 All right. Welcome everyone. Good morning. I hope you are doing well. I hope you had a good weekend. All right. Let's just start off with the word of prayer. I request one of us to please lead us in prayer, please. Father, we thank you for this day. Once again, Lord Jesus, we thank you for doing this. We submit each one of the questions ahead. We begin with the last Lord God. I pray that you help each one of us to understand everything Lord Jesus and have take this lesson and music in our life, Lord God. May this be one of us and let your spirit speak to us one of us as we open our heart to the Lord. In the name of Jesus I pray amen. Thanks Lord. I appreciate it. All right. Let me just quickly share the screen and we get started. Okay. So today we'll start with chapter six. It's titled, Understanding Youth Culture. Okay. We finished chapter five last week. In the last class, last week's classes, we learned the challenges that a youth leader, a youth pastor faces and then we learned a few challenges what the youth are facing in this day and age. Okay. So with that in mind, we'll flow into chapter six, Understanding Youth Culture. Okay. A culture, it may seem like a word that's being used a lot with anything in terms of language, in terms of where we come from, in terms of a geographical location, where we speak so much about Indian culture and whatnot. But then if you just take that word into a certain context and study it a little bit more deeper, it's vast and it's so deep, isn't it? For example, as soon as when I ask, let's say for example, in the first year, I met most of your line and you would introduce yourself and then you would also tell where you are from. And also on a personal note when we meet one-on-one, not necessarily in a group, it's like, hey, my name is Kanan and then I would say, okay, hey Kanan, where are you from? And you would say, here's from so-and-so places. And then you immediately start having conversations regarding the culture of the place where he is from. I mean, or wherever, any individual that you might come across, for example, anyone says that you're from Bengal, it's like, oh wow, I like the sweets from there. They're supposed to be good, isn't it? You get what I'm saying, isn't it? You identify, you immediately try and relate to the culture that's existed for a while. Culture comes with some kind of recognition, reputation, with a lot of history. Why do we know that Rasubullahs are amazing in Bengal? Bengal, right? Oh, what else? Bidyanis are great in Hyderabad. There's been huge long-lasting tradition, history, etc., etc., isn't it? And that's how a culture is built. Culture is not built overnight. It takes decades and decades, right? Years to build something, depending on what context is. And similarly, when we look at all these different contexts of culture, a certain company will have, an organization will have its own culture, and every church will have its own culture, right? That could be, say for example, this is a church that has a very strong healing culture, right? Everybody believes in the healing and deliverance, and everybody will go out praying for one another, because they believe in the culture of healing, and it's being taught from the seniors, from the elders and pastors, right? Another church might have a very strong culture of community, right? I mean, it's all about community for this church. They love coming together, have that time of fellowship. It's all about a building community and all of that, etc., etc. What we're trying to get at this chapter is, I'm trying to understand what the youth culture is. What we need to realize is, if we don't create cultures as leaders, a certain culture will be set for us. That's the purpose behind this chapter, understanding the youth culture. It's very important that you, if you as a leader, if you as a pastor or youth leader, whatever, if you don't set a culture that you think is healthy for the church, an unhealthy culture will be created for you, okay? It could be a culture of gossip, it could be a culture of backbiting, which is not nice, right? I mean, all kinds of anything. So a culture is related with both positive and negative, right? So you can create a healthy environment, atmosphere, a culture. There's also chances of people creating a negative, unhealthy culture, okay? So it's very important for us to understand the importance and the significance of creating a culture. And now, in our context, we're going to make a little bit of an effort to understand what is the current culture of the youth across the globe and in our nation, okay? So that's the premise of this whole chapter, basically. So let's look at it. How do young people learn? We must first understand before being understood, okay? We must first understand before being understood. This is so crucial. Why I say this is because we, I think sometimes as leaders, we can be very quick to make a statement saying, oh, these young people, they don't listen to us, they don't understand us at all. But what we must realize is that we must first understand them before wanting to be understood, okay? And that's how, you know, that's how we begin to relate with one another, okay? So we must first begin, first understand before being understood, okay? Our