RECLAIMING COMMUNITY:

YOUTH MINISTRY IN POST-PANDEMIC AMERICA

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 COMMUNITY. 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 community 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 messaging. We were already seeing the rise of a generation of narcissists, solely looking out for themselves, with little to no understanding of the Gospel of Christ. With the physical isolation brought on by the pandemic and the effects of online education, narcissism has grown exponentially. Further complicating things has been the increased prominence of a variety of social issues, as part of a “modern” theology of wokeness, that would supplant the theology of the Church. The community of the Church for our young people has been diminished, to say the least, but it is not lost. This article will look at the spread of narcissism in the United States and the movement away from community. It will then offer thoughts on how we can bring our youth back into the communal reality of the Trinity, modeled in the liturgical life of the Church.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMMUNITY OF NARCISSISTS

Perhaps the biggest block to living in community is narcissism, a term commonly used in modern parlance. Narcissism is extreme self-centeredness, with limited empathy, and a disregard for the needs and feelings of others. This most often leads to isolation, the narcissist having pushed others away through his words and actions. Rarely is this isolation deliberate, though it becomes a relied-on defense mechanism employed to preserve the narcissist’s ideas and worldview. Without anyone keeping him in check, isolation deepens the roots of his narcissistic ideas.

In her groundbreaking work Generation Me, sociologist Jean Twenge exposes a generation that has grown up and thrived in this fertile environment. In a section titled “The Church and Community of the Individual,” she explores the impact narcissism has had on the religious life of this generation. After revealing the rate of decline of various religious groups, she observes the following:

Many of the churches that have grown in membership in the past few decades are the fundamentalist Christian denominations that do require more strict adherence. However, these churches promote a very personalized form of religion . . . . These denominations teach that one’s personal faith guarantees acceptance into heaven, not the good works you perform and the way you treat others (which tradition- ally defined a proper spiritual outlook and its rewards) . . . . Of course, most adherents strive to live good lives, but personal beliefs are considered more important.4

What Twenge has discovered is a desire and attraction towards a religion that is focused on selfdetermined belief, feeding into a narcissist’s selfaffirmed ideas. Ultimately, with personal faith and beliefs determining admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven, they replace God as the decision-maker, rather than the scriptural understanding of God as judge.

This is confirmed in an in-depth study of the religious lives of teens. In the book Soul Searching, sociologist Christian Smith found what he considered to be “the de facto dominant religion among contemporary US teenagers.”5 He called this “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,”6 or MTD. Smith lists the framework of this so-called dominant religion to be the following:

1) A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4 God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.

5) Good people go to heaven when they die.7

Within this framework, we see a further progression away from referral to the tradition and towards belief in themselves as the ultimate judge. What happens when God is replaced as reference, or Lord? We cease to seek out God in our lives and we ignore His gift of community.

Twenge followed-up Generation Me with a book entitled The Narcissism Epidemic. She and co-author Keith Campbell state: “Somewhere along the line, American culture’s core ideas and values were modified to include the idea of self-admiration.”8 They go on to argue that self-admiration comes from inflated self-esteem, ultimately leading to narcissism. With narcissism so prevalent, it’s no wonder that in 2010 there was discussion about the removal of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) from the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, “the handbook used by health care professionals … as the authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders.”9

The unfortunate reality is that narcissism, as we are discussing it, seems to be everywhere because everything we consume is feeding it. In his work The New Media Epidemic, Jean-Claude Larchet makes

Who am I? Where do I belong? These are the same

questions our youth are asking.

