Scouting enters new generation

August 26, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON\Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - Fresh-faced, clean-cut and just 24 years old, Josef Lorenz is a young man shaped by the core values of Boy Scouts of America.

Under the surface of his short-cropped hair, friendly smile and recognizable Scout uniform, however, Lorenz embodies the subtle but definitive changes that are altering the national organization.

As district executive of the Western Alaska Council of BSA, Lorenz oversees nearly 11,000 youths and more than 400 adult volunteers from the Southcentral region. He took his current position four months ago and, by design, brings energy and youth to the post.

"The guys before me were all in their 50s," he said in an interview earlier this month. "Today it's younger people, it's more excited leaders."

Lorenz was quick, however, to credit older leaders for the youth movement.

Nationally, young people are taking more leadership roles, with older leaders acting as mentors. The youth movement is one of several BSA efforts to enlist more Scouts.

Teen Scouts prove

hard to keep

During its 95-year history, more than 110 million members have joined BSA. According to a 2004 national survey, more than one of every 10 U.S. boys are current Scouts.

While sheer numbers are impressive, BSA leadership worries about the ongoing problem of teen Scouts dropping out. Historically, they fall away as social opportunities vie for their attention.

To reverse the trend, Lorenz said BSA has adopted changes.

"I'm not sure the program will ever try to become hip in the modern sense," he said, "but we are doing newer programs."

One major change is a relatively new co-ed program called Venturing. This high-energy program takes 14- to 20-year-olds on rafting, backpacking and outdoor expeditions in an effort to appeal to teens' sense of adventure without separating them from the opposite sex.

Unlike traditional Scout programs, Venturing groups don't wear traditional uniforms and place less emphasis on merit badges and more on adventure activities. The core Scout values remain but they find different expression.

"All our traditional units had been male, but now with Venturing you can bring in girls at 14," Lorenz said. "That's the age we are losing most of our boys to girls, gas and lipstick."

Venturing began about 10 years ago but Lorenz said it is still too early to tell what the long-term effect will be, nationwide. From his own observations, he thinks the co-ed approach is working.

Scouting for new members

In Alaska, roughly 15,000 boys are current Scout members and those numbers continue to grow. With about 1,500 Scouts in the Mat-Su area, Lorenz said his goal is to increase that by 25 percent before the end of the year.

To that end, he plans to visit every elementary school in the Mat-Su to let boys know about Scout opportunities in their area, which could include groups sponsored by churches, schools, and other organizations.

Newer programs that focus on career exploration and character training have also expanded the role of Boy Scouts in recent years.

While programs and events change over the

years to suit different generations, the organization's

core values have remained largely unaltered, a reality that stirs both pride and controversy.

Core values

stir cultural conflict

While the emphasis and language may change, depending on the location and sponsors of individual Boy Scout groups, duty to God and country and service to others remain basic tenets. Their application in contemporary culture, however, sometimes ignites heated debates over the place of religion and values in such a large youth organization.

From barring gay leaders to encouraging a sense of faith in all its programs, BSA's policies have drawn the line for several high-profile legal and cultural battles.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to uphold BSA's right to bar gay leaders from their program. The decision created a firestorm of protest from some groups that claimed BSA was discriminating against gay people.

Character education, however, is the most central aspect of the nearly 100-year-old organization and the court ruled that BSA had the constitutional right to choose its leadership based on its core values.

Closely tied to character development is the role of faith, also a cultural hot button. BSA doesn't promote any one religion but it does support the right of individual Scout groups, especially those sponsored by churches, to incorporate faith into their programs.

School-sponsored groups, however, refer to faith in far more general terms.

"Society has changed a lot in its view," Lorenz said. "I mean, 40 years ago no one would have ever thought of challenging the words 'under God' in our Pledge of Allegiance. It would never have been heard of, but we've changed."

BSA has changed its approach to faith, trying to adapt to social expectations without altering its core values.

"We've changed because we don't want to force religion on anyone," Lorenz said. "But our goal is still to develop the strongest, most complete character of any person. In that goal, we believe as an organization that no man can be complete without a belief bigger than himself.

"We're not going to say that it's God or anything in particular. It's just that people have to believe in something beyond themselves."

Fighting to keep

doors open

Nationally, BSA lists exclusion from government forums as its greatest legal challenge. In an effort to encourage public support for the organization, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the Support Our Scouts Act of 2005.

Lorenz said many of the national problems, though, aren't present in Alaska. From the state governor on down to city mayors and local school officials, Lorenz said Alaska is extremely Scout friendly.

"Alaska is probably one of the best places for Boy Scouts, in general," he said. "Out here in the Valley, the principals, the superintendent, they've all been great to us. They've all helped us out."

Creating patriotic

citizens

In turn, Lorenz said BSA is developing young citizens who love their country and work to make it better.

"We really push citizenship," he said. "We love our communities; we love our nation with a passion and we do everything we can to be better citizens."

Creating better citizens entails reaching out to minority groups around the country. Nearly 30 percent of all Scouts now identify themselves as non-white and a concerted effort continues nationally to reach Hispanic youth through soccer and other programs.

In Alaska, Lorenz said Boy Scouts are reaching out to larger Russian and Native Alaskan communities.

"We want to reach people that we haven't before," Lorenz said.

Contact Joel Davidson at

352-2266, or joel.davidson@

frontiersman.com.