Yesterday my job at Hope Lutheran Church changed from Youth Director to Director of Youth and Ministry Development. Our Associate Pastor of Ministry Development, Wendy Berthelsen, decided that she wanted to devote her time to the development of her non-profit teaching ministry Call, Inc. Instead of hiring a replacement for her, the church has chosen to shift my responsibilities around to cover both youth and ministry development. We have hired a full-time youth ministry intern to take over many of the tasks related to youth ministry.

At our church “Ministry Development” is sort of a catch-all phrase. It includes:

• Christian education for adults and children
• Oversight of adult small group ministry
• Training people in spiritual gifts and helping to discern God’s call on their life
• Molding the ministry and practices of our church around the unique gifts, talents, and passions of our church
• Overseeing church communication and administration
• Launching new ministry initiatives
• Training and supporting people in existing ministries
• And probably more

So, all of the above responsibilities come in addition to my role as the lead staff person for youth ministry, and I’m excited about the possibilities. I actually think that my new role will force me to utilize my strengths to an even greater extent than before. From my assessment in Strengths-Based Leadership I learned that my leadership style falls under the category of “Strategic Thinking” (and not executing, relationship building, or influencing).

While I love youth ministry, being involved with such a narrow ministry so intimately meant that I did not spend a high percentage of my time utilizing my strategic thinking strengths. Much of my time was spent preparing for events, cleaning up for events, administrating the ministry, and spending time with youth. All of these things are good and necessary, but they perhaps underutilized my strengths. By widening my responsibilities so broadly, I will be forced to stay on a very strategic level while equipping others to carry out many of the practical ministry tasks for the simple reason that there is not enough time for me to focus my energy on much else.

And as one who has a keen interest in ecclesiology, having a wider responsibility will allow me to dabble in this ecclesial lab over the coming months.

I would appreciate your prayers as I transition into this new role at our church.

Though only preliminary, these two main actions would do well to shape a ministry that addresses many of the issues facing adolescents while theologically attending to the revelation of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, participating through the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ continuing ministry, and joining God the Father in his creative and salvific work in the ex nihilo of the human condition. ?

As the church lives “into” and “out of” the biblical story, its life is transformed by its power. The biblical story is contextualized in the life of the church. The church becomes, in fact, the hermeneutic of the gospel. That is, the world is able to understand the truthfulness of the gospel story by reading the story of the life of the church. (144)

Currently, confirmation fits the widespread education-style paradigm, with heavy emphasis on Bible and doctrinal teaching and discussion. However, if Christian faith is best described as trust in Jesus (rather than in truth-claims), relational place-sharing (instead of programmatic efficacy), and concerned with action (as opposed to only right thinking), then some change is in order. The primary action I would like to put in place is the inclusion of adult mentors within the confirmation program. These mentors would be assigned one or two students as they enter confirmation and be charged with being the primary minister to their specific teenagers. Where this idea goes beyond typical conceptions of relational ministry and attempts to truly attend to the humanity of the teenagers is by continuing the mentoring relationship at least through the high school graduation of the adolescent. Instead of a one- or two-year mentoring relationship that is entered into as a requirement for the program, the mentor and the teen are given the time and space to develop a relationship outside of the programmatic emphasis of confirmation.

One of the goals of the mentoring relationship will be for the mentor to ask the adolescent to articulate their Christian faith in a meaningful way as it relates to their lives and situations. This should help to correct the troubling statement made by researchers in the National Study of Youth and Religion: “it was our distinct sense that for many of the teens we interviewed, our interview was the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life.”

As adolescence is naturally a time of individuation, these mentors can provide some adult wisdom and guidance during a time when teenagers are naturally pulling away from their parents. Teenagers are not afraid of adult input and advice, but they are often wary to find it from within their own family systems. Since adolescence is a common life-stage for a person to experience an ex nihilo event (divorce of a parent, loss of a grandparent, rejection in school, breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend) the mentor will already be in place and ready to become a place-sharer during such times.

These relationships would also foster accountability in another new addition to the confirmation curriculum: Christian practices. Rather than teaching Bible studies on prayer, mentors would pray with their pupils. Rather than teaching about reconciliation, mentors would guide students into reconciled relationships with their friends and parents. Rather than speaking about helping one’s neighbor, mentors and confirmands would serve side-by-side on mission trips and service projects. The mentoring relationship will go a long way to move Christian formation out of an education-based model of ministry and towards a concrete, practice-based model of ministry.

These relationships should continue regardless of the student’s behavior or participation in the church community after confirmation age. Openness to these teenagers must be unconditional because, as Miroslav Volf says, “the will to give ourselves to others and ‘welcome’ them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity.” If the church is to offer the eschatological hope of Jesus Christ, it must also be willing to embody such hope in the act of place-sharing. Since the church is the location of God’s action in the world, “[b]efore adolescents can take seriously the gospel’s claim that Jesus will ‘be there’ always, a community of affirming others must ‘be there’ for them, demonstrating steadfast love on their behalf.”