Social media outlets utilize psychological manipulation to get more clicks and sell more ads, so that young people are under a constant barrage. Advertising is designed to draw them into an identity in which some product will miraculously make life absolutely, positively amazing. There is no escape from a case that the primary goal of ever-present media is its commercialization.10 “The television aims, through our affections, to draw us to participate and to identify with its message.”11 In his description of social networks, specifically Facebook, he points out that their success depends on “everyone’s natural need to be in contact with other.” This “is often felt acutely in modern society, which for various reasons, has weakened social links and deconstructed the family. Thus, more and more people find themselves alone.”12 Thus we have a question of identity. the assumption that life is simply about happiness. This push may be overt. For example, the slogan of a casino in Phoenix is “You Do You”: it assumes a style of life that has no regard for another, for his or her needs, but encourages self-indulgence. Our youth thus have two options: identify with the message of the advertisements, or identify with the Church.

This becomes increasingly important in the way that our youth approach social issues and community. Modern “woke” theology equates social issues to community issues. Proponents claim that everything is to be accepted, and anything short of that means we are somehow bad at community, or that our community is bad. This theology relies on its own assumptions of the Church’s theology and Scripture, making accusations rather than seeking dialogue. To be fair, the Church does not help herself and the response is often equally bad. Rather than seeking dialogue, many modern theologians the youth entrusted to our care. Rather than discussing these issues with them, we often shy away from the tough conversations. This seemingly happens out of fear of offending them or pushing them away, leading to a reliance on assumed knowledge to guide them rather than being active in our guiding them towards Christ. As we will see, the result is that, feeling pushed away from the Church, they are seeking answers elsewhere. rely on their own political leanings to bolster their theological claims, manipulating Scripture for the purposes of their arguments. This becomes overwhelmingly evident amid election seasons which push abortion, race, and gender into the forefront of their conversations. This increases the divide, pushing us deeper into camps based on what we think, rather than how our Church guides us. We become self-referential and lose sight of “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” offered in Scripture. As muddy as the waters are for us, this trend further clouds them for

We can no longer rely on assumed knowledge to guide our youth towards the Church’s teachings on these issues. Rather, it is incumbent on us to teach them the Church’s teachings – they’re called “teachings” after all – in a manner that is accessible for our youth while not playing into their world-formed social constructs. There is a delicate balance to be found, to be sure, but at its core this is an issue of identity.

The biggest questions our youth are asking themselves is “Who am I?” “Where do I fit?” and “What difference can I make?”13 We are uniquely placed to help them find answers these questions, as guided by Scripture. This is summarized by research untaken by the Fuller Youth Institute, published in their work 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager. In it, they remind us that youth have access to limitless information through the Internet and yet, when they come to their churches for answers to tough questions, their churches tend to “shy away from some of their deepest questions on faith and meaning.”14 As discussed, we are not immune to this, and it often becomes our modus operandi. The results of our shying away from tough questions are our youth are shying away from our communities in search of other communities that they consider to be more “welcoming” and “accepting.” They identify more with communities that are fed by and feed their tendencies towards MTD, perpetuating the cycle of self-refence and narcissism. Fuller Youth Institute assert that “young people need new plotlines, new mantras, to say to themselves over and over about who they are, where they fit, and what difference they can make.”15 Luckily, the Church is perfectly poised to answer this challenge and to forge this path for our youth.

In his discussion of sacraments in For the Life of the World, Fr. Alexander Schmemann discusses the issue of identity for the Church in the following way: “The Church calls sacraments those decisive acts of its life in which this transforming grace is confirmed as being given, in which the Church through a liturgical act identifies itself with and becomes the very form of that Gift.”16 Within the liturgical life of the Church, the Body of Christ, community par excellence offers us gifts while being itself a gift. We are given this community to come together and learn what it means to live as men and women created in the image and likeness of God, who is community. As we come together and receive these gifts, we see how we might overcome narcissism. Fr. Alexander observes: “The thanksgiving [anaphora] offered by the church each time answers and destroys precisely this not only contemporary but age-old lie about the world and man . . . . In thanksgiving we recognize and confess above all the divine source and the divine calling of our life.”17 The thanksgiving we offer when we gather as Church as our “divine calling” reveals and clarifies a way of life that, when followed, will help us reclaim the community that seems to be lost in post-pandemic America.