present culture is like a shifting shadow in the afternoon sun, okay? The frequency at which this generation experiences change is incredible, okay? The frequency at which this generation experiences change is incredible. I'm hearing some noise and I, sorry, my apologies, I don't know how is that happening, okay? Okay, it goes on to say we see more changes in one year than the whole of last century put together, right? You guys realize how important that statement is? We see more changes in one year today than the whole of last century put together, you know? Last century is from 1900, 1900, all the way to 2000. The studies say that they saw the people who grew up in those generations, like even some of us, right? Towards the end, there was very little changes and there was hardly any changes and most of the changes happened in the, you know, from the 90s onwards. But for the huge part of that century, there was not much change and here the studies say nowadays that there's change happening every year, right? The change is happening in every field, every sector and in IT, you know, in technology and whatever you can think of, you know, you get, there's a new phone every month, there's a new brand of phone every month, there's a new brand of vehicles, cars, there's so many options, right? And all of that is a result of a change, isn't it? So, and all of this is affecting and impacting the culture of today's youth. Okay, so let's take a step back and look a little bit at, you know, we saw a little bit about the last century, right? To 1900 to 2000. So, let's see, let's break down of how the generations, you know, what they were known as and what they were called as, okay? Just to understand a bigger picture. So, generations are now typically defined in 15 year time brackets, okay? So, when we say one generation, so they're kind of defined typically in 15 year time brackets. So, our society is currently made up of five generations, okay? This is very important, please pay attention, okay? So, our society currently is made up of five generations. The first one is called the builders. Who are they? They're the traditionalists, traditionalists, the silent generation, born three or before 1945, okay? They're like the silent generation. Then you have the baby boomers who were born between 1946 to 1964, generation X from born between 1865 to 1979 and then comes the millennials, right? You would have heard this a lot and you will be hearing this a lot. Generation Y, the millennials between 1982-2001 and then generation Z, the post-millennials, post-2001 onwards, okay? So, you have the builders, baby boomers, generation X, Y and Z, okay? So, let's see what each of them are described a little bit more, okay? So, each of these generations was raised in very different worlds, right? You can argue and say almost literally, okay? Each generation was raised in very different worlds. So, what is the simple meaning of that? Have you, you know, have you ever had your grandparents say, you know, in my time it was so different. All of this, you know, in my time five rupees was like 500 rupees. Has anyone had something, you know, say that to your, even your parents for that matter, you know? Right? You have all these AC and all of this, you know, in our time we had to work hard so hard. You don't know. All right, so why do they make that statement which is a fact is because the times change, right? Like I said, you know, there's so much change happening and so fast, like even the music that sounded, you know, different five years ago is so different from the music we listen to today. The sound of the music itself changes because everything is changing. It's happening really, really fast, okay? So, each of these generations, five generations that we just mentioned was raised in different worlds. I say different worlds, not different planets, but it's like a different world, you know, when we, if we had a time machine and go back to say 1960s or 70s, you'd be like, you'd be like, wow, the first thing I will notice is there's no traffic in the road. So, what world is this? You'll see more trees, you know, it'll be amazing. So, Bangalore will still be the garden city, I guess. It'll look like a different world, isn't it? Because once upon a time, Bangalore was known as the garden city. I'm not too sure how it is now. But yeah, you get the point, right? So, the silent generation sacrificed, okay? This is the generation, right? The first builders, they are known as the builders. The silent generation sacrificed their needs and those of their families. Many of them lived through the Great Depression, British rule and witnessed World War II, most of them, right? Yeah, Thomas, I miss the 90s, Bangalore, yeah. Okay, but this is interesting generation, isn't it? Silent generation is, they lived through the Great Depression, or Great Depression, if you know a little bit of history, it happened in 1929. It was severely hit in the U.S., but I'm sure it impacted the world as well. It was like, if you remember, 2008, there was this very bad recession. World economy was hit. You know, a lot of people lost their jobs, even in India, but a lot of people lost their jobs and homes in the U.S. and whatnot. So, it was like, similar to that, that's Great