Using a Community-Based, Church-Related Youth Center to Communicate the Christian Gospel to Teenagers in a Postmodern Youth Culture

This thesis proposes that a youth center is the appropriate vehicle for attracting postmodern youth to the local church. This attraction is necessary, since the postmodern generation represents the future of the Church, and since postmodernism is the first purely secular period since the advent of Christianity. The thesis makes use of surveys of youth pastors, unchurched students, and churched students in order to determine how these three groups evaluate the present state of youth ministry, especially in terms of its mission to postmodern teenagers. The results show that although youth pastors consider their outreach to postmodern teenagers to be itself postmodern or appropriate for that group, neither churched nor unchurched students see it that way. The surveys also reveal that postmodern teenagers do not consider themselves negative in terms of their self-image or their future, as they are sometimes portrayed in the media, by youth pastors, and even their churched peers. The high value that postmodern students give spirituality means that this group could well be interested in Christianity if they were approached in the right way.

The thesis describes a youth center as a way to meet that need. Such a center could be based on a combination of several extant youth programs and incorporate entertainment, sports, counseling, and job training as ways to involve all students, with particular attention to postmodern students. Programs are described that have been specially designed to appeal to that group.