Youth Work from
Scratch: How to launch or revitalize a church youth
ministry
Martin
Saunders
Monarch £12.99
(978-0-85721-256-6)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70 (Use code
CT853 )
Models for Youth
Ministry: Learning from the life of Christ
Steve Griffiths
SPCK £12.99
(978-0-281-07051-0)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70 (Use code
CT853 )
THESE are two very different
books on youth ministry.
The book by Martin Saunders
is, as the title suggests, a guide to setting up good Christian
youth work from nothing. It is comprehensive and practical, and
goes through the steps from creating a vision for the ministry to
assembling and training volunteers, all the way through to
assessing the project once it is established.
At each stage, advice based
on the author's considerable experience is supplemented by
insightful short pieces from others in the field. There are also
example forms, questionnaires, programme plans, and other useful
tools to use across a wide range of areas. Much of this is geared
to those starting out, but much of the material will also be useful
for those reassessing youth ministry that may lead to insights that
can really improve it.
Saunders argues that all
youth ministry should be "mission-shaped". This is evident in a
number of areas, especially the helpful material on listening to
the context before deciding what is needed. Church activities can
respond to perceived needs, not real ones, especially when adults
set up ministries for young people. Saunders also explores the
"Believe, belong, behave" axiom, and suggests that, in youth
ministry, it starts with a safe place to belong, then addresses
behaviour, and finally opens the space for belief. As such, it adds
to a growing awareness that discipleship is not something one
offers only after conversion, but is part of working for
transformed lives and communities at all stages of the journey of
faith.
The book by Steve Griffiths
is very different: a work of theology seeking to change how we
think about youth ministry. It is essentially about Christology,
and offers different chapters on Jesus's incarnation, crucifixion,
resurrection, ascension, and Second Coming, and seeking insights
from each for youth ministry.
Our theological assumptions
often remain unquestioned, and ministry suffers as a result; so the
intention here is worth while. Throughout, there are good lessons
on vulnerability, the limits to incarnation (we don't become
teenagers!), dependence on God, and the sacrificial nature of
ministry. The Christological structure, however, leads to a great
deal of repetition.
The author's particular
target is "incarnational" youth ministry that builds long-term
relationships with the hope of "earning the right" to share the
gospel. Instead, Jesus's ministry, he argues, is formed of brief
but powerful encounters. This brings us to his great theme:
understanding the difference between the two Greek words for
time,chronosandkairos. The emphasis, he argues, has been on
on-going,chronos, time-commitment, when it should be onkairos,
moments when God breaks in. We can focus so much on the planned
programme that we are not open to the God-inspired event that may
actually be far more important. That is not to say that he doesn't
value planning; rather, he wants us to be alive to thekairosmoments
within thechronostime.
Nevertheless he tries to
push thischronos/kairosdistinction too far. Gradually,
"chronosthinking" also becomes promoting our ego against God, and
our selfishness against others' need. The word simply will not bear
the weight being put on it.
If the emphasis on "earning
the right to speak" has been a corrective to speaking without
understanding the context, and thus failing to communicate,
Griffiths is right to remind us that God can break in at any point
in people's lives, and we need to seize those opportunities. In
focusing on Christology, however, he ignores the real basis of the
idea that ministry with the non-churched may take a long time.
This is not the incarnation,
which tells us that we must go and meet people where they are, but
the experience of moving from Jewish to Gentile mission in Acts,
which tells us that mission often takes longer with those who do
not share our religious background. I am also not convinced by his
half-page argument that Jesus didn't really spend much time with
the disciples either. The Gospel accounts, time and again, contrast
the one-off encounters with the on-going teaching of the disciples.
Acts and the epistles suggest that this becomes the pattern for
the Church, too.
Griffiths also feels that
talk of Jesus present with us has hidden the importance of the
Spirit and hope in the Second Coming, both to be given their
due weight. He emphasises that, after the ascension, Jesus is in
heaven, awaiting the Second Coming. This, however, seems to take
account only of the physical Jesus of Nazareth, and ignores the
Logos of St John's Gospel or the Christ of the epistles, who
ascended to fill everything, and in whom all things hold together.
Equally, while Jesus needed to go that the Spirit could come in his
place, this means that the Church is sent, as Jesus was, as his new
body on earth, so that he is again present. But this is also a
target for Griffiths, who fears that it heaps guilt on youth
workers in the expectation that they are Christ to others.
This is an ambitious book
with some valuable insights. But its structure does not quite work,
and the theology is too often shoehorned into over-played insights
that end up distorting it.
The Revd Steve Hollinghurst is Researcher in Evangelism to
Post-Christian Culture at the Church Army Sheffield
Centre.