Young Life Tactics-Cultic or Legit ?

christianagnostic

Eric asked a good question that I didn’t want to get lost in the comments of Is Young Life a Cult .

He asked

“does Young Life employ cultic tactics, or do cults and cultish organizations instead use legitimate techniques and manipulate them to accomplish what they want to do?”

The short answer, is that Young Life employs tactics common to cults in many (not all ) instances.  Of course, this is just my own opinion. But it is how I see the issue.

Befriending a vulnerable demographic (teens who are minors) without consent and without being up front about motive is cultic. It’s similar to the tactics of the Boston Church of Christ and Amway.

Friendship, enmeshment, and then indoctrination.

It’s a cultic tactic no matter how you slice it. It doesn’t mean that you or other leaders are not good people or that you don’t really love…

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Cult Education Forum Discusses Young Life and Parental Consent

Minors Are Forbidden By Law (Photo credit: Dan Dickinson)

The following is a quote from a forum on the Cult Education Forum Website.  You can read the whole thread here.  On page 4 of the thread, the moderator for CEF has this to say about Young Life and it’s lack of policies concerning parental consent:

biggun223:

No one here has said that Young Life is a “cult.”

Campus Crusade for Christ and Youth for Christ, are examples of evangelical religious organizations that have chosen to identify their religious agenda within their names.

“Young Life” has not.

I have interviewed both Young Life leaders and members.

I have received serious complaints from families about Young Life. The organization caused these families serious problems. The families would not have approved of their child’s involvement if fully informed from the very beginning (initial contact with their child), but they were not informed. They only found out when their child was profoundly influenced by the group’s religious indoctrination, which led to family conflict.

Young Life has chosen to target minor children in its proselytizing efforts. The organization has the responsibility to inform families from the point of initial contact, not families.

Attempting to place the responsibility and blame on families is wrong. They have no obligation to call you. It is you that are obligated to contact them to seek permission whenever you begin to initially work with a minor child.

You say, “The last thing I want to do is break up a family.”

If this is true then you should require every minor child to take home a consent form after first contact with that child. This form should fully inform the parent[s] and/or legal guardian that Young Life is an evangelistic Christian organization with its religious creed specifically included. The form should provide space for the signed approval/permission of the parent. It should be required that the signed completed form be returned and kept on file at the Young Life office before any further contact with that child.

In my opinion if this is not done Young Life is not operating in an ethical manner regarding its contact with minor children.

Parents have the exclusive right to determine the religious involvement of their own minor children.

You say, “I personally would want my child to have all options available to them so that they could decide for themselves what they choose to believe.”

However, you don’t have the right to make that choice for the children of other families.

You say, “…we will not tell them they have to leave because we haven’t asked their parents yet” and yet you admit that you are a “Christian outreach program…”

What you call “outreach” amounts to proselytizing minor children without parental consent.

Evangelical Christians support Young Life.

See [www.creationtips.com]

The National Association of Evangelicals defines an evangelical as someone:

* who believes that the Bible is authoritative
* who has had a born-again experience
* who shares this message of faith.

To evangelize means you explain your beliefs to others with the view that they might want to adopt your beliefs.

A Princeton University study listed the following denominations as being evangelical:

Assemblies of God, Southern Baptists, Independent Baptists, black Protestants, African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Church of Christ, Churches of God in Christ, Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, National Baptist Church, National Progressive Baptist Church, Nondenominational, Pentecostal denominations, and the Presbyterian Church in America.

Perhaps those parents who support these churches would have no problem with Young Life.

But parents from other denominations and faiths may have serious problems with Young Life staffers sharing their message of faith with their children and in an effort to influence them to adopt those beliefs.

Area Directors Behaving Badly-Part 1

I think it’s important to highlight instances of area directors that have been convicted of sex abuse with minors and molesting teen boys.

Does it make all of Young Life staff guilty of similar offenses?  No and I’m not equating all staff with these few men that have been convicted.  But I do want to point out the fact, that such abuses have occurred.  Especially since they involve  area directors.

Area Directors are paid full time staff.  They are responsible for recruiting and training volunteer leaders.  Usually run at least one Young Life club in their area.   And are responsible for organinzing Young Life weekends and weeks at camp.  Many times, area directors will be a camp director for 1-3 months of the summer.

All this to say, Young Life area directors affect a lot of people and are in constant contact with teens through club, weekends, weeks, and even months on end at a Young Life property.  The fact that multiple Young Life Area Directors have been convicted of sex abuse is troubling.

Marlton, New Jersey Area Young Life

I’ve provided links to the case of a New Jersey Young Life Director who was convicted of molesting several teen boys.

As told by a former Young Life Kid in his area.

As reported by the local newspaper.

An article about his conviction.

A discussion from the Rick Ross Cult Forum.

It’s a Sin to Deceive a Kid (or a Parent)

One of my bone of contentions, is Young Life’s lack of honesty.  What I mean is this,  Young Life is an Evangelical Christian outreach to teens.  Their goal is to win an audience with teens and convert them to an Evangelical form of Christianity.  The problem is, that Young Life leaders are often coached to be vague with non-Christians.  In other words, hiding their true intent to convert teens.  This is deceitful, in my opinion.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.  The following are two quotes from a Young Life Leadership manual published in 2008…,

“How would you explain Young Life?

