EVERY PASTOR A YOUTH PASTOR: AWAKENING THE CALL TO MINISTRY WITH THE FIRST THIRD AMONG ALL THE ORDAINED by JESSICA LILLIAN HARRIS DAUM A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Luther Seminary In Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the M.Div Concentration of Children Youth and Family THESIS ADVISERS: TERRI ELTON AND NANCY GOING ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA 2012 This thesis may be duplicated only by special permission of the author. 1 2 Recently I found myself in conversation with a fellow seminary student. As I chatted with this student in the Masters of Divinity program, the subject turned to my concentration in the Children Youth and Family Ministry program. My friend and future colleague in ordained ministry asked me why I had chosen to be involved in the youth program and what attracted me to working with young people. I shared a bit of what has called me into ministry and how I‟ve grown because of my concentration in the area of Children, Youth, and Family. My friend just smiled, shook his head, and said, “Well, I sure am glad that you feel called to youth ministry. Kids and teenagers are not my thing, but I guess someone has to work with them. Thankfully people like you are doing youth ministry so that I won‟t have to.” Sadly this wasn‟t the first time I‟ve found myself in this sort of conversation. All too often I hear my fellow seminarians who are preparing for ordained ministry remark that they do not see ministry among young people as a part of their particular calling. These future pastors are called to serve in a congregational setting, and I would guess that many of them would hope to one day become the senior leader of a congregation. In fact, of those who will graduate this spring from Luther Seminary, a large number will become solo pastors and primary leaders of a congregation from the start. To think that any of these graduates will enter their office as ministers of Word and Sacrament without an understanding of the integral role of children, youth, and families within the Body of Christ is a scary thought. In light of recent research highlighting the importance of the primary pastoral leader in building a rich and vibrant ministry with young people, it is time to awaken the call in all ordained leaders to care for and attend to the faith formation of Christians of all ages. Ordained clergy in the Lutheran church are entrusted with the 3 Sacrament of Baptism through which children are made members in the Church. Beginning with baptism, pastors play a role in influencing the life of faith of young people. All pastors are in essence youth pastors, and every pastor ought to be prepared for ministry with those in the first third of life. Still, many senior pastors resonate with the sentiment that my friend expressed: “Youth ministry is not for me, and I‟m relieved that others are taking on the task of working with young people so that I can focus on ministry with adults.” Youth ministry truly is hard work. Youth can be difficult to understand, hard to deal with, and even intimidating. It seems most pastors believe that this work is something best left to youth ministry professionals. Too many pastors do not realize the impact that they have on faith formation within a congregation. The presence and support of a senior pastor has tremendous implications for the ways in which ministry with those in the first third of life will be carried out. Pastors shape youth and family ministry in congregations whether they do so intentionally or not. An Ecclesiastical Crisis Fifteen years ago, at the 1997 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture, Roland Martinson highlighted the challenge facing congregations concerned for the future of young people in the church. It is a challenge put forth by youth who cry out for a church that matters and will affirm that they matter, a cry we still hear today. “Our churches know they must act. After three decades and nearly two generations of generally declining membership, congregations see a wake-up call in the faces of the youngest 4 among us who say, „We find churches to be unengaging, strange, foreign, in fact, trivial, speaking about that which does not matter to us in a language we don‟t understand.‟”1 At the same conference Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore echoed the call, urging churches to respond to the hunger in youth. She proclaimed, “I am convinced that in what has been called post-Christian America...young people are hungry for something to believe in that gives meaning and purpose to their lives and is worth committing themselves to. And I am convinced that while they may not go to church in the first place to satisfy that hunger, they will not stay in the church unless we truthfully, honestly, and clearly introduce them to the God who can and will satisfy it.”2 The fear that the church may miss the opportunity to recenter itself around young people and thus capture a generation is still felt today. She expressed the anxiety and urgency present then and now saying, “I am convinced that unless we equip youth leaders and ministers, as well as theologians, with the resources to help young people with their struggle, we will lose them. They will turn in desperation to others who will be glad to give them all kinds of very questionable „right answers.‟ Or they will just drop out, like millions of others in our increasingly secular society, to live without faith in anyone or anything.”3 A Deeper Yearning It is understandable to be afraid that if congregations, guided by their pastors as well as lay leaders, do not rise to the challenge of engaging young people, the future of the church may be at risk. As people of faith, though, we engage in ministry knowing that the present and the future of the church are within the hands of our faithful God. 1 Roland Martinson, “Getting to All God‟s Kids,” in The 1997 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1998), 27. 2 Shirley C. Guthrie, “Something to Believe In,” in The 1997 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1998), 3. 3 Ibid., 7. 5 Something more than fear and anxiety over decreasing membership must drive our desire to incorporate youth in the whole life of the faithful, the movement of the Body of Christ. In her poignant and inspiring book, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church, Kenda Creasy Dean reaches deeper into the mission of the church, the identity of God‟s self, and the yearning of young people in order to discover the heart of what impels us to take on the challenge of ministry with those in the first third of life. Youth ministry--ministry by, with, and for people between the onset of puberty and the enduring commitments of adulthood--cannot be reduced to keeping or capturing young people in the pews. Adolescents are searching for something, for someone, „to die for,‟ to use Erik Erikson‟s haunting phrase: a cause worthy of their suffering, a love worthy of a lifetime and not just a Sunday night. Teenagers will not settle for a God who asks for anything less.4 She goes on, giving voice to the plea issued from the soul of youth, “Please, please tell me it‟s true. True love is always worth dying for. Please tell me I‟m worth dying for. Please tell me someone loves me this much and won‟t let me go, even if the Titanic sinks, even if the library explodes, even if the towers fall, even if the world ends. Please show me a God who loves me this much--and who is worth loving passionately in return. Because if Jesus isn‟t worth dying for, then he‟s not worth living for, either.”5 Isn‟t this the same yearning motivating all who answer the call to Christian vocation, the call to life within the living, breathing, broken and resurrected Body of Christ? Is this not the same cry that draws individuals to a life of ministry of Word and Sacrament under the blessing of ordination? This is the passion that ignites faith through the Holy Spirit in God‟s children, regardless of age. It is a cry that is felt most urgently and passionately in the lives of adolescents who live too close to the edge of life where 4 Kenda Creasy Dean, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2004), 2. 5 Ibid., 32. 6 possibility meets nothingness and sense the anxiety to be or become something is an ultimate concern. Although adults have developed mechanisms of defense and distraction to ward off fear and increase certainty, no one outgrows the desire to have the truth proclaimed again, to be reassured of God‟s love and Christ‟s passion and reminded of the length to which our creator has gone to redeem us. In light of the pastor‟s call to proclaim and baptize and feed, Dean raises a haunting question: “Is it possible that the „problem‟ facing youth ministry reflects all too accurately a malaise infecting mainline denominations generally: a flabby theological identity due to an absence of passion?”6 If this is so, then it is not the job of specialized youth ministers to shape vibrant faith formation in congregations, but the job of all ministers, all the baptized, led and supported by ordained leaders to reshape the theological imagination of the church and realign it for ministry with youth.