Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

Paul Kingsnorth has written an engaging and thought-provoking book on technology which serves to warn us by looking ahead to the dangers that are coming due to our un-thinking embrace of all things digital. The book is titled Against The Machine: On The Unmaking of Humanity . Kingsnorth’s analysis should serve as a wake-up call to all of us, especially parents, as he shares how the individuals beh...

As a parent, what is your posture regarding how your kids will best navigate today’s youth culture? I want to warn you against two dangerous postures. Some parents take the approach I call false optimism. It’s an approach that looks at the world and with a shrug of the shoulders says, “No need to worry, Everything is going to be alright.” Truth is, the collective lot of children and teens hasn’t g...

The title of a research study from the University of Hawaii recently caught my eye. The study title is this: “Frequency of Negative Adult Spectator Behavior at Adolescent Sporting Events.” Any of us who have attended a youth sporting event or who are raising young athletes know the sideline behavior of parents is often concerning, and sometimes even appalling. The introduction to the study recogni...

Are you aware that Time Magazine’s 2025 Person of the Year is actually a group, rather than an individual? Named as winner were the “Architects of Artificial Intelligence,” an award which is given for the transformative impact AI is having on our culture and lives. Being given the title does not always signify a positive contribution, but rather the most influential contribution.  AI is truly chan...

Parents, do you understand that seeing your kids come to Jesus is not just about belief, repentance, forgiveness, and eternal life? Something else has to happen after our kids accept Christ as their Savior. Salvation is not just about justification, but about a lifetime of sanctification. We become followers of Jesus who integrate the Christian faith and kingdom of God into all of life. Theologian...

All this week we’ve been looking at barriers to lasting faith and the reality that far too many kids are leaving high school, home, and church, then heading off to college and walking away from their faith. In his helpful article, Why Youth Stay In Church When They Grow Up, Pastor Jon Nielson lists three reasons that are present in the lives of young people who continue to embrace and grow in thei...

All this week we’re looking at barriers to lasting faith and the reality that far too many kids are leaving high school, home, and church, then heading off to college and walking away from their faith. Pastor Jon Nielson believes that one of the foundational reasons for this is that our kids have not grown up in homes where their parents have preached the Gospel to them. My own forty years of expe...

All this week we’re looking at barriers to lasting faith and the reality that far too many kids are leaving high school, home, and church, then heading off to college and walking away from their faith. Pastor Jon Nielson believes that one of the foundational reasons for this is that our kids have been entertained by our youth group efforts rather than equipped to live the difficult life of discipl...

All this week we’re looking at barriers to lasting faith and the reality that far too many kids are leaving high school, home, and church, then heading off to college and walking away from their faith. Pastor Jon Nielson believes that one of the foundational reasons for this is that our kids have not been converted to the faith. Nielson says that we all too often settle for our kids being nominal...

Several years ago here at CPYU we began what we call our College Transition Initiative. This initiative was our response to the concern parents, youth workers, and pastors were expressing regarding the growing percentage of youth group kids who had been raised in Christian homes, but had then gone off to college and pushed either the pause or stop buttons on their faith. It was as if they were jet...

Several of my youth worker friends are reporting that many kids in their youth groups are feeling increased loneliness. The data supports this growing widespread epidemic of loneliness. God has made us for relationships, and when the pressures of life, the breakdown of the family, over-scheduling, and increased time focused on screens combine, it's a perfect storm resulting in feeling alone. Sadly...

Parents, today I want to encourage you to have your family attend a church where the adults, teenagers, and children all worship together rather than going their separate ways when they walk into the building. By doing this, they will be afforded the opportunity to see the faith modeled by other adults. Writer Steve Garber knows the valuable role the inter-generational Christian community plays in...

One of the slang terms you might hear male teenagers use these days is “homiesexual.” We all know that a homie is someone who is a close friend. The term homiesexual can be used in a variety of ways, and it’s always helpful to ask just what a person means when they say it. One of the most common definitions applies the term to male friendships that are deep and intimate in emotional ways. Sometime...

In his book Against The Machine , writer and thinker Paul Kingsnorth contends that thanks to digital technology and advances in AI, we are moving into a world that is governed by Algorithm’s and AI, rather than by God-imaging humanity. In essence, we are letting the machine guide and direct our lives. I want to encourage you to take note of the four values the Machine is promoting. First, there’s...

Now that all of my children have moved out of adolescence, I’m realizing they didn’t come equipped with a switch or button that could be tripped or pushed to make them accept, embrace, and believe everything we told them about faith and life. Instead, I needed to allow them to grow just as I was allowed to grow. Our kids intellectual, physical, and spiritual development are all ongoing processes....

I was recently going through some old family photos from back when I was an elementary-aged boy. I came upon one picture that brought back memories of certain summer days that I just didn’t like at all. There I was, sitting in front of a flower bed with a bucket by my side as I was making my way across the front of the house pulling weeds. I was glancing at the camera as my dad snapped the shutter...

Blaise Pascal described a universal hole in the soul as a Godshaped vacuum. Alister McGrath describes Pascal’s model as “a God-shaped emptiness within us, which only God can fill. We may try to fill it in other ways and with other things. Yet one of the few certainties of life is that nothing in this world satisfies our longing for something that is ultimately beyond this world.” Teenagers are no...

The folks at Defend Young Minds have released some new data telling us that social media is now the most common way that kids are exposed to porn. Six out of ten minors now say they were exposed to porn by accident on social media. This is up from almost four out of ten in 2023. Thirteen is the average age of first exposure, with reports of first exposure even at six years old. And the four most c...

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is all the buzz right now. It’s come on the scene quickly, and so many are enamored with what it can do. For those of us who have engaged with AI through the growing number of apps that are out there, we are generating songs, videos, images, and even text in literally a split second, and what we see is so amazing that it can draw us in just as quickly as it responds...

Raising children in the Christian faith is not an easy job. In fact, the more intentional we are about pointing our kids to Christ and equipping them to live to His glory, the more we become a threat to the enemy of God and his kingdom of darkness. Spiritual oppression, opposition, and trials will come. Satan does not like what intentional Christian parents are doing. I was thinking about this rec...

As we finish up our week-long look at nurturing our kids away from materialism, here are some practical guidelines to help you address this issue in your home. Sit together as a family and read through the Sermon on the Mount. As the passage is read aloud, have each family member jot down anything from Jesus’ words that offer insight into how we are to view and manage money and wealth, along with...

Today we continue our week long look at steering our kids to the Lord, and away from the idolatrous trap of materialism. There is no quick way to survey the Bible’s exhortations and warnings regarding money, wealth, and materialism. The Bible is clear that while God does bless many with abundance, it is the love of money and wealth that is sinful and idolatrous. The 10 Commandments forbid the wors...

All this week we’re looking at how to help our kids see and run from the idol of materialism. We need to teach them that the accumulation of things will never satisfy their deepest yearnings and desires. They need to know that they have been created by God for a relationship with  God. Sin has broken that relationship, leaving us all spiritually empty and hungering for redemption and restoration....

All this week we’re looking at how to push back on the idol of materialism. Materialism is fed by a marketing machine that it is estimated now spends seventeen billion to twenty billion dollars on marketing to children and teens, a number that is projected to increase significantly on an annual basis over the coming years. It’s conservatively estimated that by the time they reach the age of eighte...

All of us, parents and kids alike, are swimming in a cultural soup which promotes materialism. We are encouraged hundreds of times a day to hinge our happiness and fulfillment in the ongoing accumulation of as much as we possibly can. As Christians, we need to not only recognize this fact, but we need to take steps to understand how we are drawn to this pervasive idol so that we might smash it to...