Christian: Young Life is a Christian outreach to adolescents.
Non Christian: Young Life is a non-profit that connects caring adults with kids.

Christian: Young Life is a ministry that shares Christ with kids through relationships and helps them grow in their faith.
Non Christian: Young Life is a faith-based organization that reaches out to high school and middle school kids through
mentor relationships.”

Notice that the manual is explicitly telling Young Life leaders to use vague, non-religious language when talking to Non-Christians.  The local animal shelter is a non-profit.  The local food bank is”faith-based”.  Big Brother is a mentoring program.

You get the picture, by using vague descriptions, it gives the impression that Young Life is a benign youth program that is fun and safe for kids. Just like other benign faith-based, non-profits in their community.   What these descriptions avoid, is their explicit intent to convert teenagers.

Another example would be this recent promo video for a summer Young Life camp

While it’s true, that your kid or friend will probably do all of the exciting things shown in the video,  it does not show or even hint at the fact, that the focal point of the camp will be Evangelizing teens for the Christian faith.  It offers no glimpse into the many hours spent listening to adult speakers present the Christian faith.  The hours spent each night, as leaders lead discussions centered around the Evangelistic talks.  That the final days of camp will be spent, asking kids to choose whether to become a follower of Jesus and make a public declaration of faith.

And in short, I think it’s deceptive.  I think many a parent has agreed to allow a teen to go on a week of camp with friends from school, only to have a religious convert delivered back to their home.  This sort of parental blindsiding is unfair and deceptive.  Parents (and teens) should be better informed about the faith-based aspects of camp before they are hooked on going because of the fun, sun, and friends.

Jim Rayburn was right, “It’s a sin to bore a kid…”, but I say it’s an even worse sin to deceive a kid.  A sin, Young Life seems all too easy in committing.

Is Young Life a Cult?-Freedom Responds

Freedom responded to my  post, Is Young Life a Cult?…

Probably not a cult, but an elite club for the “in” crowd. The want to be the place of the “hip and pretty.”

Obviously they are using as much manipulation as possible to get this kids to have an emotional conversion experience. That “emotional conversion” is the key to evangelical protestant Christianity. It’s the entire starting point of their faith – if you don’t have that, you aren’t one of them. Then you have to prove it to them to stay one of them by following their rules and regulations.

The manipulation with the “love bombing” and creating environments to create a sense of belonging is all part of the recruiting aspect. Then you bring them to the “camp” where this continues, set up an environment to make them feel they want to be part of the group, then you hit them with the “sign at the dotted line” at the end. It’s all sales tactics used by many companies to sell a product. In this case, the product is Young Life’s version of Christianity. And the truth is that teens are MUCH easier to emotional manipulate than adults. When they give the end “sales pitch” they have created emotional bonds between the teens so now you have the added peer pressure to conform – your friends are doing it and you want to be part of it. Now they are all crying and hugging each other and they have have a shared experience that is extremely emotional.

It’s all a sales. Yes, it’s recruiting, but recruiting is sales (ask me what I do for a living someday). What they are doing is no different than any of the “home based” pyramid type companies like Amway (or whatever they call themselves these days), Mary Kay, Pamper Chef, Southern Living, etc, etc. They all do they exact same thing to get people to sell their product – get your friends involved, invite them to a “sales” meeting (small group meeting), have them sign up, get them to come to the big yearly “meetings” (AKA youth camp), create emotional bonds, get them excited about the company and have a BIG send off where they go out and recruit new sales agents (altar call).

YL is selling a product and their success is measured by how many members they have, just like the “home based” business sales person measures success by how many “recruits” they have under them.

BTW – My kids will NEVER be going to any young life events.

Is Young Life a Cult?

Young Life is a para-church ministry that focuses on running clubs and summer camps for high school students.  They exist to introduce these students to Jesus Christ and the Bible.  I got involved with Young Life during high school, attended numerous camps, and served as a volunteer leader for five years.

Occasionally, I would hear someone accuse Young Life of a being a cult.  At the time, I dismissed it as a misunderstanding, or an angry denial of the truth of Christianity.  But I never considered it a cult….even after having been in a verifiable cult, I still thought warmly of much of my time in Young Life.

Now that I’m many years removed from my time at Young Life, and raising my own teens, I have been brought  back in contact with our local Young Life.  And it has made me wonder if one of the reasons I was ripe for a cult was the fact that many of the same cultic dynamics were present in Young Life.

Love Bombing

One of the tactics identified as cultic is Love Bombing.  Love bombing occurs when a religious group intentionally showers praise, friendship, and attention towards new members of the group.  They do this to try to emotionally connect these new members BEFORE fully disclosing the requirements and/ or theology of the group.

