people. I have loved being with your crew Good deal.
Speaker 2:One of the things I want to talk about is one it's just great to be in the same room with you. I think for a lot of folks in youth ministry there's so many changing and competing voices. I've always been thankful for you for years. I've got 20 years of just youth ministry stuff and the things that y'all have written and worked on through CPYU and your own publications. Tell me a little bit. What are some of the things that really are changes, because I think some people talk about changes in ministry stuff and it feels a little bit like trend of the week or whatever.
Speaker 2:But has it changed? Is it different?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, like you lean back into the scriptures and you think there's nothing new under the sun. Right, that's true, but but the intensity? Yes, okay, the presence of it. And then it's not just the intensity of the pressures that our kids face, but the fact that the voices that have typically been helping them and steering them and guiding them have been silenced in a way usually by choice, not circumstance, okay, has continued to decline, and parents maybe have checked out a little bit, or they're overactive in their kids' lives and more concerned about being a friend than being a parent.
Speaker 1:And so I think that makes it hard for kids. You know, definitely. You know, in a lot of intact families the anxiety is off the charts.
Speaker 2:That's one of the areas I would always point to is I think there's people have always been anxious, yes, but the amplification of that, either through device, through choice, through expectation, that feels so different than youth ministry in 2007.
Speaker 1:It's a perfect storm and I think you hit on the devices. Devices have just changed everything and I think people are waking up to that.
Speaker 2:Life never turns off.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right and that's what I said. I just said in one of my breakouts the culture is catechizing our kids 24-7. And it's through these devices. The screen time is unbelievable. It's even overnight.
Speaker 2:They're waking up to new realities of who they have to be.
Speaker 1:Well, and if we talk about overnight, they're waking up to those new realities whenever there's a notification yeah, and they're not getting the sleep they need, so that feeds the mental health issues. You know counselors will say if you're dealing with depression, are you getting enough sleep?
Speaker 2:that's like an intake. It's water and sleep. Ironically, answer a lot of medical questions before we get into the more like ticky, tacky stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah if you're not getting enough sleep. You got to get to sleep, and one of the things I tell parents all the time is don't let your kids sleep with their phones.
Speaker 2:We shouldn't sleep with their right.
Speaker 1:Yes, and they say they sleep with them because they don't want to miss anything. They want to be there for they fall asleep. Facetiming like this is one of the things that like we've talked about it.
Speaker 2:uh, when we have camps with kids, like like well, I need my phone to call my friends at night and I'm like, what do you mean? Like well, typically like we'll FaceTime until one of us falls asleep. And it's like this weird, like dependency. It's like this facsimile of like connection and relationship through a small screen.
Speaker 1:Well, and I say you know kids need developmental experts will say medical community says kids need about nine hours of uninterrupted sleep for healthy growth and development. I mean you and I when we're here we're not getting enough sleep.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're hardwired, over-caffeinated, undercooked yeah.
Speaker 1:I become like a walking zombie.
Speaker 2:I feel it in my body right now.
Speaker 1:And you know so. You think about your kids over and, over and over again and, yeah, it's an issue. So I think that in the overarching generalized culture, people are waking up to this. So Jonathan Haidt's book.
Speaker 2:The Anxious Generation. I recommend A must read, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Every youth worker and parent needs to read that. And what's amazing about that? That's a professing atheist who's speaking absolute common sense based on good data and research yeah. And so people are picking up on this, you know.
Speaker 2:Do you think that that's part of some of this? There's, like this erosion of commons. Do you think that things have gotten so loud and we're all so sleep deprived that common sense really is uncommon? Some of that storm.
Speaker 1:That'll be interesting to see how that unfolds. I just think a lot of adults just don't have common sense.
Speaker 2:Where did we lose the common sense?
Speaker 1:We're listening to narratives. Okay, we are forsaking our responsibility.
Speaker 2:Are we over-entertained and over-distracted? Absolutely Under-researched? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you know and I will say this on the anxiety thing, I was just talking about this in a breakout that the pressure we put our parents put on their kids, yeah, appearance, pressure, athletic pressure, more pressure than they even experience, right, which is a weird.
Speaker 2:A weird again. This amplification or no?
Speaker 1:they're living. They're living vicariously through their kids okay so the things they did not achieve, they were trying to make happen. Kids are status, objects and so social media ramps that up okay, I have to be able to post about my kids.
Speaker 2:I'm a better parent if I can produce a perfect child. Yep, yeah, yep, really interesting.
Speaker 1:But frightening too. So parent education for youth workers is an absolute necessity.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, let's click in there because that's one of the areas of emphasis for you. It's becoming a more and more frequent question for us. So the umbrella term of parent ministry, parent discipleship for a youth minister, that's in the tension, in the anxious tension of trying to both minister to students well, but understand that part of that is helping parents well.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where's a starting block? Where's a base measure, a base camp?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think a good starting point is well. Link me a couple guidelines. One is that you know you both have an interest in the same thing your kids, yes, so parents love their kids, you love their kids, and I think it's really important.
