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If you know what Relient K’s lead singer wears in “Sadie Hawkins Dance,” this one’s for you. Ditto if you ever participated in a 40 Hour Famine, signed a purity pledge, or dutifully wore a t-shirt over your swimsuit on the “fun day” of a summer mission trip. Those of us who came of age in a certain period of U.S. youth groups—what Tyler Huckabee unofficially dubs “Peak Youth Group Era”—are now adults. And though we’ve tossed out our copies of She Said Yes and I Kissed Dating Goodbye (good riddance!), we’re still reckoning with the youth groups that raised us. This isn’t a “let’s trash youth groups” piece, though. As a veteran of the youth group trenches himself, Tyler talks with youth ministry experts and alumni who acknowledge the “good intentions” of “giving kids spaces that were spiritually informed, but fun.” And while I personally wish to spare future generations from what I saw when my youth pastor tried to figure out how many marshmallows he could fit in his mouth at one time, fun and games weren’t really the problem. The real problem, Tyler points out, is that this “highly programmatic” style of youth group treated teenagers as either “a demographic to be retained or a problem to be solved.” Or as one expert told him, the history of youth group is really about “social control.” The good news? A chorus of churches and theologians are pushing for us to rethink the way we treat the church’s youth. In short: Youth groups don’t have to be this way. Here’s what else you need to know this week: Oh, and if you’re wondering, the best outfit for a Sadie Hawkins dance is revealed in the chorus of Relient K’s 2001 hit: “The Sadie Hawkins dance/ In my khaki pants/ There's nothing better.”
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