RECLAIMING COMMUNITY: Y O U T H M I N I S T R Y I N P O S T- P A N D E M I C A M E R I C A
Gregory J. Abdalah, D.Min.
INTRODUCTION PERHAPS ONE OF THE GREATEST TRAGEDIES OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC WAS OUR EXPERIENCE OF ISOLATION; AN EXPERIENCE FELT MORE ACUTELY FOR SOME THAN FOR OTHERS. THE RESULTS OF THIS, ACCORDING TO THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, WAS AN INCREASE IN ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION FROM 2019 TO 2021.1 AVERAGE REPORTS OF ANXIETY SYMPTOMS INCREASED TO A RANGE OF 28 TO 37 PERCENT BETWEEN APRIL 2020 AND AUGUST 2021. IN 2019 THEY HAD BEEN BETWEEN 7 TO 9 PERCENT. FOR REPORTED DEPRESSION SYMPTOMS, THE INCREASE WAS FROM 6 TO 8 PERCENT IN 2019, TO A RANGE OF 20 TO 31 FROM APRIL 2020 TO AUGUST 2021. THESE NUMBERS REMIND US THAT, AS WE SEE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE CREATION STORY, WE ARE BUILT FOR COMMUNITY. IN GENESIS 1 GOD SAYS: “LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE, AFTER OUR LIKENESS” (GENESIS 1:26). ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS UNDERSTAND THIS TO BE A TRINITARIAN STATEMENT: WE READ THAT GOD IS “US” BECAUSE GOD IS TRINITY. HERE WE HAVE A FUNDAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING OF GOD AS C OMMUNITY. METROPOLITAN KALLISTOS WARE EXPLAINS THAT COMMUNITY IN THIS WAY: “THERE IS IN GOD SOMETHING ANALOGOUS TO ‘SOCIETY.’ HE IS NOT A SINGLE PERSON, LOVING HIMSELF ALONE, NOT A SELF-CONTAINED MONAD OR ‘THE ONE.’ HE IS TRIUNITY: THREE EQUAL PERSONS, EACH ONE DWELLING IN THE OTHER TWO BY VIRTUE OF AN UNCEASING MOVEMENT OF MUTUAL LOVE.”2
hus, for us to live out our creation in the image of a God who lives and acts as a community, and is community, we need community. This may be why Genesis goes on, in the very next verse, to say: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Immediately the focus shifts to the image of God being communal, both male and female; not for the reasons modern proponents of gender studies will tell you, but because we are created to live in and to be in community. As we see at the end of Genesis 2, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (2:24). As two halves of a whole, we seek out community, first and foremost, within marriage. As Metropolitan Kallistos points out, the 6 November - December 2023
c ommunity of the Trinity is “a never-ending procession of mutual love.” Community, most notably the community formed within marriage, strives to be formed in and express this same love. Through our communities we experience God. So St. Maximos the Confessor writes in his Ecclesiastical Mystagogy: “Therefore, the holy Church is the image of God, as it has been said, because she works the same oneness around the faithful as God does.”3 As we will see, through the rise of narcissism in our society, this experience of community often eludes us. Those of us undertaking Youth Ministry learn all too well that this community is often lacking in the lives of today’s youth. Even before the pandemic, human interaction was often limited to digital expressions, whether through various social media outlets or “old-school” text messagi ng. We were
