One of the greater challenges for churches at this point in the 21st century (and perhaps in any century) is how to work and worship for the formation of young people.  For years, it seemed like youth work was the cutting edge of the church: it was where all of the good and appropriately-forward thinking was taking place.  These days, from my outsider perspective, something about youth ministry seems somehow gutted.  In You Are What You Love, Smith attempts to address the question of raising young believers.  He works his way through the worship and communal aspect of the church.  He plays off of the part of youth culture that seems addicted to emotion and a kind of anti-intellectualism.  Consider:

While we might assume that the emotionalism of contemporary youth ministry is anti-intellectual, in fact it is tethered to a deeply intellectualist paradigm of discipleship; the whole point of keeping young people happy and stirred and emotionally engaged is so that we can still have an opportunity to deposit a “message” into their intellectual receptacles.

But we need to face a sobering reality: keeping young people entertained in our church buildings is not at all synonymous with forming them as dynamic members of the body of Christ. What passes as youth ministry is often not serious modes of Christian formation but instead pragmatic, last-ditch efforts to keep young people as card-carrying members of our evangelical club. We have confused keeping young people in the building with keeping them “in Christ.”

(image from newschannel10.com)