observations of a former youth pastor

I’ve been able to dabble in youth ministry here in Brazil. After nine years as a youth pastor I am happy to just dabble. I’m thrilled to not have to go to a youth meeting every week. But in dabbling I still get to do the fun stuff, like work with the college aged leadership team. Most of my closest relationships are with youth on the leadership team. It’s really the best of both worlds, I have no real responsibilities, but I get to help out whenever I want, or when I’m needed most.

But once a youth pastor always a youth pastor, I suppose… I can’t help myself from analyzing the youth culture as I have been so accustomed to doing. I know enough to know that I haven’t figured much out here. When I finally think I’ve nailed down some aspect of the youth culture, I usually discover something else that blows my whole theory. It’s a good thing I’m not getting graded on all this.

Failures aside, I have been able to come up with some striking differences in the youth culture here and back home. Usually it’s a this-would-never-work-back-home moment that leads to one of these findings. So here is my list of 2 (I know, pretty pathetic) things that I’ve figured out about brasilian youth culture…

1. Technology rules, but the bar is low. Like American youth, the youth here are enthralled with all things new, but unlike their American counterparts they don’t have the pretention of cynicism. You’ll never get a “that’s so cheesy” sneer or a “that’s so 90’s” comment. They’re just glad you’re trying to put something up on the video projector. So if the sound system feeds back and the video stops 3 times during playback and all we have for bathrooms at the retreat center are holes in the ground… well that’s ok, they don’t mind.
2. People are shockingly patient when it comes to being preached at. Probably because of a number of factors, in the U.S. we are overly sensitive to offending people that we are trying to reach (and rightly so). It’s a breath of fresh air (and at the same time somewhat disturbing) to find that here there is really no need to be concerned with that. Either people are not offended at anything or they just keep their thoughts to themselves, I’m not really sure which. Let me explain, let’s make-believe that you are a youth pastor, your youth leadership team comes to you and says they want to put up a fake police road block to stop traffic in front of your church and tell people they need Jesus and they should come stay for the church service. You’d probably laugh or cry or maybe both, but you’d gently guide them away from that absurd idea, right? Well not if you were here. No joke. Our youth group did this. Some people sped away because they were breaking the law in some way and thought it was a real roadblock, but the rest just took it in stride, some even stopped and stayed for the church service!

The roadblock in front of our church

A youth talks to the driver of a car that was stopped,
a policeman stands nearby supervising the mock roadblock.

My other example comes from the other night. We were given permission to hold an evangelistic meeting at a local school. It was in the evening, during the time of night classes, which are attended mostly by high school and college age kids. I’m still not sure how they pulled this off, but somehow they were able to cancel the classes but instead of telling the students, the youth group was hoping that when they showed up for class they would decide to just stay for the meeting. Now if I were a student, religious beliefs aside, and classes were cancelled and no one told me, I’d probably be a little peeved, I know I’m not sticking around school for some meeting that is not required. But again, I was totally wrong in my assumptions. The students did stay, and some even seemed to enjoy it.

The outreach program at the school

I do have to say, given these factors alone, this would be a pretty great place to be a youth pastor. Not having to try so hard to impress people is liberating. I spent too much time as a youth pastor trying to think of the next best thing that will capture their attention. There’s something authentic about knowing that the audience is not so caught up in the delivery system of the message that they miss the point altogether. Come to think of it, that’s the one thing that drew me to Brazil from the beginning, the openness and often eagerness to hear the Gospel.