Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers
Chap Clark

Reviewed by Rev. Michael A. Hall
Minister of Youth and Families, Kirk of the Hills PCA, St Louis, MO

To those of us who have worked closely with high school students over the past ten to fifteen years, the title of Chap Clark’s incredible book on the changing world of today’s adolescents is more than appropriate. Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Baker Academic, 2004, ISBN # 0-8010-2732-2) is the collective result of years of the author’s academic study and first-hand experience with teens as a teacher, minister, and father. Many in our culture assert that adolescence has not changed much—if at all—over the decades or even the centuries. Kids are kids, and they’ve always been kids. This book not only counters that claim but provides compelling support that adolescence is a “fundamentally different thing than it was even thirty years ago.” Dr. Clark convincingly makes his case, which hinges on what he calls a “defining issue for contemporary adolescents.” He writes, “In sum, systemic abandonment by institutions and adults who are in positions originally designed to care for adolescents has created a culture of isolation.” Our kids have been abandoned and that hurts.

This book has without a doubt become one of my favorite and most beneficial texts to consider when reflecting on my call to ministry with youth. I have read it a few times, and it continues to challenge me to a more authentic ministry of presence in the lives of the students God has placed in my ministry. When I first read the book, I anticipated much more of what many other books assert about teenagers and their struggles with depression and anger and unmet expectations, all because of failing educational systems, believing the lies of popular media, and the breakdown of the family. While these elements do play a role in the problem of abandonment, after reading this book, I realized that those things are merely a small part of the issue. After over ten years of youth ministry in local churches, I found in Hurt descriptions and diagnoses of students and situations I came in contact with over and over. If you share my burden for teens and work with them as I do, I bet you have met the student who seems to have it all together with everything looking great for their future but underneath that “perfect” exterior we learn it’s more like a continual train wreck. As you read Hurt Dr. Clark will take you with him into his first-hand experiences of the world beneath today’s teenager, and you’ll come to understand with sobering clarity how that student got into that apparently paradoxical predicament. This book is humbling throughout and even heart wrenching at times as he includes poems and short entries from some of the students he interacted with during his study, which provide powerful illustrations of his points.

While it is written by a long time youth ministry “professional” and has garnered much praise from within youth ministry circles, Hurt is not a youth ministry textbook per se. Nonetheless I contest that it is an invaluable must-read for all who are called to care for youth. I would encourage you to read it and then pass it along to teachers, coaches, administrators, parents, and anyone else who longs to provide a safe place for today’s teenagers to navigate “one of the most difficult and challenging developmental periods they will ever face.”