HOW DO WE BREAK THE CYCLE? BECOMING “THE OFFERER AND THE OFFERING”

We hear this “divine calling” to which Schmemann refers most acutely in the closing chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. As Christ gathers His disciples together, he sends them out into the world with very clear instructions: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28: 19–20). It would seem that becoming a disciple of Christ is a two-stage process: Be baptized, and observe all that has been commanded. This process begins with our chrismation.

In baptism, we “put on Christ,” as we hear in St. Paul’s L etter to the Galatians (3:27). What does it mean to “put on Christ?” In his L etter to the Romans, St. Paul reminds us that we are baptized into Christ’s death so that we might “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3–4). This is key for us. Putting on Christ does not mean we put on our crosses and walk around declaring ourselves to be Christians based on our personal beliefs. Walking in newness of life means that we are not walking in the way of our beliefs, but that we are walking in the way of Christ’s teachings. In Of Water and the Spirit, his work on baptism, Fr. Schmemann puts it into perspective: “In Baptism, we receive [Christ’s] life as our life and thus His faith, His love and His desire as the very ‘content’ of our life…18

And what is Christ’s life that we receive? It is a priesthood of self-offering in which we are called to share. Christ brings together the three Old Testament figures of Prophet, Priest, and King. He is the archetypal Prophet, in that He proclaims God’s Word; the Priest, in that He offers gifts to God; and the King, in that He is the steward of God’s gifts, ultimately being the gift that is offered. We hear this repeated throughout the Divine Liturgy. So in the priestly prayer of the Cherubic Hymn we address Christ as “he that offers and is offered.”19 Even more deliberately, we hear in the anaphoral prayers of St. John Chrysostom: “In the night in which he was betrayed or, rather, gave himself up for the life of the world . . . .”20 In putting on Christ, we, too, are called to be both offerer and offering, sharing in Christ’s priesthood of self-offering. His self-offering is most abundantly evident in His voluntary and life-giving death on the cross. The cross, which is the core of our liturgical life, reveals for us where the path to our own self-offering might go. In his article “Where is God in the Liturgy,” Fr. Alexander Rentel reminds us that “within the liturgy, the sign, the symbol, the gesture, the word, the veil of the cross gives way to the revelation of God’s love.”21 As we are created in the image and likeness of a God who is a community based in selfoffering love, this is the core of any attempts to reclaim community.

It is through our offering of ourselves that we find this love and, as St. Basil the Great posits, work to build up the likeness of God within us. “By our creation we have the first [image], and by our free choice we build the second [likeness].”22 He continues this line of thought: “How do we become according to the likeness? Through the Gospels. What is Christianity? If you are shown to be a Christian, hasten to become like God, put on Christ. But how will you put Him on if you have not been sealed . . . if you reject the likeness of God?”23

Through our actions, our observance of the commandments of God, we live out Christ’s priesthood of self-offering. This process, begun in our baptism, is sealed through our chrismation in which we begin the process of learning God’s commandments. In chrismation, we receive the “Seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit.”24 This is “the gift of the Holy Spirit that ‘opens’ to us access to the church, to Christ’s table in His Kingdom. We are baptized so that we might receive the Holy Spirit; we receive the Holy Spirit so that we may become living members of the Body of Christ, growing within the church into the fullness of Christ’s stature.”25

Becoming members of the Body of Christ means to become members of a community that is centered around self-sacrificial love. It is through this community that we learn to live out our sharing of Christ’s priesthood of self-offering. This is the key to reclaiming the community we have lost and it is found within the liturgical life of the Church. Providing our youth with that firm foundation, fostering a sense of self-offering within them, will begin the process of reclaiming community and combat the pull of narcissism.

HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD? RECLAIMING COMMUNITY

The movement towards narcissism within our society has led to isolation – exacerbated by the forced isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our youth are most acutely affected by this. Those of us who undertake Youth Ministry are called to help them overcome the challenges through their baptismal call to live Christ’s priesthood of self-offering, as taught throughout the Divine Liturgy. We are called to bring them back into the communal understanding that we find within the Divine Liturgy. After all, “worship gives expression to our faith.”26

The liturgical life of the Church is a beautiful gift we are given, with the Divine Liturgy being the crown jewel of that gift. Surprisingly, perhaps, we may keep our youth from fully embracing and experiencing that gift by referring to them as “the future of the Church.” This implicitly diminishers their current membership: if our youth are the future, what does that make them in the present? This wellmeaning understanding may have contributed to declining numbers, complaints that church is boring, and to accusations that the church is irrelevant.

In a panicked response, our attempts to “keep our kids in church” invert the relationship of worship/faith and ministry. From this inverted perspective, we approach our Youth Ministry efforts as the essence of the faith experience, rather than the liturgical life of the Church. Current youth ministry typically follows the following pattern: first, have fun activities like sporting events, movie nights, or ethnic dance troupes; next, bring the kids to these events; finally, add a church service to the event. We might plan a laser tag event from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., realize that there is Vespers that same night at 5 p.m., and then advertise the event to be from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. to ensure that they come for Vespers. The result is that we are seen as deceptive by our youth, while also feeding into their preconceived ideas that services are inherently boring and that they need to be tricked into attendance. Ultimately, this approach places the liturgical life as an extra-curricular activity to the youth programming. This is not done intentionally, but passively. Though a well-meaning attempt at education, when Sunday School happens during liturgical services, though our youth are actively being taught the content of the faith, they are passively being taught that church services are less important than what we are teaching them.

This highlights for us an important element of youth ministry: the importance of experiences in education. Human beings learn through experiences. Experiences have power, either reinforcing or contradicting what we are being taught otherwise. A child might heed the warnings of his parents not to touch a hot stove, but it may be that only after touching it does he know not to do it again. By the same token, telling our youth that they are a part of the community of worship without integrating them fully into that community will have the same effect as tricking them into coming to Vespers. Instead, we need to find way to integrate them authentically within the very fabric of the community, finding opportunities for them to own their faith.

For example, a parish was in need of a choir director. That parish had a high school sophomore who was particularly gifted musically. Rather than ask an adult who was less qualified, the sophomore was given the opportunity. He was given training and encouragement and the results were incredible. The choir not only continued under his guidance and leadership, but membership increased when his peers, now feeling empowered that one of their own was given this responsibility, began to join the choir themselves.

1. Tori DeAngelis, “Depression and Anxiety Escalate during COVID,” Monitor on Psychology (American Psychological Association, 1 Nov. 2021), https:// www.apa.org/monitor/2021/11/numbersdepression-anxiety.

2. Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), p. 27.

3. St. Maximos the Confessor, edited and translated by Jonathan J. Armstrong, On the Ecclesiastical Mystagogy (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2019), p. 54.

4. Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me (NY: Free Press, 2006), p. 35.

5. Ibid., p 162.

6. Ibid., p. 162.

7. Ibid., pp. 162–163.

8. Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. (Free Press, 2009), p. 57.

9. “Frequently Asked Questions” in Psychiatry.org - Frequently Asked Questions, https://psychiatry.org/ psychiatrists/practice/ dsm/frequently-askedquestions.

10. Larchet, Jean-Claude, and Archibald Andrew Torrance, The New Media Epidemic: The Undermining of Society, Family, and Our Own Soul (Holy Trinity Publications, The Printshop of St. Job of Pochaev, Holy Trinity Monastery, 2019), p. 4.

11. Ibid., p. 6.

12. Ibid., p. 9.

13. Kara Eckmann Powell and Brad M. Griffin, 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager: Making the Most of Your Conversations and Connections (Baker Books, 2021).