Depression, okay? The economy was hit so bad, people didn't have jobs and whatnot. So, this generation lived through that very dark period. So, it's called not just a depression, but a Great Depression in world economy, and they were born through the British rule in India and witnessed World War II. So, and all of that is not pleasant for that generation to just enduring all of this. One person said this, it's interesting to study about history, but it's not so nice when you're going through it. So, those people, we study about World War II as history, but people who went through that is not so funny or not great for them at all. So, their kids, who known as the baby boomers, the baby boomers are known as, I mean, they're the children of the builders. They're the silent generation. Their children, the baby boomers, embraced consumerism. What does that mean? What is consumerism is, it is the pursuit of money and things that is never satisfied and excess, okay? So, this simply means a lot of greed, okay? It was a very greedy generation. So, see the contrast of the previous generation, they sacrificed, they were willing to give up their lives for their family and their loved ones, right? But the other generation is a stark contrast, okay? They want to pursue, it's just money and they were not satisfied. Personally, money in itself is nothing wrong with it because you need money to transact, isn't it? That's how it happens and we function in this world is we need money to pay the rent, electricity bills, et cetera, whatnot. The Bible says it's the love of money that kind of kills the job, but this generation wanted a lot of it and more and they were never satisfied. That's the danger, okay? So, let's go on. So, having seen the excess material goods collected by their parents, who are these parents? The baby boomers, right? Having seen the excess material goods collected by their parents, all unwanted, unnecessary stuff also. Generation X, you see this, they are the children of baby boomers, right? So, Gen X and the millennials are more prone to focus on the quality of their lives than the quantity of their collections. These vast differences can cause generations to misunderstand each other, okay? Guys, this is very important. So, I'll read this one more time for us, okay? So, having seen the excess material goods collected by their parents, Generation X and Generation Y, millennials are more prone to focus on the quality of their lives than the quantity of their collections. They're like, okay, you know, you have all these, you have a lot of these things, but in this generation, they're looking for some quality thing more than just collecting everything and anything. And so, because of this, there is a misunderstanding that is created, okay? So, let's dive into it a little bit more. So, in the 1900s, the average lifespan was 48 because of everything that happened, right? Great depression, World War I, World War II, etc. The average lifespan was only 48. Today, it's 78. In previous eras, there were only three generations. It's very important, please make, note this, okay? In the previous era, there were only three generations. Three generations means that existed together in a society. So, for example, there would be, like I say, your grandparents, your parents and yourselves. So, three generations, okay, in the previous eras, you know, because of the lifespan. But today, for the first time in history, we have five generations in our families, in our churches and in our communities. Five. Now, why is that a big deal? You know, why am I stressing so much, you know, the five generations, you know, what's the big deal? Just take a look at it. That's a huge change, right? It causes quite a stir because every generation is pushing to be heard and understood. Every generation is pushing to be heard and understood, right? Everybody's like, you know, every generation wants to do the things that was what they did during their time, right? They want to listen to, they want to watch their TV shows that they watched back then. They want to listen to the music that they listened to back then. And so, this back and forth is happening and every generation is fighting in a way to be heard and understood. And that's why, you know, when we have a quarrel with our parents and what not, we will tell, you know, you don't understand, right? We say that, you don't understand. It's not like that. It's changed. And then they will make another point. And then you've been there. I've been there many times, right? You guys don't understand. It's not how it used to function back then. You know, GPA, Google pay is genuine. You can pay Google pay. Even that can cause, you know, quite a stir. So, every generation is pushing to be heard and understood, right? Especially now, you go to certain busy areas, busy market areas, say, I mean, what I would know as, say, MG Road or Brigade Road and advertisement and what not. It's just so big. Everything has become, say, big. You know, they want to be loud. You know, they want to appeal to a certain generation. Every product wants to appeal to a certain generation, right? They want to cater to a certain generation and what not. So, that's visually loud. Okay? You're like, when I say loud, I'm not just talking about