Andrew Root & Kenda Creasy Dean (2011) The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 264pp.
OVERVIEW
Two important leaders in youth ministry and practical theology believe youth ministry in the past has avoided solid theology. It has responded to society’s construction of a gradually extended and separate age group in pragmatic and utilitarian ways without careful theological effort. Youth workers have found techniques to contact and influence young people in order to gain faith commitments and keep them morally safe. In short it has made caring for, influencing, and instructing youth the foundation of youth ministry. But within a few years many of these young Christians have drifted from faith and church. The documented attrition of these young people, once they leave the youth group, demonstrates the need for a deeper understanding of human crises and God’s response in theological terms.
Root and Dean suggest youth ministry has been demeaned in the past through its uncritical use of utilitarian means to attract, entertain and instruct high school students. True relationships with young people, discovering who they are in the midst of life’s ambiguities and suffering, will reveal our need for a rich theology to answer their deep questions. Theological ministry with youth will also allow young people themselves to become a prophetic mission for the church—a church critically needing their prophetic passion.
The theology described in this book is not a musty, abstract theology based on a God revealing himself as a theological entity. It considers rather a God revealed as minister. “…the God we meet in the pages of Scripture is not a theologian, but a minister. (p.14)
Practical theology, for Dean, begins in practice. “Practical theology is… reflection on Christian life... Practical theology studies those moments, contexts, situations and practices in which God’s action intersects with our actions, and transforms paltry human effort into something holy and lifegiving.” (14, 17) Brilliantly and creatively Dean sees adolescent identity formation as a search for meaning and salvation. Many of us have treated adolescents’ quest for personal identity as something psychological and separate from the matter of faith commitment and spiritual growth. For Dean, God is the end of all youthful quests whether they recognize it or not. Their search for self points toward, and is a proclamation of, God’s gracious salvation.
Youthful questions can also inspire the church prophetically; youth’s passion is a challenge and rebuke to a church too absorbed in self-preservation. (See also, K.C. Dean, 2004, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church, EerdmansPub. Co.)
Andrew Root stretches youth ministry’s theological boundaries in a rich and thoughtful way. His hermeneutics and method of theologizing have produced guidelines and issues needing serious discussion in youth ministry circles. With Dean, he believes practical theology begins in ministry itself—for God is the great Minister (Ch.2) Our experiences need to be reflected upon with theological and social science tools if they are to positively affect new action. And, of course, the experience, reflection, action cycle continues. Ministerial education has neglected experience and action; (youth) ministry itself has bypassed critical reflection. As a youth worker, you join the divine encounter with human suffering. Ministry leads theology through experience, reflection and action. Theology cannot act alone; it must be interdisciplinary, operating between the norms of Scriptural/theological tradition on one side, social science and communal experience on the other.
How do we balance and use the practical insights from social scientists and the Bible, regarding troubled youth, for instance? Theologians have approached culture and the social sciences in different ways. Paul Tillich is given as an example of those allowing culture to ask the questions while theology proposes answers to those questions. Such a perspective Root calls a Correlational method—culture and the behavioral sciences and theology working together on a similar plane. Karl Barth provides a different model. He begins with the Word of God as the subject matter of theology; social sciences represent a secondary level of insight. This Root designates as the Chalcedonian method. There is a third method, Root says. Martin Luther claimed, “that human beings can have no knowledge of God that doesn’t begin with God’s own unveiling on the cross of Christ…. Luther’s theologia crucis (theology of the cross is) a method open to the suffering humanity of the other which is both apologetic and krygmatic, and it offers a meaningful way to do theology in the practice of ministry. This method Root calls a Representational method… and claims it for himself. (55ff)
Quite probably you have heard, and possibly used yourself, the idea that “Christ’s Incarnation models relational ministry for us.” Root’s own attempts to implement this doctrine, and his observance of other leaders using the idea of “incarnational ministry” to influence young people, led him to reexamine the uncritical use of the term. Experientially, we’ve seen that students respond to adults (and especially young adults) who take interest in them. Concern for the manipulation or misuse of such influence is behind a good bit of Root’s other writings (Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation, and Relationships Unfiltered: Help for Youth Workers, Volunteers, and Parents on Creating Authentic Relationships).
Root challenges us to see the real crises of human existence, being and non-being, as well as the general and particular suffering that strikes us all. Theology calls us to take human suffering seriously—and the suffering of God. Entering the suffering of another human being with an understanding of God’s suffering for that person is a more authentic relationship than one established so a young person will come to our group or club. Following the way of Christ, the way of the Cross, we enter life’s existential line of tragedy and death with another. This is the area of Christopraxis (Christ-centered ministry) between our tragic existence and eschatological (final) hope.
Kenda Creasy Dean and Andrew Root offer much more in this book for us to ponder and discuss. Some readers may be uncomfortable with some points and emphases, but our profession is enriched by this challenging collection of essays.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1. Do you consider yourself an urban, rural or suburban (or name your ethnicity or country) theologian? Why or why not?
2. In your opinion, what is theology, and how do you understand its relationship to other branches of learning and culture?
3. Has reading this challenged your understanding of “incarnational ministry?” Why or why not—and how so?
4. How do you understand a “theology of the cross?”
5. Has reading this review encouraged you to read this book—or further theology?
6. Do you agree that the profession of youth ministry needs or is experiencing a “theological turn?”
IMPLICATIONS
1. Since When Kumbaya Is Not Enough: A Practical Theology for Youth Ministry (1997) and the several writings of British Pete Ward, there have been attempts to encourage theological thinking in youth ministry.
2. The emergence of D.Min. and PhD programs in youth ministry, along with the flourishing of professional youth ministry societies such as the North American AYME and Global IASYM, have promoted both social science research and theological considerations regarding ministry to youth and families.
3. The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry takes us especially deep into theological issues, such as the Crucified God.
4. We can hope for a practical theology of youth ministry from the urban context which will take us from unique suffering resulting from social disadvantage to the kingdom issues within broader social systems.
Dean Borgman c. CYS