14. Ibid., p. 33.

This underlines for us a second important element within youth ministry: the role of relationships. Our youth need to be empowered to fulfill their membership within the life of the Church today. This happens through relationships with their clergy, their parents, other family members, and parishioners who take an interest in them. We learn better when we have a connection with the person we are learning from. Ask most high school students who their favorite teacher is, and then ask them what is their favorite subject. Probably nine times out of ten, there is a link between the two. Relationships are vital to our experience of the liturgical life. Looking again at the example of the choir above, the youth of the parish rallied around their peer to help support his efforts because they had a relationship with him. It would stand to reason, then, that building relationships are vital to ensuring that we are able to reclaim the lost community we have been discussing. Community is relationships, after all. Finding ways to break down the walls built up by isolation becomes essential.

Putting this into action requires asking ourselves some key questions, a kind of litmus test, to ensure that we are on the right path. What are these questions?

1. Does this support my ministry goals?

To ask this question means, above all else, that we must have ministry goals . . . and those goals are not numbers-based, but outcomes-based. We do not often look at ministry in this way. Typically, we plan a year’s worth of events and then try to make it all happen. The following year, we just change the dates on the calendar and do it all over. By adjusting our focus to outcomes-based goals, we provide new opportunities for the growth of those entrusted to our care. It also allows for, or requires, introspection on our part. Maintaining the status quo will get the status quo. Rather than simply changing the dates on the previous year’s calendar, we want to take the opportunity to look at the previous year and analyze what happened, shedding things that did not work, finding where our kids are, meeting them there, and setting goals that will guide them towards growth. We cannot expect growth if we are not willing to put in the effort that growth takes. Once our goals are set, all our programming, lesson planning, and event planning needs to point towards those goals.

2. What is being actively taught?

Setting goals and regular evaluation of ourselves and our programs allows us to ensure that we see where our kids are, meet them there, and guide them where we want them to be. We cannot allow ourselves to default into thinking that meeting them where they are and walking with them means talking down to them or failing to challenge them. We also need to stop avoiding answering their tough questions. Helping and fostering growth means engaging in those tough conversations. It also does not mean we launch a straw-man attack against “the world.” Rather, it means following the words of the great Apostle Paul: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”27 Our teaching needs to be focused on transformation through the renewal of the mind. As St. Paul continues, this stems from seeking out “the will of God” so that we might know “what is good and acceptable and perfect.”28 This does not mean we accept everything we are being told to accept, conforming to what “woke” theology might attempt to bully us into accepting, or creating a pseudoOrthodoxy rooted in a political system’s false construct. Through the transformation St. Paul speaks of, we are called to “prove what is the will of God,” which means our teaching must be firmly rooted in Holy Scripture as it is presented to us. This calls for further introspection to ensure we are not manipulating Scripture to prove our point. This brings us back to our discussion of Sunday School above.

3. What is being taught passively?

We often fail to realize the unintended consequences of some of our decisions. Through reflection, we can identify pitfalls in the decisions we have made, and, one hopes, make better decisions. We can act consciously regarding when and how we do things, with an eye towards incorporating the life of the Church into our various activities. These decisions can be simple in nature. For example, beginning a youth event, Sunday School lesson, or weekly Bible study with a basket in the center of the room for cell phones can serve as a reminder that phonefree time is important, even necessary. People might moan and groan at first, but setting this as the expectation for events and classes eventually just becomes a part of how we do what we do. This takes some time to get used to and requires effort on our part to “stay strong,” but has huge benefits.

This is connected to what was said above about putting in the effort for growth. Our young people know we care about something based on the attention we give, and this includes our relationships with them. When they see that we have put effort into a lesson topic, they know we see it as important.

4. What behavior am I modeling?

Imagine if I were to teach a lesson about the importance of church attendance and then take football season off so I can focus on my fantasy team. As much as we want to say the preacher is not as important as the message, we all know the adage that “actions speak louder than words.” Ensuring that we are living the life that we are teaching can also provide an opportunity for growth in our lives as well. We ourselves are also striving to be disciples of Christ, after all.