This is certainly a tactic that Young Life is guilty of  –  no doubt.  Most of what Young Life leaders and their campaigners do would fall under the category of Love Bombing.  As a leader, we would discuss our weekly “contact work”.  Contact work was the amount of time we spent hanging around the local high school or area teen hangouts, in hopes of making contact with students outside of Young Life.  Some leaders would organize sports events, or have teens they know intentionally invite other kids to an event, (like watching a football game on TV) so that the Young Life leaders could make contact and build a relationship with these students.  The sole intent of all of this was to then invite the students to attend a Young Life club or camp.  As a leader, I saw my motives as totally pure and godly.  But I was just in my late teens and early 20’s.  As a parent, I realize now, that I was evangelizing other people’s underage children without their consent.  This is another sign that Young Life might be cultic.

Young Life Club

Young Life club was a fun place to be during my high school years.  The skits were fun, we sang a lot of “oldies but goodies” from the Young Life Songbook, and I got to hang out with kids that I didn’t normally relate to at my school.  It also felt really cool to have guys in college taking the time to get to know me and discuss faith, music, politics, etc…I was a lonely teenager and Young Life helped me not feel so lonely.

As I got involved as a student leader, the dynamics changed.  I wasn’t just a kid at club anymore.  I was now involved with inviting my friends, going out of my way to be like Christ to others in my school (student version of Love Bombing), and was also given tips on how to help hype the club by always clapping and singing during songs, which included being told that we needed to scream like crazy when the leaders talked about Young Life camp.  In other words, we became a part of the backstage production crew that helped pull off a successful performance at clubs and camps.  We also spent a lot of personal time doing things like quiet times (anyone remember those Ty Saltzgiver booklets on quiet times?), memorizing scripture (NAV press anyone?), and journaling about our relationship with God and who we were going to reach out to for Christ.  Many times, our time as a campaigner was spent discussing with leaders how we could better improve on these three areas of life.

Young Life Ministry Strategy

One of the strategies that was often discussed at leadership meetings was that of making contact with “the leaders” in the schools.  This meant that as Young Life leaders, we would intentionally try to recruit the most popular and influential kids at a high school.  The thinking was, that if you could get the cool kids to attend, then other students would follow.  In other words, Young Life was gaming the pecking order of the high school cliques in order to try to build a platform to evangelize the school.  In this case, I would call this the “cult of cool”.

In the “cult of cool” thinking, the appearance of Young Life being cool was tantamount.  This meant that the Young Life leaders needed to be good-looking and in-touch with the latest fashions.  Star athletes and cheerleaders were often the focus of attention by Young Life leaders.  The good-looking people were often “randomly” chosen to be in the skits or brought up to help sing a song.  Were these things explicit?….not really.  It’s not that anyone said, don’t go after the ugly kids, or the girls that are overweight, or the punk rock kids with the Misfits t-shirt.  But if you focus on going after “the cool kids” in the high school, then usually these “un-cool kids” are quickly excluded from your ministry strategy.  It didn’t mean that those “other” students couldn’t be involved, they could.  But it was usually the result of them wanting to follow and be part of the “in crowd” that the more popular students represented.

This ministry strategy of Young Life does not make them a cult,  but it does make them appear to be more closely related to an advertising firm than a ministry.

Young Life Camp

Young Life camp was an incredibly fun time for me as a student.  Everyone seemed so open and loving.  The food was great, the outdoor settings were beautiful, and the nightly meetings were full of energy and emotionally charged talks about life, love, and Jesus.

But here’s the rub; so much of what I assumed was a result of  really loving people, was orchestrated.  Love Bombing and emotional manipulation would be an apt description.  Young Life camps are orchestrated to heighten ones emotions and encourage the students to make a highly emotional “decision to follow Christ”.

The nightly talks about Jesus and his crucifixion were followed up by a mandatory 10 minutes of silence to think about what we had just heard.  This was then followed up by an hour of  hyped up singing by the volunteer staff.  Campers would then return to their cabins, where their leaders would lead an hour or more discussion about the talks and about where each student stood in regards to their relationship to Jesus.  Every activity was intentional in trying to persuade students to make a decision for Christ.  The final activity at a weekly camp was the “say so” meeting.  The verse about letting the redeemed “say so” was the basis for the name.  Kids would be encouraged to stand up among the hundreds of students and “say so” if they had committed or re-committed their lives to Jesus.  It was an intense display, full of emotional stories, lots of tears and hugs…followed up by more tears and hugs as we said goodbye to the many friends we had made during the week and got on the bus to travel home.

Again, I don’t know that the camps are intentionally cultic.  But they are intentional in their efforts to persuade every camper to make a decision for Christ during that week.  We would often times get complaints from parents whose children came home and were all the sudden “different” or “zealous” about their Christian faith.  Sometimes it was a change for the better; many times it was to a parents dismay.  Their child was now quoting the Bible to them and telling them that they were not real Christians and were hell bound.  Needless to say, some parents regretted having given permission for their child to attend.  They were told about the water tubing and sailing and all the fun their kid would have (which was true) but did not realize the amount of evangelizing that would be occurring (which was not highlighted in the brochures).  The fact it was a Christian camp was mentioned, but again, it was not the main focus of our pitch when convincing  parents to give their kids permission to attend.

So, is Young Life a cult?  I’m not sure, but I think they skirt close to the edge….My kids won’t be attending Young Life meetings any time soon.