Incarnational Youth Ministry: Bearing Christ into the Lives of Young People By: Erin M Haligowski

Theological Foundations for Youth Ministry An understanding of youth ministry must be shaped by theological foundations, informed by cultural concerns, and find its in equipping parents and families to form the faith of their children. At its very core, youth ministry involves bearing the incarnational presence of Jesus Christ into the lives of young people through relationships that are clothed in Christ. In Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV), the apostle Paul describes the incarnation of Christ and the of incarnational youth ministry: Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Jesus forfeited his place of power and priority in heaven in order to come to earth and become one of us—a human being. Those in youth ministry essentially do the same thing, forfeiting a place of power and priority as “adults” in order to enter the world of adolescents and to bear Jesus into that world. In order to really practice this sort of incarnational youth ministry, steps must be taken to build a foundation of “theological rocks”: Since youth ministers must become skilled backdoor theologians—people who can slip theological truth in through the cracks of everyday life, without waiting for a formal invitation to preach—the first task of ministry must discern those theological rocks we want our lives and our ministries to proclaim.1 In order to fully embody the incarnation of Christ and to “smuggle God into the room from the rear before youth can erect the normal defenses,” youth must begin with a healthy theological foundation.2 In Starting Right: Thinking Theologically About Youth Ministry, four authors contribute to this framework by establishing four theological foundations for youth ministry: repentance, grace, redemption, and hope. By taking a closer look at each of these theological foundations, one can begin to see how each provides an important framework for practicing incarnational youth ministry. Before diving headfirst into the theological frameworks of repentance, grace, redemption, and hope, it is first necessary to grapple with the whole idea of practical theology for youth ministry. How is it that those seeking to engage “students in a process by which they may discern God’s call in learning what it means to live out their faith in the context of a believing community” make that happen in a theological framework?3 Chap Clark argues that youth ministry must become an academic subset in the field of practical theology so that youth ministers may be fully equipped to facilitate such discernment among students.4 In response to Clark’s article, David E. White argues that Clark has

1 Kenda Creasy Dean, “Introduction,” in Starting Right: Thinking theologically about youth ministry, ed. Kenda Creasy Dean, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 17. 2 Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster, The Godbearing Life: The art of soul tending for youth ministry (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 1998), 181. 3 Chap Clark, “Youth Ministry as Practical Theology,” Journal of Youth Ministry, vol. 7 no. 1 (Fall 2008), 12. 4 Clark, “Youth Ministry as Practical Theology.” 1 made it seem that youth ministry must ultimately “involve the technical skills requisite for a nuclear engineer,” and that it is perhaps better for Christian discipleship and leadership to be more intuitive- affective than the technical-rational approach proposed by Clark.5 Finally, Kenda Dean responds to both by proposing that perhaps practical theology is more a matter of solivitur ambulando, translated “it is solved by walking.”6 In an effort to bring these responses back to some sort of center, Chap Clark offers this statement of summary regarding youth ministry as a practical theology: …we must move the church beyond the programmatic view of youth ministry and shepherd God’s people toward embracing a perspective that maintains a commitment to the spiritual inclusion and development of the young that is dynamically expanding from the theological locus of God’s redemptive activity in human experience.7 This statement perfectly captures the heart of youth ministry as a discipline of theological reflection. It is for this reason—moving the church beyond a programmatic view—that youth ministry must be understood in the theological frameworks of repentance, grace, redemption, and hope. The first crucial theological framework for youth ministry is repentance. The voice of repentance in youth ministry is the voice of the minister as a prophet—one who calls young people into awareness of sin so that they might bend toward Christ. Robin Maas defines repentance as “the hard, not-so-fun work of spiritual path-clearing or moral roadwork. It is a heart-turning, stomach- churning, mind-burning experience that actually changes people.”8 In a culture that is wearing an increasing sense of entitlement, youth ministers “bear the heavy responsibility of announcing [Christ’s] coming to youth, of convincing them that he is indeed on the way, and that they can and must do something about it.”9 Repentance is an important framework in which youth ministers must work to effectively disciple students in following Christ. In addition to the difficult work of repentance, youth ministry must also live in a theological framework of grace, which Augustine himself described as “unmerited divine favor.”10 In a world that is becoming increasingly performance-driven, it is often difficult for young people to even comprehend the idea of grace—of a free gift of unconditional love. Roger Nishioka cites in his chapter on grace that young people “must name at least five adults in [his or] her life that would love [him or] her unconditionally” in order to be able to successfully navigate through adolescence.11 It is this sort of statistic that drives the heart of the faith-webbing model for congregational youth ministry, which seeks to put at least 30 caring adults in the life of every young person in a congregation by the time

