The Digital Age

I wasn't sure at all what I was going to write about this week.  I've been extremely busy with my work and left this weeks post to the last minute and then a few more.  For the last couple of months I've had a very good idea on what I was going to cover well in advance, not this week.  Then this evening my wife informed me that some of the former members of the David Crowder Band had stayed together and formed a new band call "The Digital Age" and have released an EP.  This new piece of information led me to this post tonight and will perhaps influence the next couple weeks of posts.

I'll get into this more next week, but I feel the David Crowder Band has been an amazing pillar of music in the Christian scene for many many years and have been light years ahead of everyone else.  It is good to see some of them sticking together.  While surfing their site a particular line on their about page caught me and I want to touch on it briefly today.

"With the rise of the internet, our neighbors are no longer the people who live next to us. We have relationships with people not only within our communities and in our cities, but across the globe. Ideas and information spread quickly and shape how we choose to connect or disconnect from those around us."

This very topic has been something I have been investing a lot of research into over the last few years.  The internet is making the world flat, countless things are becoming disintermediated, traditionally strong things are crumbling at a rapid pace.  This current age that we are in is one of wonders, speed, information and change.  It is an exciting yet scary time to be a part of.  As Youth Leaders we need to make sure that we pay attention to the changing landscape around us, try our best to understand the next generation of kids coming up, and meet the current generation where they are at now.  In some ways your job in the church is one of the most difficult as you have to learn to build bridges between some very different generations and mindsets.

It will pay off if you take some time to understand all of this, learn to connect to those in your neighbourhood, but also make sure you learning from people across the globe.  Truly understanding the shifts that are going on is more than just getting yourself a Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest account.  It is about learning how kids learn and absorb information, paying attention to the next wave of technology and how that will impact your next group of kids, and also trying to act as a gap between your youth and their parents.  All of this takes a lot of work, but if you put enough time into it will pay off.