As I mentioned in a post a while back I have decided to undertake a project in 2010, to try and put together in the form of a book, my thoughts on ‘why youth ministry?’ The goal is to somehow try and nut out, in a more refined way, exactly what I think about youth ministry, its place in the 21st century church and its role in the secular society that we find ourselves living in. The main purpose of this project is to help clarify my thoughts in my own mind. It is to help me better understand what I actually think.
One of the first steps in this process was to ask some close friends in youth ministry to suggest some good books to read so as to expose my mind to the shaping thoughts of the current thinkers and dreamers in the youth ministry circles. From this I have formulated a pretty extensive reading list that I have started to work through. So far this has done exactly as expected, it has opened my mind to the many, many different idea’s and philosophies that exist in the church today. This was to be expected, though I think I naively expected this to not be as challenging to me as it is.
The main thing I am noticing is that any discussion on ‘why youth ministry’ is inevitably and intrinsically linked with a discussion on the future of youth ministry. If youth ministry were not to be part of the future then we wouldn’t bother with they ‘why’. In fact it could be said we only consider the question of ‘why’ something will exist when we have come to the conclusion that not only it will exist, but that it needs to. So really, to discuss WHY youth ministry involves considering what the future of youth ministry will be.
This is where it gets tricky. The more I read, the wider the scope becomes. Every man and his dog seems to have some differing idea’s about what the future holds. Though there are many trains of thought that correlate, as any discussion about future trends there are many trains of thought that do not correlate at all. This therefore requires an element of decision making, which way do I think it will go? This is proving a difficult concept for my mind to consider.
At the moment I am reading a book called ‘Postmodern Youth Ministry’ by Tony Jones. It is a book I remember reading during my theology training and finding to be a fantastic resource and upon re-reading it I am once again challenged by what it asserts. I think what I find most disturbing is how much I resonate with the arguments it presents about post modernity, even if there are significant levels of disagreement dispersed amongst the agreement. What frightens me most though is how unequipped I feel to actually tackle these thoughts and apply them to discussing with people older than me, with more modern thinking patterns, why a postmodern approach to ministry and in particular youth ministry, is so important. I cannot even begin to grasp this in my mind.
I am enjoying the task of focusing my reading in a particular area and certainly intend on completing my 2010 project, but right now my task is definitely growing by the day and definitely making me think this process, for me, may well take much longer than a year to complete. This is not necessarily so bad, but for someone who has grown up in a world of ‘now’ it is hard to imagine keeping myself focussed for a prolonged period of time. We’ll see how it goes. It is enjoyable, if not also thoroughly frustrating!
Don’t worry about it possibly taking more than a year. I started my first draft for my current book (which I later scrapped) in 1998 and the current version I started in 2005. Maybe you could finish it in the US which would enable you to get more thoughts from people involved in youth ministry over there.