The Church?

This is a question for all the youth pastors and senior pastors out there. I have been a youth minister for 5 years now, and throughout those 5 years I have tried to pound into our students heads: "you are not the Church of tomorrow. You are the Church of today." I thought that this was the consensus across the board except for a few fundamentalist types. However, this weekend, my philosophy was countered by someone that I thought was on board with this idea. What do you ladies and gentlemen out there teach?

Here's my philosophy. The youth are the Church, period. The Church consists of the body of Christ, no matter what the age,and functions as God's prophetic agents of change and reconciliation on earth. I have to think that if we tell the youth that they are the Church of tomorrow, that we will relieve them of any and all pressure to be a prophetic voice in the midst of popular culture. After all, isn't being a prophetic witness the job of the Church? I guess part of my wanting to call students "the Church of today" comes from watching adults ie "the Church of today" not speak prophetically to postmodern culture. I don't think that we can afford to label youth "the Church of tomorrow" because I don't necessarily see "the Church of today" getting the job done.