Facing Illiteracy
July 8, 2008Today’s youth culture is creating an issue not faced by Christianity since 1440. Today’s youth are progressively emerging as teens who either have severe issues with reading at an eighth grade level (50% of adults now can’t do that). Those who can read are able to read at a proficient level are decreasingly choosing to read not just books and magazines, but (from my observations on Facebook) even content to grow.
I would propose that, instead, the medium of ideas is emerging to be (in this order)
- Spoken word from equals
- Social norms, cliches, and ingrained philosophies
- Lyrics in musical expression
- Parental influences
- Video and other like media
- Advertising and other promotional materials
If this is now the medium of exchange of ideas, perhaps Christian leaders need to do radically rethink how we approach spiritual formation for average Americans. In prior generations facing illiteracy, methods of conveying ideas of the Word have included:
- Call-and-response in worship services
- Memorization through repetition
- Discussing Scriptures, how they relate to each other, and today’s culture, etc (binding and loosing)
- Publicly reading the Scripture (explaining the audiences of the epistles)
thes posts speeks ov a trooth that iss diphicult two deel wiph.
Seriously though, good post, these are definitely things we need to consider in how we communicate the truth of God.
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