5 David E. White, “A More Excellent Way: A response to Chap Clark’s youth ministry as practical theology,” Journal of Youth Ministry, vol. 7, no. 1 (Fall 2008), 52. 6 Kenda Dean, “We Will Find the Answers as we Go: A response to Chap Clark’s youth ministry as practical theology,” Journal of Youth Ministry, vol. 7, no. 1 (Fall 2008), 39. 7 Chap Clark, “Coming Together: A rejoinder to Dean’s, White’s, and Parrett’s responses to youth ministry as practical theology,” Journal of Youth Ministry, vol. 7, no. 1 (Fall 2008), 68. 8 Robin Maas, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Repentance,” in Starting Right: Thinking theologically about youth ministry, ed. Kenda Creasy Dean, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 235-236. 9 Maas, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Repentance,” in Starting Right, 236. 10 Roger Nishioka, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Grace,” in Starting Right: Thinking theologically about youth ministry, ed. Kenda Creasy Dean, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 244. 11 Nishioka, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Grace,” in Starting Right, 249. 2 they graduate high school.12 With grace as a theological framework for youth ministry, the minister begins to see every young person with the eyes of Christ, as a beautiful creation deserving of unconditional love. The next foundational theological framework for youth ministry is redemption. Darrell W. Johnson writes about redemption as the good news of the gospel for the lives of young people: “If Jesus Christ comes to redeem us, then he comes to set us free from whatever binds us—to release us from whatever prevents us from being the person God created us to be.”13 The task of youth ministry is to draw young people into that redemptive love of Christ so that they may be free of those things which bind them from fully experiencing the freedom of Christ. The final theological framework for youth ministry is a framework of hope. With the recent escalation of teen suicide and bullying being hyped up in the media, today’s young people need an injection of hope in their lives. Evelyn Parker addresses the issue of Christian hope for young people: “Given the state of hopelessness among teenagers in North America, an emphasis on Christian hope shifts the theological lens of youth ministry to eschatology as we consider the theory and practice of ministry with youth.”14 Young people need to know that God is present in the midst of suffering and despair, that it is okay to express anger and frustration to God through lament, and that there are ways to cope with the suffering that they experience in their own lives.15 When this hope is balanced with the theological frameworks of repentance, grace, and redemption, youth ministers can begin to make room for the incarnational presence of Christ in the holy ground of relationships.16

Cultural Concerns Once youth ministry is founded on the theological bedrock of repentance, grace, redemption, and hope, it must then become informed by the cultural concerns that surround the world of young people. In a 2007 book titled UnChristian, David Kinneman unpacked some groundbreaking research from the Barna Group revealing the predominant attitudes and perceptions carried by young people outside the church, particularly those who were relatively recent high school and college graduates. From the very start, the cultural outlook seems grim for those who are still fighting for the love of Christ: Our research shows that many of those outside of Christianity, especially younger adults, have little trust in the Christian faith, and esteem for the lifestyle of Christ followers is quickly fading among outsiders. They admit their emotional and intellectual barriers go up when they are around Christians, and they reject Jesus because they feel rejected by Christians.17

