Context for Youth Ministry
I saw this article on Wired.com, and it reminded me of a series of lectures, conversations, I heard at the Disciples Youth Ministry Network this past March on “Exegesis of the Self” by Rodger Nishioka. Understanding the context from which you grew up can help place, understand, and interact in the context of young people today. And even though youth will not have the common experience of this list of 100 things, they still have the same issues all young people deal with: 1) Acceptance; 2) The meaning of it all; 3) Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll (Rap today); 4) Educational Pressure; 5) Peer Pressure; 6) Who am I? This is my list. You probably have your own. The biggest difference between youth today and when I was a young person is the amount of stuff that is marketed directly to youth.
100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About
By Nathan Barry, July 22, 2009
There are some things in this world that will never be forgotten, this week’s 40th anniversary of the moon landing for one. But Moore’s Law and our ever-increasing quest for simpler, smaller, faster and better widgets and thingamabobs will always ensure that some of the technology we grew up with will not be passed down the line to the next generation of geeks.
That is, of course, unless we tell them all about the good old days of modems and typewriters, slide rules and encyclopedias …
Audio-Visual Equipment
- Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
- Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
- Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to today’s teenager.
- The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
- Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
- Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
- High-speed dubbing.
- 8-track cartridges.
- Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
- Betamax tapes.
- MiniDisc.
- Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
- Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio b0rk this concept.)
- Shortwave radio.
- 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
- Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
- That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’