audible, sound loud, but then everything is big. Everything is like in your face. And it's so loud. And they are loud because they, you know, they're trying to get us to, you know, they want their attention, want our attention. They want to be heard. We want to understand them, et cetera, et cetera and what not. And then there is this trend of the headphones nowadays, right? We have Bluetooth headphones. You know, every, say, five out of 10 person will be walking with their earphones or headphones and what not. What does that do? In an attempt to shun off the loud noise, they just, you know, solid, you know, put themselves into this box, into this bubble, saying, okay, I don't want to, I want to be in my own world because nobody seems to understand and everything is too loud. You see how things are, you know, we're trying to get balanced. The society that we are living in at the moment is enduring a lot, guys. You know, it's a challenging society to live in. But it's still, it's wonderful. Like, people are still nice. People are still good. Okay. I hope you are still with me so far. So, why all of that? You know, why do we have to understand all this generations thing? You know, so what if it's, so what if the five generations are there? What, how does it impact youth ministry? Right? So here we go. So the ability to understand and relate to multiple generations at one time is more crucial than ever before. The ability to understand and relate to multiple generations is very important in this day and age. So what we are trying to do now is to, because our focus, our area of ministry is going to be youth and, and more specifically, generation X and generation, sorry, generation Y and generation Z, right? The millennials. We'll try and understand and see what's happening in their lives, right? What is the culture? What does their culture look like? Okay. So I approximately say about four, four or four years, yeah, I think four years ago, there's this very famous person who is a corporate trainer. His name is Simon Sinek, okay, Simon Sinek. He, he is known for his talks on leadership, etc. And then someone asked him a question about millennials. And then he went on this five minute, you know, like one rant, you know, you say millennials are this, millennials are that, you know, they feel they have the sense of entitlement. They don't like to work hard. They don't understand. They don't believe in, in hard work and what not. Okay. So I'm not sure what you were saying is that millennials are entitled basement dwellers who are content to let their best years slip past them. You know, that's what basically we don't, millennials don't care, right? But when I saw the video, something kind of stirred in me because, you know, I couldn't believe with everything because I'm a millennial myself. I'm, I'm from most, I'm some of us from generation Y. And so me being a millennial myself, I was not entirely happy because not everything he said was true. But that just was my opinion. Right. So we must pay attention to those who make up the millennial generation. Okay. That's the youth in your church that you interact with. Okay. Pay attention to them, you know, by getting to know them and discovering the answers to questions like these. Okay. So if I'm sure there are youths in your church and you yourself are a youth, but I'm talking to you as you are going to be a youth, as a youth leader. Okay. So pardon me if I, you know, I know you are young and whatnot, but I'm not talking to you as a youth. I'm talking to you as a youth leader. So, okay. We must pay attention to those who make up the millennial generation. That's generation Y and Z by getting to know them and discovering the answers to questions like say, hey, how do they live? How do they live? You know, when do they sleep? How do they get here? You know, where will their paths take them? What does their faith look like? Why do they not attend church as much as the generations have gone before? Why don't this generation attend church as much as the previous generations? What does their faith look like? What are their belief system when it comes to career paths? How do they choose their career paths, et cetera, et cetera. So we need to get to know them, have these conversations with them, a heart to heart conversation, you know, and all of that simply because the youth are changing, guys. Okay. The youth, they are changing. They are changing socially. They are changing intellectually, emotionally, morally, and spiritually. Okay. What do I mean socially? Like I said, one of the examples that we saw was social means like social media, for example, where you say it's social media, you can have, you can socialize with a lot of people, isn't it? You can have in Facebook, there was another thing called Orkut in 2000s, you could have say 50 friends, then 100 friends, then 500 friends, then 2000 friends, 5000 friends, you know, all for you to kind of socialize, get to know them high talk, whatnot, right? But that is changing for the youth. Some of them like to be left alone. Like, you know, they want just their headphones, their iPhones, they listen to their music or read books and whatnot. So they're changing socially, intellectually also changing. So they are not hesitant to ask