12 Gary Pecuch, ELCA Southern Ohio Synod, conversation at youth ministry leaders retreat, November 9, 2010. 13 Darrell W. Johnson, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Redemption,” in Starting Right: Thinking theologically about youth ministry, ed. Kenda Creasy Dean, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 259. 14 Evelyn Parker, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Hope,” in Starting Right: Thinking theologically about youth ministry, ed. Kenda Creasy Dean, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 269. 15 Parker, “Theological Framework for Youth Ministry: Hope,” in Starting Right, 270-272. 16 Andrew Root, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a strategy of influence to a theology of incarnation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 111. 17 David Kinneman, UnChristian: What a new generation thinks about Christianity… and why it matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 11. 3 According to this study, outsiders’ most common reaction to the faith is that “they think Christians no longer represent what Jesus had in mind, [and] that Christianity in our society is not what it was meant to be.”18 The study conducted by the Barna Group identified six broad themes present in the attitudes of young adults outside of the church. Those six themes are that the church is: hypocritical, too focused on getting converts, antihomosexual, sheltered, too political, and judgmental.19 These are the cultural tides and currents against which present day youth ministry is swimming. In addition to the pervasive attitudes pressing against the church from the outside, there is a dangerous cultural trend that is also eating away at youth ministry from within the church itself. In her most recent book titled Almost Christian, Kenda Creasy Dean identifies a disturbing trend in the faith of high school youth: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Dean notes that based on the National Study of Youth and Religion, a conclusion has been drawn that “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is supplanting Christianity as the dominant religion in the United States.”20 This Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is guided by five core beliefs: 1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life. 2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. 3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem. 5. Good people go to heaven when they die.21 These core beliefs have even been picked up on by the media as seen in a recent episode of the hit television show , which is tuned into by adults and young people alike. In an episode titled “Grilled Cheesus,” one of the main characters, Finn, discovers what he believes to be the face of Jesus in his grilled cheese sandwich. The episode then chronicles his ‘spiritual awakening’ during which he prays to his “grilled cheesus” for things like a win at the first football game of the season, and a chance to make it to second base with his girlfriend Rachel. The more his “prayers” come true, the more he obsesses over his “grilled cheesus.”22 The episode also follows a number of other character plots in which each of the main characters grapples with some element of religion, faith, or a lack thereof. Kenda Creasy Dean almost immediately responded to the episode on her weblog, praising the show for its accurate portrayal of the current religious climate of adolescence, and identifying a number of ways that the show “got it right” in portraying said climate: (1) kids are accepting of all religions, including atheism; (2) prayer matters; (3) crisis makes it okay to talk about religion; (4) it’s hard to talk about religion (or anything else) that matters deeply to us—but we can sing about it; (5) teenagers often equate God’s presence with getting what they want; and (6) religion is still a humorless

18 Kinneman, UnChristian, 15. 19 Kinneman, UnChristian, 29-30. 20 Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the faith of our teenagers is telling the American Church (, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010), 14. 21 Dean, Almost Christian, 14. 22 Glee, “Grilled Cheesus,” season 2, episode 3 (originally aired October 5, 2010). 4 topic for the media.23 If even the media is cashing in on the watered-down faith of America’s youth, then it is time that the church become informed and begin re-establishing the important theological frameworks of youth ministry identified earlier. In addition to the cultural assumptions about Christianity and the watered-down faith infecting the young people in America’s churches, there are cultural factors and concerns that are deeply impacting the core practices of youth ministry in contemporary society. Three of the core cultural factors are: the breakdown of the traditional family unit, the relentless presence of bullying in America’s high schools, and the rise of technology usage among young people. The world of an adolescent in today’s culture is significantly impacted by the cultural breakdown of the traditional family unit. Jim Burns comments on this breakdown in his book, Uncommon Youth Ministry: “Family dysfunction and instability have a direct impact on adolescents today. In the past, the family was stress reducing; now the family is stress producing.”24 Young people are probably the population most affected by the increasing divorce rates in the United States, where “41 percent of first marriages end in divorce” and “every year, more than one million children in the United States experience the divorce of their parents.”25 These statistics are huge in their effect on youth ministry in the church, and some of that effect will be addressed in the next section of this paper in a discussion on Engaging Parents in Youth Ministry. Another disturbing cultural concern facing youth ministry recently is the escalated media attention being received by bullying and teen suicide, particularly among teenagers who are perceived to be homosexual. The reality is that with all of the recent media attention from news sources and even Hollywood on the topic, the church really needs to find a voice on this cultural issue. In fact, when The Trevor Project and It Gets Better were established in the fall of 2010 in response to a string of teenage suicides, the church was overwhelmingly underrepresented in the conversation.26 In an age when the church is overwhelmingly perceived to be antihomosexual, the church must be willing to stand up and be a voice of repentance, grace, redemption and hope for the lives of young people. One final cultural concern impacting contemporary youth ministry is the explosive growth of technology usage among teenagers in the United States. Jim Burns identifies technology as “the main source of influence and connection in the lives of this generation of youth.”27 The overwhelming use of technology among teenagers—be it text messaging or social networking—is affecting issues of identity and issues of community. First, technology “has created a cyber reality in which students can assume whatever identity they want within that reality, assuming any personality they wish and fitting in wherever they want to fit in.”28 Christian author Donald Miller would probably argue that this is not just a problem with teenagers, but that it is something they are learning from adults both inside and

