"Where does most of this come from? Let me begin by highlighting the myth of adolescence. You know the age with which youth ministry deals with is commonly known as 'adolescence,' and our society has been identified as unique in history by calling people between age twelve and age twenty 'adolescents.' Let me give you the history of that, okay?
In 1904, G. Stanley Hall—this is all on your CD, by the way—G. Stanley Hall published a book called.. .and guys, if you publish a book, please, please don’t do this, okay? Here’s his book, Adolescence: It’s Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. How do you put that on the spine of… anyway. 1904. This is the first known treatise on adolescence. 1904. The first place to identify that age. In this book, by the way, Hall argues that the stages in a child’s development parallel in mankind’s evolutionary development in history. The thesis of his book and the idea of adolescence is that the period between thirteen and eighteen is a crisis and stormy period of a young person’s life. Hall concluded that these years almost always include extreme inclinations for a person to be very good or very bad.
Has anyone outgrown adolescence? Has anyone in your church outgrown adolescence according to that definition? By the way, it was his book and these expectations that were the basis for segregating school children by age for educational purposes. It was at this point, 1904, that adolescence was—keyword—invented.
