YOUTH MINISTRY LEADERS
The most needed ministry at the most crucial time
WHAT IS AT STAKE?
"[There] must be the frank admission that those who are trying to bring about a moral revolution in this country understand that this accomplished by the means of gaining control of the schools, which means how the mind and worldview of the young will be framed. You should make no mistake, there has been concerted effort going on for decades now to reach the hearts and minds of America's children and particularly to go around their parents and to go around their churches in order to frame the understanding of reality that will take the shape, take the possession of the younger generation and doing so without parents or church authorities or anyone else being able to stop, much less to correct what is being taught to children.
There's another dimension to this which many Christians just fail to understand, and that is that throughout so much of this literature is the fact that parents are considered more likely to be the problem than the solution. And indeed, there are many who argue that the role of the public schools is to correct the religious prejudices that children are likely to encounter in their homes. You can figure out immediately what that means." (The Briefing, 01/15/19. https://albertmohler.com/2019/01/15/briefing-1-15-19/)
Mental Health on the Rise
In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase — to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011 — of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous year. Surveys that look at symptoms related to anxiety are also telling. In 1985, the Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A. began asking incoming college freshmen if they “felt overwhelmed by all I had to do” during the previous year. In 1985, 18 percent said they did. By 2010, that number had increased to 29 percent. Last year, it surged to 41 percent.
Those numbers — combined with a doubling of hospital admissions for suicidal teenagers over the last 10 years, with the highest rates occurring soon after they return to school each fall — come as little surprise to high school administrators across the country, who increasingly report a glut of anxious, overwhelmed students.
Anxiety is the most common mental-health disorder in the United States, affecting nearly one-third of both adolescents and adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But unlike depression, with which it routinely occurs, anxiety is often seen as a less serious problem.
(New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html)
PEW RESEARCH
A majority of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (57%) fear a shooting could happen at their school, and most parents of teens share their concern. Nonwhite teens express greater concern over the possibility of a shooting at their school than white teens, and girls are more likely than boys to cite such concern. Most parents also share the concern of a shooting at their children’s school. More than eight-in-ten teens and adults say preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns and improving mental health screening and treatment would be effective at preventing school shootings.
A majority of U.S. teens (59%) have experienced some form of cyberbullying. About four-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 (42%) say they have been called offensive names online or on their cellphone, 32% say they have had false rumors spread about them and one-quarter report that they have received explicit images they didn’t ask for. At the same time, nine-in-ten teens say online harassment is a problem that affects their peers. And while a majority of teens think parents are doing a good job addressing the issue, they are critical of the way teachers, social media companies and politicians are tackling cyberbullying.
Nine-in-ten Americans believe in a higher power, but just a slim majority (56%) believes in God as described in the Bible. Belief in a higher power is even common among religious “nones,” or those who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” Meanwhile, about half (48%) of U.S. adults say that God or another higher power directly determines what happens in their lives all or most of the time, and three-quarters say they try to talk to God or another higher power.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/13/18-striking-findings-from-2018/