Worship in the Lives of Black Adolescents: Builder of Resilience and Hope

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Notes

Key descriptions of experiences and attitudes of Black youth that contribute to views on their role and needs in worship appear in: Lee H. Butler, Jr., Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls: A New Theory of African American Identity Formation (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2006), 18, 61, 100, 150.

Emphasis is appropriately placed on educational environments that center on an environment where youth feel competent, find success, and see themselves as belonging. See: Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Racialized Identities: Race and Achievement among African American Youth (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 35.

A Sawubona (“I see you”) church is used to describe a welcoming church in the chapter entitled “Welcome Matters: Seeing, Reaching, and Hearing Youth” in Youth Ministry in the Black Church: Centered in Hope, edited by Anne E. Streaty Wimberly, Sandra L. Barnes, and Karma D. Johnson, (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2013), 110–31.

See especially the nature and importance of verbal and nonverbal expression as body language described in: Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language—Introduction to Christian Worship: An African Orientation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 1–40.

See Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, ix.

Ways of bringing hip-hop into church worship appear in Efrem Smith and Phil Jackson, The Hip-Hop Church: Connecting with the Movement Shaping Our Culture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2005), 185–99.

The words are part of the gospel hymn written by famous hymnist and preacher, Charles Tindley. The hymn is found in Songs of Zion, Supplemental Worship Resources 12 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982), no. 10.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne E. Streaty Wimberly

Anne E. Streaty Wimberly, is executive director of the Youth Hope-Builders Academy (YHBA) at the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and professor emerita of Christian Education at ITC. She is the author of Nurturing Faith and Hope: Black Worship as a Model for Christian Education and Youth Ministry in the Black Church: Centered in Hope.