some of the questions, you know, biblically as well. For example, anything regarding the Bible and the faith, you know, how do I believe that Genesis is true, that, you know, creation is stories true and not evolution, you know, and how do I know that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible? You know, how do you, so they are not hesitant or scared to ask those questions. They are thinking, right? That's what it simply means that they are changing intellectually, right? Which is a very scary part when I think about my son, you know, the kind of questions he is going to ask me. I'm like already sweating thinking about, okay, but they are changing emotionally. Now, there's a survey that was taken, I think I've mentioned this before, but a lot of young people, youth globally are going through a huge mental health problem that is associated with suicidal tendencies, even suicidal attempts, depression, etc., etc. A huge survey that was conducted where it shows that they are changing emotionally, because of everything that they are experiencing and going through, they're changing morally. Their moral values have changed, right? Let's just take two generations before that. Living relationships was an abomination to talk to, but these days, you know, living relationship, yeah, that's cool. It's absolutely nothing, you know, you know, premarital sex is fine, you know, I'm just expressing my love to my partner. So morally, things have changed and spiritually, while all of that is changing, there are more and more young people getting hungry and desperate for God as well, right? So they care constantly looking for answers to life's question. Okay, who am I? Who are my friends? Where am I going? What is my purpose in life? So as if the changes that they are going through itself is not enough, you have the outside influence of media that's kind of shaping their values, okay? The outside media is shaping their values in music and other media, superior groups, materialism, the desirable lifestyle, substance abuse, rising the rare of depression and suicide, and finally the big one, sex with no rules, no consent. They live in a sex saturated society. The media tells them that sex is something to be enjoyed whenever, wherever, however, with whoever they like. Isn't that a fact, guys? Isn't that the society that we're kind of living in, which is so, so dangerous, right? That's, it's so scary to think, isn't it? As it is, like we just, we're trying to understand the culture of our youth that they're going through. And we see that they're changing socially, intellectually, emotionally, morally, spiritually. And all of that seems like it's being shaped by the media, their values are being shaped by the media, right? There's a rising case of mental health, suicidal tendencies, suicidal attempts. Cases have gone up amongst the teenagers and youths, and sex with no consent and sex with no thinking that there is no consequences. It's so, so scary and dangerous, right? That's the kind of culture that's kind of being set right now. And teenagers and youth are longing for love and acceptance. You know, they buy into these ideas and look to have their emotional needs met through a few minutes of physical intimacy. Okay, the teenagers and some of the young people who are looking for true love, acceptance, you know, want to be accepted and not rejected. They look for, they look for it in all the wrong places and the wrong ways in few minutes of physical intimacy. And they'll get used, they will be abused. And then they'll feel like they, you know, that they are worth nothing because they were used. And so one thing will lead to another, you know, and, and it's like a downward spiral from there. You just keep falling and falling and falling and falling. So all these challenging influences are leading to new trends. Okay, all of these challenges that we just saw, all these changes that the youth, that the teenagers are going through, will always lead to certain trends. Okay. And so that's what we're looking at. We're going to look at. As it's quite a few, but then I'm just going to, you know, just go through quickly. So these are some of the trends that you will notice or observed in this today, in this day and age is secularization. What does that mean? In secularization, religion and the religious values associated with it disappear from culture and are replaced with government ideals and other secular institutions. Religion loses its influence over people as they embrace non-religious movements. Okay, there's been a rise in case of atheists and agnostics openly, right? In, again, in the last 20 years or so, at least that's in my observation. And young people are not a bold, a bold to tell, you know, what they believe in, simply saying that I don't believe in God. I don't, I'm an atheist. I'm an agnostic, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So that that's the one of the trends that's being created. Then the next one is big, which is the gender revolution, gender revolution broadly refers to the sweeping changes that are occurring in the gender system, where the traditional binary categories of male and female are deemed insufficient or invalid. Okay. So this current trend basically, the gender revolution simply