MORTAL, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?

Mission without relationship is colonialism. Ministry without relationship is patronizing.

I’ve been guilty of both many times. I was new to ministry and had developed a complex chart depicting the leadership structure that my ministry would take including youth committee members, small group leaders, peer ministers, drivers, etc. I shared this with my father, a pastor. His responded by saying, “That sure is a nice drawing. Where are the people?” I had a snazzy organizational chart for my ministry but no people to plug into it because I had not established any relationships. Mission without relationship.

Also, there were two times when I tried to assert myself as an authority figure or mentor into the life of a young person who I thought was “needy” only to be shot down by the teens both times because I had not done the hard work of actually getting to know them. Ministry without relationship. [Read more →]

Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian has gotten a lot of attention in the past year and I am glad. I was beginning to think that we (as a Church) had glossed over the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) too quickly. Kenda offers us an antidote to the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism of the NSYR by looking into the lives of highly devoted young people. These youth register as highly devoted youth because they …

“seem adept at using at least four cultural tools in ways that mark them as members of their traditions: (1) they confess their tradition’s creed, or God-story; (2) they belong to a community that enacts the God-story; (3) they feel called by this story to contribute to a larger purpose; and (4) they have hope for the future promised by this story.” (pg. 49)

It is important to notice that these students aren’t just confessing a tradition, but they are able to operationalize the story, or theology, of their tradition. Dean says they are “adept at using” these tools. [Read more →]

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the  blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

How do we bring good news to our youth? How do we proclaim release to our youth and the recovery of sight? How do we let our oppressed youth go free or proclaim God’s favor to them? These are the questions that arise when we begin to understand youth ministry as proclamation.

Proclamation is the act of injecting the good news of Christ into the life of another person. This happens in many ways. [Read more →]

If your goal is to simply socialize youth into the church and its routines, then you do not need to read any further. Good luck with that.

However, if your goal is to invite young people into a life of discipleship, then it is critical that we start seeing ministry as discernment and not as a process of socialization and  that we view the practice of discernment as ministry and not only as a tool for planning ministry.

In the youth ministry world, I often hear and see the (false) polarization of action and contemplation. Youth ministries tend to lean towards either one or the other of these two (false) poles. Either a ministry emphasizes a devotional life of prayer, reading scripture, attending worship regularly, listening to Christian music, etc. OR it emphasizes a life of service, leadership and engagement. Neither of these are wrong, but  both are only half-truths. Discernment is a singular practice that consists of both action and contemplation. [Read more →]

I believe the primary task (or practice) of youth ministry today is the hermeneutical task, or interpretation. This is the first practice of the anti-model presented in an earlier post. Youth ministers often find ourselves in the role of interpreter – interpreting youth culture for adults, interpreting adult culture for youth, interpreting church tradition for youth, interpreting middle schoolers for high schoolers, etc. But there is more to this work of interpretation.

Interpretation, as one of the primary practices of youth ministry, means that our work centers on the task of helping young people re-interpret their reality in light of God’s Good News. We interpret their reality in light of God’s Word and we interpret God’s Word in light of their reality. [Read more →]

Upon being hired at Augsburg College, I was intent on establishing Augsburg College as THE place to study and train for youth ministry in urban settings. It made complete sense given Augsburg’s unique location and the diversity of its student body. Over time, I have come to a place where I do not think the teaching of urban, or suburban, or rural, or small group, or confirmation, or congregational, or intergenerational, or missional youth ministry will serve the church or the world. In fact, I think this approach actually harms the church, its leaders and the young people we are called to serve.

Instead, I’d like to propose an “anti-model”. [Read more →]