Disabled Adolescents, Enabling Youth Ministry

Abstract

The institution of adolescence creates conditions that disable young people. Additionally, young people are often viewed by adults as temporarily disabled cognitively due to the neurological and emotional changes related to the process of human development that occur during the period designated adolescence. The concept of adolescence/adolescent needs to be challenged when it squelches the potential ministry of both youths and people with disabilities by characterizing both groups as somehow deficient.

Keywords:

• Adolescence
• disabling
• youth

Notes

1 “A moratorium is a period of delay granted to somebody who is not ready to meet an obligation or forced on somebody who should give himself time. By psychosocial moratorium, then, we mean a delay of adult commitments, and yet it is not only a delay. It is a period that is characterized by a selective permissiveness on the part of society and of provocative playfulness on the part of youth, and yet it also often leads to a deep, if often transitory, commitment on the part of youth, and ends in a more or less ceremonial confirmation of commitment on the part of society” (Erikson, 1968, p. 157).