23 Kenda Creasy Dean, “‘Grilled Cheesus’: Glee and Teenage Spirituality,” blog post, October 7, 2010, http://www.kendadean.com/youth-ministry-useful-stuff/ (accessed November 29, 2010). 24 Jim Burns, Uncommon Youth Ministry: Your onramp to launching an extraordinary youth ministry (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2001), 39. 25 Jim Burns, Uncommon Youth Ministry, 39. 26 The Trevor Project, http://www.thetrevorproject.org (accessed November 29, 2010). It Gets Better, http://www.itgetsbetter.org (accessed November 29, 2010). 27 Burns, Uncommon Youth Ministry, 42. 28 Burns, Uncommon Youth Ministry, 42. 5 outside of the church: “If there’s anything obvious about humanity, it’s that people are obsessed with projecting an identity.”29 Aside from the projection of identity, another serious danger associated with the explosion of technology usage among adolescents is that it has created a generation of people that are so over-stimulated with virtual connections that they miss out on real, face-to-face relationships: While Facebook and other social media connect us to more digital relationships, at the same time, they deteriorate our ability to maintain healthy relationships in real life… Our social technologies are increasingly serving as an obstacle in the process in young people. If certain kinds of social media are introduced prematurely in the lives of teens, they may inadvertently short-circuit basic developmental milestones crucial for establishing healthy relationships later in life.30 With the rise of popularity of text messaging and social networking among America’s teenagers, it is absolutely critical that the Church take steps to help young people establish healthy and meaningful relationships outside of technology and pass along to them the wisdom to discern the effects that such technologies may have on their sense of authentic community and relationship. Clearly, the cultural issues facing young people today need to be informing the way the church is practicing youth ministry that has been founded on the theological bedrocks of repentance, grace, redemption, and hope.

Engaging Parents in Youth Ministry Knowing the brokenness of the traditional family unit that overwhelmingly affects the lives of America’s youth, it is becoming more and more necessary to engage parents and families in practicing effective youth ministry. In The Godbearing Life, Kenda Creasy Dean points out that “research overwhelmingly identifies the family as the most important faith field in a young person’s life.”31 In his groundbreaking book titled Think Orange, Reggie Joiner identifies the critical role of the family “to love and demonstrate God’s character through an unconditional relationship.”32 The foundational concept unleashed in Think Orange is the impact that could be achieved were the church and family to collide in influencing the lives of the next generation: As long as churches do only what churches are doing, they will get only the results they are presently getting. And as long as families do only what families are doing, they will produce only the outcomes they are presently producing. To experience a different outcome, we have to embrace a different strategy.33 Joiner suggests that the primary purpose of the church leader “is not to equip parents to have exceptional parenting skills.”34 Rather, church leaders ought to help parents understand that “their role is to impress on their children the love and character of God,” and to “help them parent from the

