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More than just fun and games
Young people benefit from traditional spirituality as well, Pete Ward argues
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| Growing Souls: Experiments in contemplative youth ministry Mark Yaconelli
SPCK £9.99 (978-0-281-05937-9) Church Times Bookshop £9 THIS IS Mark Yaconelli’s follow-up to his influential Contemplative Youth Ministry published last year. The book divides into three parts. The first explains the thinking and theology behind the research programme into the Youth Ministry and Spirituality, based at San Francisco Theological Seminary, which gave rise to the earlier book. The second offers case studies of two youth ministries that have adopted the contemplative approach. The final part is made up of conversations with groups of youth leaders and young people about contemplative youth ministry. Yaconelli’s argument is that youth ministry has emerged from a religious culture obsessed with activism and success. It has sought to hold young people in the faith through entertainment and high-energy programmes based on fun and games, and it has given rise to an industry that sells a Christian sub-culture to the Church. Young people then have a shallow faith that does not sustain them; and youth leaders are on a treadmill of activity required by a results-driven church leadership. Contemplative youth ministry advocates, as the basis of the Churches’ work with young people, a deeper engagement with the traditions of prayer and spiritual direction. Central to this is the spiritual regeneration of leaders through the exploration of contemplative forms of prayer, retreats, and direction. The idea of contemplative youth ministry forms part of a much wider move towards liturgy, spiritual practices, and a re-orientation towards Catholic, Celtic, and Orthodox forms of spirituality among Evangelicals and Charismatic Christians. Mark Yaconelli has done a great deal to make accessible to a new generation the rich tradition of spirituality represented by Julian of Norwich, Ignatius, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Anthony Bloom, and the Jesus Prayer. He is surely right in believing that this strand of contemplative spiritual practice is a deep well from which we can draw in our work with young people. That said, I found the narrative within which these helpful insights are set to be a little irritating. The portrayal of youth ministry as driven by shallow fun and games is probably truer of the US than the UK. Since the 1960s, thousands of British Christians have been introduced to precisely the forms of prayer he advocates by visiting Taizé; while Evangelical Christians have practised an equally deep and disciplined form of spirituality as they studied the Bible and prayed together at camps and house parties. More recently, Charismatic young people in this country have pioneered new styles of worship that have their own integrity, and embody the “contemplative” practice of encounter with God. Both Growing Souls and the earlier Contemplative Youth Ministry were written in an American context, and are a valuable addition to the growing area of youth-ministry studies; but they would have benefited if the UK publisher had encouraged Yaconelli to take account, also, of the British youth scene. Dr Ward is Senior Lecturer in Youth Ministry and Theological Education, in King’s College, London. To order this book, email the details to Church Times Bookshop (please mention "Church Times Bookshop price") |
