You could say that I've worked in youth ministry for over a decade. That's not entirely accurate, though. A decade ago, I was a youth. Yes, I was involved in youth ministry, but it was more about being involved with the church and hanging out with people my own age. Today, I work for the church, still spending a lot of my time with young people. I'm not sure that makes me a professional. But development is a good thing, so when I had the opportunity to attend the Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry at the beginning of May, I jumped at it.
I registered for an extended seminar on relational/incarnational ministry with Andrew Root, an assistant professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary, Minnesota. Root's main thesis was that if those involved in youth ministry focus on influencing the behaviour of youth, they will miss the chance for a deeper social and theological connection. It's an easy trap to fall into. You like youth, and you want to show them the worth of living a Christian life. But who wants to hang out with someone who is always telling them what to do?
This struck a chord with me. What is my focus? It's a question I don't find time to ask when i'm worrying about programs and phone calls and how many kids are going to show up this time. At Princeton, I found time to step outside the details of my work and to think about it more deeply. Why do I do ministry the way I do it?
There is a story that I've used many times while working with youth. I used it to explain the incarnation (as if that could be explained so easily), but i think that it can shed light on the question of focus in ministry. It goes like this: one night, a farmer looks out his window and sees some sparrows huddled together in the yard. It's cold outside. Depending on who's telling the story, it may even be Christmas Eve. the birds are looking fairly miserable, as the cold wind swirls around them, ruffling their feathers. The man thinks that they would be much warmer in the barn, so he puts on his coat, goes outside and opens the barn door. The birds don't get the idea, so he tries to round them up, chasing them towards the barn, flapping his arms. It doesn't work. he yells at the birds, hoping to scare them into the barn. They scatter into the shadows. If only, he thinks, if only I could become a bird, I could show them how to go into the barn, and they would be warm and safe tonight. And if the storyteller is going for poignant, she'll have the village church bell strike midnight at that moment as the farmer realizes that this is why Christ came into the world. If only I could become a bird.
It's a sweet story, but also a problematic one if we use it to give shape to ministry. The farmer, like Christ, like a youth minister, points the way of salvation; but in the story, it's implied that Christ assumed humanity like a costume so that he could lead us to safety. In youth ministry, we sometimes mirror this kind of costumed Christ. We want to influence youth — in a good way, of course — so we assume the look of youth, with its new music and movies and high-tech gear. This costume admits us to youth culture so that we can lead the youth out of the cold of troubled adolescence and into the warm barn of the church. But Jesus' humanity wasn't a costume. It ran deeper than that, because Jesus shared our humanity. This is important. In Jesus, God became as vulnerable as we are — vulnerable to shame, to insult, to pain and to death — and he shared that vulnerability with us. It is only through his sharing of vulnerability that the cross makes any sense. If Jesus wasn't vulnerable, he didn't suffer and didn't confront through his suffering the suffering of the world. But, thank heavens, he did.
All ministry, be it youth ministry or aged ministry, camping ministry or urban ministry, should be focused on this sharing. Jesus shared and redeemed our humanity that we might share and redeem all humanity as his ambassadors. That includes our own. It means being real with each other, open to show our thoughts, feelings and questions. Always giving youth answers is like asking them to grow out of their humanity. Perhaps we should all try to grow into our humanity instead.