29 Donald Miller, “The Danger of Projecting an Identity,” blog post, October 15, 2010, http://www.donmilleris.com/2010/10/15/the-danger-of-projecting-an-identity/ (accessed on November 29, 2010). 30 Shane Hipps, “What’s [Actually] on Your Mind?,” Relevant Magazine, Issue 47 (September/October 2010), 75-76. 31 Dean and Foster, The Godbearing Life. 32 Reggie Joiner, Think Orange: Imagine the impact when church and family collide (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2009), 44. 33 Joiner, Think Orange, 24. 34 Joiner, Think Orange, 48. 6 perspective of a bigger story, one that allows room for our missteps but still encourages us to participate.”35 The church can only be the church to young people if parents and families are encouraged to understand their role as “little congregations.”36 Incarnational youth ministry must focus on the important faith-shaping that takes place in the context of the family unit, no matter how broken and messy that unit may be. Kenda Dean points out that “regardless of our family configuration, most of us “go barefoot” at home: We are more likely to expose our psyches in the protected space of families than anywhere else, a fact that opens us both to the good and the bad that families have to offer.”37 The question then becomes, what can the church do to allow authentic youth ministry to take place in the holy space of family time and how can the church engage parents in the faith formation of their children? In identifying the importance of parents in the lives of young people, Wayne Rice points out some important characteristics of parents that can simply never be replaced by a youth minister: parents love their kids more, they care about their kids more, they spend more time with their kids, they know their kids better, they influence their kids more, they have more authority, and they have more responsibility.38 For these reasons, it is absolutely necessary that parents be engaged in faith formation. A youth minister can never replace the parent of a young person. However, the youth minister can do a great deal in helping parents to own their role as the primary faith former in their child’s life. If the role of the family is so critical to the faith formation of young people, then there are some steps that the church must take in its practices of youth ministry to allow for that faith formation to happen. The first and most important thing that youth ministries can do is to begin to “cut the fat” of their programming. Young people are already so over-involved in extra-curricular activities such as sports, musicals, drama, and more, that the last thing families need is one more program that takes their kids out of the house every week. The church can communicate a lot to families by making more time for families to be families. In addition to helping create this additional margin for families, churches ought to be investing significant amounts of effort and energy in engaging and equipping parents to be the primary faith-formers in the lives of their children. Wayne Rice suggests that blessing, communicating with, equipping, connecting, and involving parents can help to make this happen.39 When push comes to shove, the church needs to “be an advocate for the family system.”40 By partnering with parents instead of competing with them, youth ministries can begin to have an even greater impact not only on young people, but on culture as well. As discussed in the Cultural Concerns section of this paper, youth ministry is now being practiced in an age where there has been a significant breakdown of the traditional family unit. Young people are navigating through a life that is split between divorced parents, often dividing their time between two residences, two sets of values and beliefs, and even two separate sets of religious

35 Joiner, Think Orange, 48. 36 Dean and Foster, The Godbearing Life, 77. 37 Dean and Foster, The Godbearing Life, 78. 38 Wayne Rice, Engaging Parents as Allies (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing, 2009), 21-27. 39 Rice, Engaging Parents as Allies, 71-140. 40 Burns, Uncommon Youth Ministry, 67. 7 influences. While family-based ministry and engaging parents seems like a no-brainer for churches, putting it into effective practice in today’s culture can be a daunting hurdle to be crossed by any youth minister. Terry McGonigal jokingly encourages youth ministers in today’s culture with this summarization of his four-year process for implementing family-based ministry: “Try something. Fail. Try something else. Fail again. Try something else. Stumble on one thing that works. Repeat what works. Try something else… You get the idea.”41 The ultimate reality is that engaging parents is going to involve some failures, but it is worth the fight. “Regardless of the model, every ministry needs to find ways to build on a foundation of parents providing intentional Christian nurture for their children and students connecting to an extended Christian family of faith-full adults.”42 The church needs youth ministers who are willing to fight for the cause of family-based ministry. Andrew Root poses a question in his book Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry asking, “Where then is Jesus Christ?” to which he immediately responds, “He is in the concrete place where the I meets the you, where persons meet persons.”43 This statement is the very essence of incarnational youth ministry. When the youth minister allows Jesus Christ himself to be present in the sacred space of relationships with young people, transformation and faith formation are able to take place. With that said, it is necessary to return once again to where this discussion began. Youth ministry must be understood as incarnational, built upon a solid theological foundation, informed by cultural concerns, and find its home in engaging parents as the faith formers of their children.

Erin M Haligowski serves as the full-time Youth Director at Epiphany Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (Practical Theology) from Ashland University (2007) and a Masters of Divinity in General Ministry from Ashland Theological Seminary (2011). Erin is a social media power-user, and blogs regularly (http://erinhaligowski.wordpress.com). She is happily married to her husband, Scott. In her dream world, Erin would spend her time sharing Jesus with young people, playing guitar, and sipping a good cup of light roast coffee from Caribou Coffee.

41 Terry McGonigal, “Focusing Youth Ministry through the Family,” in Starting Right: Thinking theologically about youth ministry, ed. Kenda Creasy Dean, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 152. 42 McGonigal, “Focusing Youth Ministry through the Family,” in Starting Right, 152. 43 Root, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, 115. 8