A Book Review

Our friend Wes Vander Lugt has written an excellent review on the book The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry by Andrew Root and Kendra Creasy. One of the goals of GYFM is to help youth pastors think more deeply and theologically about ministry to young people. As Wes states, the Theological Turn in Youth Ministry is a great help in asking good questions and starting the conversation on how to have a theology of youth ministry, and then how that theology is practically played out. Check out the review!

---

The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (IVP, 2011) is not your average youth ministry book. Rather than a pragmatic manual, Andrew Root (professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary) and Kendra Creasy Dean (professor of youth, church and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary) have put together an engaging work of practical theology. As such, the goal of this book is to resource and re-imagine youth ministry as Christopraxis oriented toward existential and eschatological horizons.

Youth ministers might think they can escape theology, but this is impossible. Every ministry is enacted theology and every theology is ministerial. The goal of practical theology is to make more intentional connections between theological reflection and ministerial action, which continually inform one another. Root explains theology as the process of attending to God’s revelation and ever-changing contexts, letting God’s revelation answer the questions arising from our encounters with particular people and situations. In addition, Dean notes that the youth themselves are intuitive theologians, and by doing ministry with youth, we can craft theology and ministry attentive to their actual needs and desires.

Theology constructed with youth, as Root articulates, is theology that begins by acknowledging and articulating the crisis of reality, and then recognizing God’s act and being within it. Youth ministry as practical theology takes seriously the mix and tangle of real life (the apologetic element), while always situating these complexities within the overall biblical drama (the kerygmatic element). The relational-social dimension of ministry should never be separated from the biblical-theological element. Because of this, youth ministers should not presume that theology always provides simple answers to questions arising out of complex relationships and situations. In fact, a robust theology of God’s presence and absence allows ministers, along with young people, to be patient with honest yearning and to persevere with the suffering while rejoicing with the healed.
While the first half of the book is a deep exploration of theological themes, the second half unfolds how ministry practices might be affected by this theology, whether conversations about sin, sexual issues, summer camps, nature trips, short-term missions, and mentoring relationships. In fact, it is in these practical issues that the pay-off of practical theology is most clearly seen and where it is easiest to register and articulate my agreement and disagreement with the proposals.

For example, I wholeheartedly resonate with Root’s concern to orient mission trips away from accomplishment and toward accompaniment, focusing more on being with and partnering with one’s hosts rather than doing something for them. Seen in this light, the purpose of a mission trip is learn more about God’s kingdom and to build relationship with Christians around the world rather than accomplishing something that makes us feel good but maybe does more harm than good. In addition, I applaud Dean’s identification of desire as the foundation of spirituality, and her insistence that youth ministry cannot divorce sexuality from spirituality. The ongoing challenge of the youth minister is to affirm the structure of desire while providing pastoral guidance regarding the direction and expression of desire, and this requires us to expel “the corset of modern rationalism.”

At other points, however, the practical suggestions reveal my disagreement with the authors’ theology. For instance, by identifying evil as nothingness and sin as flirting with death and non-being, I think Root makes conversations about sin more convoluted than they need to be. Much more helpful, in my opinion, is describing sin as Cornelius Plantinga does—“not the way things are supposed to be”—which includes both the objective brokenness of the world and our complicity in breaking it. In addition, because of his strong Barthian theology, Root claims that nature is inert and does not reveal God in his beauty and grandeur. On the contrary, a stronger view of general revelation and a more robust theology of creation leads me to believe that no element of creation is inert and every creature is a full participant in the drama of creation and re-creation. As a result, outdoor trips are a time to experience longings and brokenness, but they are also a time to encounter God. Furthermore, while I agree that a youth minister should be a “captain of the company of companion doubters,” I disagree that “Christianity has nothing to do with certainty.” It is true that Christianity does not offer hard, rationalistic certainty, but there remains, as Newbigin maintained, a “proper confidence” rooted in the reality of Christ’s resurrection and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. “Faith seeking understanding” can dispel some doubts while learning to live with others. Finally, while it is necessary to keep theology and ministry rooted to the “crisis” of reality, our starting point and ultimate point of reference needs to be the abundance of God in Christ and his creation. Even though Root maintains that theology and ministry should always maintain a tragic and comedic element, his theology and practice tips toward the tragic. “Healing is wonderful, but it’s weird” is a tragic perspective; a comic perspective claims that although wonderful healing may be sporadic, it’s actually the way things should be.
Even though I disagree with the authors’ theology at times, overall I am encouraged by this “theological turn in youth ministry.” The best youth ministry arises from and leads to robust theology. As my theological critiques reveal, however, there will always be “theologies” of youth ministry rather than “a theology” of youth ministry. Divergent theologies result from different conclusions regarding what God has communicated in Scripture and creation, different conversations partners within the Christian tradition, and doing ministry in different contexts. Consequently, if the theological turn in youth ministry is going to spread and mature, youth ministers intentionally need to bring their theology into conversation with other theological traditions. The goal is not to blend all theologies into a nebulous amalgam, but to realize how our own sin, cultural situation, and human finiteness have blinded us to some aspects of God’s truth, goodness, and beauty. The theological turn in youth ministry, therefore, is also the global turn in youth ministry, because the collective reflection of the global church serves as a corrective to particularly theological and ministerial deficit disorders. It is exciting that Root and Dean were courageous enough to begin these theological conversations, and it is even more exciting that this is only the beginning.

---

After serving in youth ministry in Mexico and the USA, Wes now ministers to young people in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, where he is a PhD candidate in Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Check out his blog at: http://theatricaltheology.wordpress.com/