Speaker 2:Don't lose sight of that Exactly.
Speaker 1:And so I think you have to go to the parents and say, if you don't mind, would you give me the freedom to come to you if I see something that concerns me, that I think you need to know about, and would you have the freedom to come to me and let parents know they're the ones primarily responsible for the spiritual nurture of their kids.
Speaker 2:You're there to assist them, to walk alongside them and I think Setting that relationship in the right roles is probably something that most folks don't do. It's just an assumed role of well, you're the parent, I'm the youth pastor. But again, if we're trying to establish the right status, let's define the right relationship Well and sometimes parents outsource the spiritual nurture to the youth pastor. Okay, well, that's a whole other—. That's not biblical, that's not the way God designed it, so we're there to walk alongside you.
Speaker 1:Biblical, that's not the way God designed it. So we're there to walk alongside you. Another thing I'd say is you know, think about it. You know we're not there to teach parents necessarily how to parent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so don't feel that pressure, especially if you're not a parent, especially for ones that haven't been a parent yet. That's right Never been a parent.
Speaker 1:And look, I'm going to say this I talk to guys who've been doing this as long as I have and we know far less about parenting than we did when we weren't married and didn't have kids. Okay, and you know, so we've learned. We should have been really quiet then and just listened and learned, yeah. But what we can do, whether we're married, whether we have kids of our own or not, is we can be a pipeline to parents to give them all the resources they need, that maybe people are writing on parenting that are really good. You know we mentioned the Jonathan Haidt book. That's right. Parents read this, you know? Or? Here I'm going to give you a summary of what this guy says.
Speaker 2:Curate. You don't have to be the expert to be the curator or the translator or the DJ of the resources. Be the bridge yeah, that's right. Be the bridge. Be the playlister that's right, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's more important for you to put these in the hands of parents, to help them understand you know what's going on in the world with their kids and how to respond biblically.
Speaker 2:Well, because in some ways, that content delivery is relationship initiative. Like that is a way for us to establish how we're going to relate to each other as a trusted source by resourcing, instead of just saying, well, there's stuff out there, I hope you find it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'll give you an example. I had a conversation here with a youth worker who came over to our booth and we have a bunch of our resources. We do these parent prompts yeah, and we have one that's on teenagers and online gambling. Okay, which, if you're watching football, if you're watching any sport at all, the prompts, the triggers we're given for that, the way we're nurtured into that, it is constant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Constant constant, constant.
Speaker 1:And our kids, you know it's like social media. They can go on these things before the age of 18.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all they have to do is say I'm 18. Right, it's easy to bypass the gateways. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:My son, who's a high school physical education teacher up in Pennsylvania, has said to me Dad, you cannot believe what's going on at lunchtime with the kids on their phones and the online gambling.
Speaker 2:Fantasy football, not so fantasy, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:And I want youth workers like. This youth worker said to me is that really a thing? And I said oh, yeah, yeah, and if it's not a thing yet, it's going to be a thing.
Speaker 2:It's becoming a thing.
Speaker 1:Put that in the hands of parents so that they can then be aware and exercise the preventive influence to make sure they're putting up the guardrails, the borders, the boundaries, having the conversations about the spiritual nature of that and what can happen. I think that might be be zach, like the new pornography well with with a lot of the closures of.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot of onslaught, yeah, it's uh. It's interesting the ways in which the marketing campaigns for those have been so pervasive through a lot of I mean, whether it's comedians or podcasts or sporting events. It's becoming ubiquitous. And the celebrities are promoting it. They're promoting it and they're making it easy and even at some levels it seems like harmless fun. It's a little more harmful when it's 15, 16, 17-year-olds that are unawares and we don't want parents to find out on the other side of their bank account.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Well, I'll just add this to that. My son told me that some of these guys that are doing this are calling their parents at lunch and saying can you transfer money over? So the parents are actually assisting, Participating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So which, again, it's a formative issue and I think that's one of the things for youth ministry leaders like we've got to make sure that we are identifying the sources that form us. We talked about devices, but the patterns of behavior, the inputs. I think sometimes we plan youth ministry in isolation of a cultural reality. We are doing the thing that either we had planned or we are doing the thing that we had learned and not having it in conversation with those that were serving. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things I'd say is you know, we want as parents. I'm a parent, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I with my four kids now they're all adults we have grandkids. I could go to sleep at night if I knew they weren't doing certain things and that's really not what we should drive at. It should be not doing certain things for behavioral conformity, but it should flow out of heart changes, as Christ and the Holy Spirit are in our hearts and we desire now that our behavior would bring honor and glory to God. That should be the motivator, not I'm going to get in trouble or not. My parents are going to find out and then it's going to be bad.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that's one of the things and maybe one of the last questions I want to ask you are what are the ways in which we can stay hopeful, because I think sometimes parent ministry can feel like a bad news brigade of like. Have you heard about this app recently? I mean, I just know that in the last few weeks, so many people have talked up and down good and bad about TikTok Red Note or whatever else good and bad about TikTok Red Note or whatever else. How would you encourage a youth pastor to stay hopeful for the ways in which we are doing ministry to teenagers that isn't just preventative or behavior conforming, yeah, Well, one of the things I would say is you know, as you're ministering to your students, realize that we live in a sinful and a broken world.
