One of the things I love doing every year is watching the Canadian team play in the World Junior Hockey Championship. It's a winter tradition at our house. It doesn't matter if we have to get up at 4 a.m. to see the gold medal game from Sweden or wherever the tournament is being held, we are die-hard supporters.

I love how, for a couple of weeks each winter, the entire country rallies behind a group of 17, 18 and 19-year-olds, urging them on to glory. I love how even if we've never heard their names before, we learn about them quickly and become their biggest fans. I love how we invest ourselves deeply, over the course of the tournament, in each player's triumphs and failures, their goals and their dreams, their personal stories. I love the World Juniors tournament because for a short time each year the whole country is on the edge of its seats, wishing the best for a group of young people, knowing that in some weird way their victory or defeat is tied up with our own.

I wish we would feel that way about the youth in our church. What if the people in our churches were so supportive of our young people that they'd want to wear face paint and scream out their names? What if the people in our churches would want to wake up at ridiculous hours of the night to support our youth in prayer? What if our church lifted young people up and showcased them and their talents, their concerns and their culture, so we could get to know them and rally behind them better? I think we'd have a very different church, and a very different forecast for our future as believers.

As with the athletes on our national hockey team, I think you will find that this generation of young people is deeply talented, quick, potentially aggressive and of strong character. They are the future (and the present) of our church. Our success as believing communities is wrapped up in theirs, so we'd better get to know them and get behind them. Those of us who are older, we're their coaches-it's up to us to lead, mentor, direct and encourage. To help us do this, here's a brief scouting report on the youth of today.

Traditional categories like denominations, conservative/liberal, church membership, etc. don't mean a lot to young people anymore. The assumption now is that every person is unique and needs to be approached as such.

Anything that smacks of religion or ritual is not cool. Young people today don't know the meaning of most rituals, and so these rituals just look goofy. Religion looks like it's about doing goofy things that they don't understand. God, however, and having a relationship with him, is still very cool.

Young people are longing for authenticity. The media barrages them with thousands of messages each day, and most youth see it for what it is…rubbish. Young people are looking for something else. They want someone to speak to them from the heart about things that are true. Wear your heart on your sleeve and leave the phoniness at home.

Because people don't feel the same all the time, what we do at church shouldn't look the same all the time. Be creative. Express what's going on. Be in the moment. Young people are very attuned to when someone is going through the motions.

These are our youth of today. They may look different, think differently, react differently and even grow into something completely different again, but they are the best and the brightest, the stars of the future. Let's rally behind them, cheer them on, acquire a passion for them. And let's see if they (and we) can come home with the gold medal, the one Christ has made available to us all.