When it comes to the spiritual and religious lives of America's teenagers, there is good news and bad news, at least accord ing to the National Study of Youth and Religion. The good news is that teens are not hostile toward religion. Most see religious faith as having a positive role in society; making a helpful contribution to individual, family and communal life. The bad news is that it just doesn't matter much. Religious faith is not all that important to them. This is true even of "churched" youth. Teens struggle to find biblical and theological language to express their faith. And the faith they practice is only nominally Christian when viewed through the lens of Scripture and Christian tradition. This situation reflects a failure on the part of parents and congregations who have passed faith on to them. Though this is a crisis for the church, it is not a reason for despair. Parents and other adults have the opportunity to form deep and lasting faith in young people. But the challenge is spiritual and theological, not programmatic or methodological. This project is based on the assumption that the reading and preaching of Scripture in the context of corporate worship is a primary communicator of Christian truth to the church. If this is true, then how can preachers intentionally prepare and preach sermons which inspire and form teens for a lifelong trust walk with Jesus? To move toward an answer to this question, this project will explore what today's teens actually believe and practice. It will explore the postmodern context in which young people live and listen to sermons. It will then propose that understanding preaching to teens as "confessing Jesus Christ" is useful in a postmodern context and that collaborative preaching methods offer a practical way to prepare, preach. and evaluate sermons that reach and grow young listeners. Finally, it will offer several guidelines for effective preaching to teens.
