현대 한국교회의 청소년 영성을 위한 기독교 교육적인 모색

Abstract

Contemporary Korean churches are facing a serious crisis. Adolescents who should serve as the buttress of churches, tend to stay away from churches, give in to material temptations, and live worldly lives that are contrary to spiritual life. Adolescence is a major and primary period in a person’s life in which future vision and sense of value regarding religious faith are formed. Particularly, Christians in adolescence have questions about religion and think hard mainly to develop a proper sense of self through the medium of religious life. As beings with high reasoning power, adolescents try to discern things and think rationally. This kind of thinking makes adolescents have negative attitude towards religion, which is opposite to science, and harbor doubts about the religion itself. As a result, adolescents become skeptical about their faith and even give up their faith and live secular lives away from churches, indifferent to spiritual things and lacking pious and religious consciousness. However, adolescents are beings with stronger potential to grow as spiritual Christians than those who are in other periods of life. This can only be accomplished if adolescents are spiritually nurtured and taught and guided in Christianity. In the present era, education for adolescents prioritizes the capabilities pursued in urban industries and external phenomena of efficiency as the society is changing dramatically, unlike in the past, due to the rapid development of the Internet and computer technology, instead of focusing on internal value and developing a holistic teaching plan. This leads to an educational collapse. As a result, adolescents have become indifferent to and even ignore a person’s character, personality, and life. Adolescents have gone as far as to lose the essential righteousness, which should be embodied as a human being. Therefore, it has become an urgent and important task for spiritual Christian education to help adolescents properly confess their faith and understand and practice Christian life and distinguish between right and wrong from a Christian perspective. This study aims to examine Christian education for adolescents’ Christian spirituality in contemporary churches in Korea and help them live a new life as spiritual believers. Regarding the spiritual identity talked about by Christian adolescents today, the study also aims to explore Christian spirituality for the purpose of education, which can enable adolescents to find their religious identity in everyday life, as the starting point of spiritual faith, at a time when they are in confusion, wanting to get out of a church. Against this backdrop, the researcher will make suggestions to help adolescents establish Christian spirituality in them in the context of Christian education. This paper suggests that churches make educational efforts to help adolescents develop right spiritual faith and expects Christians to understand the essential relationship between Christian education and Christian adolescents’ spirituality, so that Christians can play a meaningful role in carrying out youth ministries.