기독교 청소년 교육에 대한 창조적 성찰

Abstract

Current youths’ image is our future image as well as our church’s image ten years later. However it is sad to report that the self satisfaction level of Korea’s youths is the lowest of 23 nations which belong to OECD. We are the nation that has number one rate of youths’suicide not to mention that we are being challenged by the lowest birth rate and diminishing number of adult believers in the church. Therefore it is urgent to reflect what we are doing in terms of youth ministry and how we are educating our youths. In this line of concern this paper looks at psychological and various phases of religious developmental issues that our youths are facing today and diagnoses the possible problems today’s youths might suffer from. As far as the psychological problems today’s youths lie in the very shaky ground that almost thirty percent of them suffer from depression and ten percent of them constantly feel psychologically unstable that they are wanting to commit suicide. Many of them do not communicate with their parents in family at all and it is getting worse every year, and the report says that more than fifty percent of all youths feel that the church is inapt to provide answers to their spiritual questions. This report helps us to look at the huge gap between youths and current Christian education endeavor. In order to present critical reflections and creative alternatives, our youths’ characteristics are dealt with psycho-social, cognitive, moral,faith and brain science perspectives. Then several suggestions are presented as a result: first, we need to earn systematic professionalism on youth education; second, through communication and participation we need to design education that allows youth to participate in Christian education with self directed willingness; third, by uniting healthy civil consciousness and wholistic spirituality we need to design educational curriculum which can enable and unite both faith and everyday life matters; fourth, we need to deeply reflect more on the basic values that Christian youths must follow in their life.