c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Youth minister Lara Blackwood starts her day the same way most of the young people at her church do _ she signs on at MySpace.com.

“Any time they post a new blog, I get a message in my e-mail and cell phone that such and such has posted a new blog,” said Blackwood, the youth minister at First Christian Church of Fayetteville, Ark., and a regional youth minister for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“If the title tells me `Gosh, prom was fun,’ I’ll read it within a couple days. If it says `I hate my life, I want to die’ _ which I’ve read some similar to that _ I’m on immediately.”

More youth ministers are discovering the promises and pitfalls of social networking Web sites such as MySpace.com as they use them to stay connected with their students. It’s a place where students can be honest about their lives and keep an open dialogue with their ministers.

MySpace is one of the hottest sites on the Web _ New York-based hitwise.com rated it No. 1 for the week ending Nov. 11, accounting for about 5 percent of all U.S. Web traffic. Alexa.com, another ratings Web site, put it in the No. 3 spot among U.S. Web sites. Either way, MySpace has more than 100 million accounts with a demographic that is dominated by teens and 20-somethings.

While the site has allowed ministers to advertise activities and keep in touch with students, youth ministers and students alike can be bombarded with pornography, and teens can be subject to predators.

“Social networking is what being a teenager is about,” said Kenda Creasy Dean, associate professor of youth, church and culture and director of the Tennent School of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. “For people my age (in their 40s), technology is a tool. For kids, technology is the air they breathe. It’s social glue.”

Students in Blackwood’s previous youth group in Abilene, Texas, initially encouraged her to get an account so she could read their blogs. Her involvement grew from there.

She keeps in touch with her former students, encouraging them and offering advice when asked, on MySpace more than anything else. She is currently working on building her roster of “friends” with the students in her new youth group so she can send out mass announcements about upcoming events.

“They’ll get the word faster if I post it as a MySpace message than if I try to call them,” she said. “Most of them check their profiles so many times each day.”

Julie Richardson Brown, minister of youth and young adults at Beargrass Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., has also used social networking sites to promote church events. She said part of the appeal of MySpace for students is the community aspect.

“I think they long to be part of something bigger than themselves and desire to be part of a community,” she said. “My hope is to make them part of a Christian community.”

Jewish groups are also becoming more aware of MySpace. Reform Jewish teen leaders from the North American Federation of Temple Youth recently adopted their “OurSpace Recommendation” in which they pledged to be conscious of their actions and urge their peers to integrate Jewish values into online communities.

Among some Catholic youth workers, MySpace is approached with caution.

“I would encourage our youth ministers to set up their own Web sites connected with their parishes but to also monitor MySpace,” said Sister Eileen McCann, a consultant for youth and young adult ministries at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I would advise them to get on MySpace for information but not communication.”

Ministers might be surprised at what they find on their students’ profiles. Some teenagers present themselves online in a different way than they present themselves at church.

“It’s definitely something you can talk about, though,” Blackwood said. “They’ve opened the door to that conversation. It’s easier for me to have a conversation about drinking if on MySpace they’re talking about it all the time. We can actually have a conversation that’s real.”

Some youth ministers serve as watchdogs as they scan their students’ sites. Students post full names and even personal calendars on their profiles. Blackwood says it’s her responsibility to help students be aware when they’re posting too much personal information.

“It can definitely be a dangerous thing for them to have a profile,” she said. “They do it without even thinking about it. They may not say they go to such and such high school, but if they post a picture from homecoming and they’re wearing a letter jacket, you can figure out what high school they go to. It’s easy to hone in on someone with things like that.”

Michael Davison, an associate regional minister to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Kentucky, said he is concerned that young people see the Internet as far-reaching but think there is still anonymity in it.

“They are surprised when I say, `I saw your MySpace page.’ They’re shocked that an adult might see what’s on their site,” Davison said. “Most of them don’t equate the Web site with the fact that everyone in the world has access to them. The young people I work with understand I’m Internet-savvy, and yet they’re surprised when I mention I stopped by their MySpace.”

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Along with being a Princeton professor, Dean is a parent of two teenagers and has explored their MySpace pages. She acknowledges the risks of predators and easy access to pornography, but those are not her deepest concerns.

“What bothers me most is that it encourages a premature `adultification,”’ she said. “They present themselves as an adult when they’re not. The overall precocious sexuality is a part of that. Some is an act, and MySpace encourages that.”

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The church needs to recognize MySpace can be used in good and bad ways, said Dean.

“It’s more helpful for parents, youth ministers and churches to become aware and conversant with MySpace than to spend all our time railing against it,” she said.

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A church in Fort Worth, Texas, is trying to familiarize parents with MySpace.

Last month Wesley Black, a professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, led an instruction session for parents at Travis Avenue Baptist Church. Thirty attended, along with some teenagers enlisted to teach.

“Most of the questions dealt with (parents) struggling with the technology,” Black said. “They brought laptops, and we met in a room with wireless access.”

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Dean thinks few parents will be able to keep up with their tech-savvy kids, and said it’s more likely for a youth minister to be on MySpace.

“By definition, youth ministers are people who want to connect with teenagers,” she said. “We all can be conversant in it. And we need to be. This is the world we live in.”

KRE/PH END BIRD

Editors: To obtain a photo of Blackwood and members of her youth group, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.