Our September/October GIRLS issue generated a handful of letters from women youth ministry leaders. Here’s an excerpt of one letter.

Dear YouthWorker Journal:

You are probably familiar with the childhood response to taunting, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” We learned early the lie of that statement, and, as many will acknowledge, the words of childhood often continue to hurt way into adulthood.

Words are powerful. Anthropologists and linguists teach us that words are the very basic symbols that teach us what is meaningful and what is valued in our society. A few days ago, I received an e-mail from YWJ highlighting some good news for youth workers; a new digital journal. I read with great interest the announcement that included a list of the upcoming articles and resources of the first issue. Perhaps because the announcement was highlighted with the word GIRLS in all caps, or because I have been studying the research on how language shapes meaning, I was struck, in particular by this one part of the announcement:

* The GIRLS theme section begins with Girls Ministry Roundtable featuring these experts: Ginny Olson, Megan Hutchinson, Christina DiMari and Crystal Kirgiss.

* Three males tackle our “Guys and Girls” articles, which explore how men can best work with girls, and how to respond when things go wrong.

Those anthropologists and linguists I mentioned above also tell us words are symbolic because they convey images of meaning about our reality; sometimes accurate images, sometimes not. It may be just me, but when I read the above announcement, the images I had were not ones that had much to do with the kind of young people I encounter in youth ministry.

For example, when I read “Girls Ministry Roundtable” I imagined a group of girls, all about 8 or 9, sitting around a huge round dining table. For “Guys and Girls” I had an image of junior high and high school students with a smattering of those 8 and 9 year-old girls. The one that created the greatest dissonance in my imagination was the phrase, “which explore how men can best work with girls, and how to respond when things go wrong” For that one, I actually had images of middle-aged men working on a construction project with those same 8 and 9 year-old girls with chaos and disaster all around them.

Obviously, I have a vivid imagination, but in all seriousness, this is an important issue for youth workers to consider. What do we call those human beings between the ages of 12-18 who occupy our youth rooms and Bible studies? More specifically, what are those male human beings and female human beings called?

Years ago, a fellow seminary student, challenged me on my use of the word “kids” to refer to youth. “Kids,” he said, “are young goats or small children, not the young people in our ministries. What you call them matters. What you call them communicates volumes to them about who they are.” He was right. So, what is appropriate in this instance? Does it truly matter whether we call them guys, boys, girls or something else?