Speaker 1:So there's going to be a lot of difficulty, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain. And I always say, like you say, the preventive. You know, I always say there's a threefold approach that you have to take with your students and teach your parents, you know, encourage your parents, work alongside them when you see a cultural issue. The prophetic influence speak the truths of God's word to that reality. The preventive influence build the guardrails that need to be built to keep your kids from going down roads that will destroy them.
Speaker 1:And then the redemptive influence, because we are all broken people and we all sin, we all make mistakes, we all fall from time to time and I need people to be there for me, in the church, in my family, to exercise that redemptive influence, where I can, you know, repent and find forgiveness and be restored. So I think that threefold emphasis but I would also say that you know a landscape of great difficulty and a landscape of a lot of problems, pressures, choices and expectations on kids that can undo them is a landscape of great hope. It's right for the gospel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because the more broken we are like.
Speaker 1:I think about you. Know the parable of the prodigal son.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:He came to the end of himself and we prayed for that, for our kids. Expose their sin, bring them to the end of themselves while they're under our you know, under our roof and even beyond now you know, so that we can intervene, because we want to recognize they're sinners.
Speaker 2:They're going to mess up. Well, it's the son that ran and returned, was far more aware than the son that never left. Yes, so there may be some of that to our stressed out, anxious, sleep-derived, online addicted. That's helping us Again. You said it about Jonathan. Hey, this is a secularist that has found a way to preach. A different kind of formation is needed. We cannot just be beholden to the trends as they play, but we must be proactive in what we're about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he's offered some great prescriptive strategies that I couldn't agree with them more. I think they're great, so that's why people need to read that book and people are starting to pick up on that. I just had a chat with two guys one who runs a large Christian high school out of Philadelphia one that related middle school and they instituted a no-phone policy school in the school a year and a half ago. I'm going to interview them in the next couple of weeks on a podcast and it's working beautifully. The students are living into it because now that they're without their phones, they see the beauty and the richness of life and relationships, and that's what we're made for.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think in some ways, that's where youth ministry has the best chance to shine.
Speaker 2:It's helping them imagine possibility. We're here with our camp friends. One of the things that so many students love and rejoice about camp is living in community. That's tight knit, that's doing all the things they would do on a Sunday or a Wednesday, but with enough routine and regimen every day. That, of course, five days of songs, scripture, prayer, community, small group how could you not feel closer to God? Yeah, and none of those were things that you couldn't practice at home. We just don't make them the rhythm of our life, and so if youth group is not just instructive but imaginative, hopeful, I think there's something there, especially in a world that if they're tired and youth ministry provides a place of rest and being seen and known and shutting down.
Speaker 2:And shutting down. Yeah, Youth group hype night may actually mean to be youth group rest night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know, one thing I think we've forgotten is Sabbath.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The rhythm of work and rest that God created us for and that runs weekly, it runs yearly, it runs for us in ministry, hopefully, every seven years we get a sabbatical. Yeah, and it runs day by day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know that we need that, like go back to what we talked about in the beginning. We need that sleep.
Speaker 2:That's good. That's good. Well, what would you give us as just we're finished? You know, we've been here, we've been sharing with a lot of youth ministers from nine different states. For folks that weren't here, what's a word of wisdom or encouragement for 2025, as we try to continue to minister well?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think two things I think balance your, you know, obviously lean heavily into your knowledge of the Word. I think about John Stott. He talks about dual listening, that our great responsibility is to listen to God's Word but the other responsibility is to listen to the world and know the culture.
Speaker 1:You are a cross-cultural missionary. If you're a youth culture, you are a cross-cultural missionary. If you're a youth worker, you're a cross-cultural missionary. If you're a parent, you're a cross-cultural missionary. A teacher cross-cultural missionary. Grandparent cross-cultural missionary. So see yourself as such and take the time, obviously bury yourself in God's Word you can't I can't emphasize that enough and then see everything that you see in the world your kids are encountering through the lens of God's Word and bring the light of God's Word to bear on that.
Speaker 1:That's what nurturing your students is. That's what discipleship is leading to sanctification.
Speaker 2:Love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, walt, my friend, thanks for being here giving a little time just hearing the bustle of Conclave's exhibit hall and there's an exhibit right on the other side over there, and every time I look past you I see this woman looking, this girl looking at me. Do you see her over there? I kept thinking who is staring at me over there?
Speaker 2:She's on a banner. We've got people passing that are handing out shirts and doing magic tricks. It feels like we're in youth ministry.
Speaker 1:I love being here. I can't recommend Conclave enough.
Speaker 2:I've heard so much about it and being here for the first time with my crew has been awesome, so thank you. Thank you so much. We'll see you again soon and back next week.