means people don't believe that they're just two genders, male and female. Why? Because they think it's insufficient and also invalid. One of my friends, he lives in Canada, and he was telling that there are approximately, I'm not sure if the numbers would have increased, but they identify with 35 odd genders. There could be more or less. Yeah, let that sink in. Are you saying you say, oh, yeah, Russian, but that's Canada. Canada is so far away, it's on the other side of the world. You think India is really that far behind this, right? How many of you, you know, you see India now, the movies that are made, some of the ads, or you see, you know, people outside boldly, boldly saying it's like, yeah, I'm gay. I'm a lesbian. I'm so and so in India, isn't it? So all of that is, that's another trend that's kind of being said. And then there you have this privatization occurs when the government awards its ownership and control of business or property to an individual or individuals. That's one thing. But these are all some of the trends, guys. I don't want to really go through it, but then you can go through it. But the two things is that I want to emphasize here is the technology revolution and hyperindividualism. This is huge. These two trends that's being said by the changes that the youth are going through. So from the last part of the 20th century to the present, technology has permeated every area of our lives and become central to how we live, work, and socialize. We have moved from an analog world of isolation to a digital one that is connected globally. By the way, this was before pandemic. And before the pandemic itself, the world was connected, isn't it? Like online, everything is technology driven. And we all know what happened after the pandemic. This is still happening online. And then you have hyperindividualism. What is that? It simply occurs when an individual need is elevated above the needs of the collective society. The individual need is elevated above the needs of the collective society. So it's all about me attitude. I don't care what the society tells. This is all of that that they believe isn't true. I will wear what I feel is right. I will do what I think is right, even if it's wrong. Imagine if murderers start saying or thieves, I steal because I feel it is right. It's all about me. I will kill because I feel it's all about me. But it's fine for me. Hyperindividualism. And I hope you can relate to all of this. And I hope that you've seen all of this happen in the world around you and can relate to it in a certain extent. And what is happening right now, we are just giving words to what you've seen. We are just putting words to what you already know in most cases. Just a couple more points and we'll probably kind of stop. So when we start to drill down and look more closely at the influence of these trends, we can begin to understand how and why the local church is also being impacted. So we went through all of this, the generations, what they're going through, how they changed, what is happening, what which has led to all these trends to come to this point. When we start to look, when we start to zoom in and study and the trends that's influencing our young people, we can begin to understand how and why the local church is also being impacted and why we, as a church, need to take notice, not just notice, but as well as action. Okay. One of the saddest scriptures in the Bible is that it says in Judges 2-10, after that a generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. They did not remember, they did not know him, they did not acknowledge that he was the, you know, the Yahweh was their God. And partially because and I, or partially fully because the responsibility of passing on the good news, telling what God has done to another generation that that responsibility falls on us. It is our responsibility as youth leaders, youth pastors, church leaders to proclaim what the Lord has done to the next generation. That is the best inheritance or anything we can leave to our kids, to our generations after us. They're declaring the goodness of God and how good God's been in our lives. Isn't it? So generations are passing away, will your church pass away with them? This is the stat that says by 2030, that is eight years from now, millennials will represent 75% of the global workforce. Will they represent 75% of your church? Right? Will they represent 75% of your church? I'll stop at this point and we'll resume tomorrow with the same chapter. And so as I always make a point, as leaders, as young people yourselves, ask God to give you a heart for the younger generation. Ask him for what he has planned, what he desires for this generation. And then we surrender ourselves and make ourselves available for him to do whatever he wants to do through us. Because I feel like the Lord is asking, just like it says in Isaiah, who shall I send? Who will go for me? And I pray that we will be like Isaiah and answer and respond and say, I will go. Amen? Yeah, so that's about it for today. I hope you were able to gauge and understand and relate to some of the things that we studied today. All right, guys? I'll stop that recording now. Thank you all for joining the class. I'll see you again tomorrow. Okay, bye-bye.