Just as the Apostles had first to be taught before teaching, through our own Baptism and Chrismation we are called to be disciples and to live a life modeled after Christ’s priesthood of self-offering. We are not putting on an act in our youth-minister costumes when we engage with our youth. Integrity and authenticity are required for youth ministry. They will know who we are and they will see that in our actions. Our ministry goals are standards that exist not just to guide our work, but we are to hold ourselves to them as well. If we say we are walking the path with them but are not walking the path with them, it is all simply a Magic Kingdom and we are nothing more than Disney cast members.

Conclusion

In 2001, I was very lucky to visit Lebanon with my father. While there, we visited Douma, the village where his grandmother came from. We stayed with the same family who my dad had stayed with in 1975, nearly 30 years prior, when he took her “home.” We were greeted with a lifestyle that I wish I had appreciated more as a 19-year-old undergraduate student. Everything was simplified. Hospitality and love were the driving forces behind everything. People seemed relaxed and at ease, comfortable in their own skin. I felt like we had gone back in time, walking through narrow streets that I couldn’t imagine having cars travel, being regaled with stories of the family that lived in one or another house. What I later found out was that this society that I had idealized was, in fact, just that: an ideal. Our family that hosted us was simply there for the weekend, coming back from Beirut where they lived and worked during the week. They didn’t live this beautiful and simple village life, connected deeply to extended family. Their reality was much like ours, isolated from others, absorbed by the city’s hustle and bustle.

Our American experience is no different. In fact, like many things in America, we “perfected” this reality. I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, in a small industrial town of about 14,000 people. We knew our neighbors, knew people around the town, and people knew us. In sixth grade, we were even allowed to leave the school at lunch time and go to the local pizza shop. Everyone knew each other, so there was little fear of a group of kids ranging in age from 10 to 12 walking a half-mile to get some pizza. Shortly thereafter, my family moved to a suburb of Pittsburgh. It was a commuter town, to be sure. We did not know our neighbors, let alone people in town, and there definitely was no local pizza place where we could walk.

I look back on these two examples often, recognizing that there is no perfect image of community, save the Church. Remembering that, ultimately, our youth are searching for community, we have a duty to welcome them fully into that community. When we demote our youth to being the “church of tomorrow,” we push them away, isolating them from the community of the Church, causing them to seek belonging and validation elsewhere. Communities which provide feelings of belonging and validation by feeding into a person’s inherent narcissism become increasingly attractive. They are easy and have the promotion of self as their primary goal. Participation in these communities, particularly electronic ones, further isolates our youth. Additionally, when we distill their Church experience to fun activities and ethnic dances, we do not share with them the fullness of a life centered around God’s love. We keep the Church from them and then expect them to wake up “tomorrow” and be the Church. How can this happen if we have not taught them to be the Church now? We are called to give them more. We are called to bring them into the life of the Church, through Her liturgical life, teaching them to participate in Christ’s priesthood of self-offering. This can only be accomplished through the experiences and relationships the Church is perfectly equipped to provide.

15. Ibid., p. 71.

16. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), p. 81.

17. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist–Sacrament of the Kingdom (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), p. 185.

18. Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), p. 68.

19. Service Book of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church According to the Use of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of New York and All North America, 2006), p. 105.

20. Service Book Antiochian Archdiocese, p. 113.

21. St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 2, 2 Nov. 2015, p. 218.

22. St. Basil the Great, Ed. Nonna Verna Harrison, On the Human Condition (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), p. 43.

23. Ibid., p. 45.

24. Service Book, Antiochian Archdiocese, p. 159.

25. Schmemann, Of Water and Spirit, p. 116.

26. John Breck, “Bible and Liturgy” (Orthodox Church in America, 1 Jan. 2003), https://www.oca.org/ reflections/fr.-johnbreck/bible-andliturgy.

27. Romans 12:2.

28. Ibid