One of the Apostle Paul’s most famous speeches took place at Mars Hill, the Areopagus, in Athens.  He noted that they appeared to be a very religious lot of people due to the sheer number of statues they had to their gods.  In a brilliant move he identified the one statue that was for the “unknown” god and he saw his bridge.  Paul then launched into his epic sermon about the “unknown” God and described our Father to the Greeks.  He masterfully used a technique called bridge building to connect with his audience.

Kids today are completely enmeshed in pop culture.  We could, and should be aware of what is shaping our youth today and much of what we see and hear impacts them more than we know.  But I’m not simply talking about knowing what the newest Katy Perry song is blazing up the charts, what I’m talking about is building a bridge with a language of the soul.

In order to connect with young people they first have to know that you’re interested and trustworthy.  They are most likely already suspicious of adults anyway.  Too often we have an agenda for them and they know that.  It’s what drives them underground many times.  What we’re talking about here is a fundamental belief that we have something in common with the young people we love and hope to reach.

If we say things like, “Teens today are just so much more _________ than we were.” or “Kids today are just lazy and apathetic.” we create distance between us and them.  If we fail to see that they have the same longings that drove us then and drive us now there will be no bridge to walk across.  All we will have to work with is a shallow relationship and all the change we’re likely to affect is shallow compliance to an empty belief system.  We have to find common ground and that common ground should be our shared humanity.

In his ground breaking book Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers, Chap Clark identifies six intrinsic longings of all students.  Those longings are: to belong, to matter, to be wanted, to be uniquely ourselves, for a safe place, and to be taken seriously.  Who among us can’t relate to those longings?  I work with drug addicted emerging adults.  Daily they express to me their desire to satisfy those very longings and that much of their behavior was an attempt to do just that.

After some small talk I usually ask a student where in their life do they feel they belong.  Where do they and what do they do that makes them feel like they matter?  Who takes you seriously?  Where are the safest places for you to just be yourself?  These are the questions that matter to students even if they don’t have the language to articulate them.

What the Apostle Paul did was provide an opportunity for those in the crowd to have their longings satisfied in a permanent manner by depending on the One true God.  A civilization that worships everything is an empty civilization desperately searching for meaning.  They apparently hadn’t found that in the many false gods they worshipped.

We have the same opportunity to connect the kids in our community to the very God that Paul preached about to the Greeks but first we must take to time to build a bridge by learning about them and their longings.  There is ALWAYS a bridge and it’s up to us to find it.