Talk:Young Life

POV

User 143.109.59.20 has added a large amount of content that appears to be promotional. Given the obvious POV problems with promotional material, I will remove it soon.

Concurr. Ditch that.

I also found this article to be biased. I cited this line in the introduction as evidence. Young Life tries to make a subtle distinction from our high school ministry.

What is it biased towards? It seemed pretty straightforward and informational to me.

Does anyone have a problem with the line, "As these "experiences" tend to be expensive, most teenagers participating in Young Life come from middle-to-upper class families."

This seems biased as younglife has a large Urban ministry that has been omitted from the article. Also, the position of quotes around experiences seems sarcastic. King-of-no-pants 01:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The language throughout the article is overly inclusive and rings disturbingly of promotional material. The use of the word "experiences" in such a way provides no factual information and makes Wikipedia seem too close to the organization. More specific wording such as "camping trips" might be better. At least, language with overly positive connotations should be used more sparingly in the article. Also, due to the prevalence of "mission statement" related information, it seems that there ought to be some evaluation of what the organization Italic textactuallyItalic text does, or some contrary views if they can be found.

Conflicting statements

Does anyone else see a problem with this statement:

Young Life, which began in 1941 (although in Britain, NYLC began in 1911), is a non-profit non-denominational organization founded by Jim Rayburn. Young Life's focus is on teenagers. Kids are encouraged to explore the purpose of life and the Christian faith through weekly clubs

How can it be non-denominational while still 'encouraging the exploration of the Christian faith'? - Greb 05:49, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Because non-denominational is a reference to denomonations of the christian faith. i.e. catholic, baptist, reformed... King-of-no-pants 01:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Cult?

Is there any evidence that Young Life is somewhat like a cult?

I have a ton of personal experience with young life, its not a cult. :) King-of-no-pants 01:20, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It depends on your definition of a cult. I have been a participant and paid staff for Young Life and there were no overt coercive tactics that I recall that are otherwise associated with cults such as food or sleep control. However there is a deliberate motive on the part of the organization to recruit new members who are otherwise emotionally vulnerable and to introduce them to a narrow set of ideas, where a confused young person can now find a group than can do the thinking for them and serve as a family by proxy for all the emotional needs that are missing for them. It is a fun social community that unfortunately is a trap because at its base is a bunch of people with narrow, unexamined ideas and an ideology that is internally inconsistent.