It was through the work of Ray Anderson that I began to see the salvific action of God as arising out of a state of total nothingness, out of ex nihilo: barren Sarah gives birth to Isaac, the outcast Moses leads the Israelites to the Promised Land, a virgin gives birth to the Son of God, the salvation of the world is achieved through the death of God on the cross, and the Spirit of God is given to a group of people hiding in a room. It is not comfort or power that beget the action of God, but “[t]he void—the ex nihilo—is the necessary condition for the Word to bring forth God’s creation.” God’s salvific power is made evident in the most desperate times of human weakness. Thus, the church’s ministry must also occur in the space of the ex nihilo.

As a community called to minister the church must be open to the action of God in the ex nihilo of individual and institutional lives. Times of despair and discomfort are situations that often naturally force distance rather than intimacy and solidarity. However, it is in these very times when God is able to do God’s most profound work. Just as through the cross of Jesus Christ God became a place-sharer for humanity, so the church is called to share its place with those who suffer. Place-sharing is a form of ministry that tends to the humanity of individuals rather than offering religious platitudes during times of hopelessness. This conforms well to Anderson’s understanding that “all true ministry in the world is ‘secular’ in the sense that it seeks to recover the true humanity of the world, not to make it religious.”

Just as the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus (Luke 3:22), so the Spirit descended upon the church (Acts 2:1ff). The church is, therefore, more than a collection of individuals who attest to a past event (as profound and cosmologically significant as that past event may have been) but instead the church bears the message of Jesus Christ within her very being as the church is the current primary means of God’s revelation to the world. Paul’s description of the church as the Body of Christ is more than mere metaphor. Indeed, it is a theological assertion that the work of Christ continues through the church. Drawing from Jürgen Moltmann, Anderson agrees when he says that “the messianic mission of Jesus is not entirely completed in his death and resurrection. Through the coming of the Spirit, his history becomes the church’s gospel for the world. The church participates in his mission, becoming the messianic church for the coming kingdom.”

Thus, this is more than nineteenth century liberal theology or anthropocentrism but is a pentecostal ecclesiology. The church did not decide upon herself that she should possess such a task and status, but God is the one who elected for the church to be the continuing agent of God through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. In ministry the church continues in the ministry of Christ: “The form of the church is thus incarnational; not another incarnation, but a continuation of the one incarnate life of God in the form of Jesus Christ.” The formation of mature Christians must move past current educational models towards practice-based action, whether that is through ritual and worship or acts of service and justice. Because the Holy Spirit continues to be active in the world, Christian formation must take the form of action.

If a church is to be more than a local community support group for those in need, it must attempt to speak of God. When beginning to consider the means by which we speak about God, it must first be emphasized that the God whom we worship is an active God, breaking into the human condition and revealing Godself to humankind. The most full and explicit revelation of God is to be found in Jesus Christ. In order to begin to speak of God one must first begin by speaking of Jesus Christ.

By looking to Jesus as the source and norm of all Christian theology, we learn both about God and about ourselves as human beings. Jesus stands in the gap between God and humankind as “the mediator of all that God is towards humans (revelation), and all that humans are called to be in relation to God (reconciliation).” Such an understanding roots the source of Christian truth in a person, rather than a group of Platonic ideas that the church must guard and possess. Douglas John Hall warns that “[a] religious community that believes itself to be in possession of ‘the Truth’ is a community equipped with the most lethal weapon of any warfare: the sense of its own superiority and mandate to mastery.” Thus, the church must witness to Jesus Christ, not to the truth-claims it might make (or attempt to make) on his behalf. This leads the church to a humble, rather than triumphalist, orthodoxy.

Many western churches appear to be fairly Christocentric in their approach to ministry. They proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God as made known by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, this kerygmatic style of ministry can fall prey to gimmicks and methods in an attempt to most effectively spread this message to those who have not yet heard. A more full understanding of ministry will also take into consideration the third member of the Trinity.

This series was originally written as a paper for a class in seminary.

In considering how to best articulate a theology for ministry within my particular context I have chosen to attend very specifically to the teens already present within the fold of my church. Though the mission and ministry of the church should (and must) extend outside the walls of a community of faith, for the church to become better ministers in the world an ecclesiological revolution is in order. Thus, in the following I speak almost exclusively in regard to my church with the understanding that the natural outworking of a passionate and vibrant church will result in blessing those outside of our community.

Issues confronting the adolescents to whom I am specifically called to minister could be grouped in two general categories: those fairly common to adolescents in the western world and those specific to my particular context at Hope Lutheran Church. Most in youth ministry will notice the tension inherent in adolescence, the challenge of transitioning our young people past graduation age, and a lack of ability of teens to accurately articulate the Christian faith. Being a stage of life whereby a person is an adult biologically (possesses the ability to reproduce) but is considered a child by society (no ability to vote, barred from drinking alcohol, still in school, living at home, supported by parents), adolescence may be defined as a stage of life that is by very definition a tension-filled period. The tensions begin early biologically as students mature, their bodies change, and they develop the ability to reproduce sexually. The response can result in those who mature early to look more adult-like and to begin to attract the attention of those who are much older, increasing social status, and the possibility of romantic relationships. For those who mature later, they may be the brunt of teasing, jokes, and have difficulty socially. Other social tensions occur when teenagers begin their process of individuation and seem to withdrawal from their families and spend more time with their friends. This can lead to risk-taking behavior, another action that is reinforced biologically as the pre-frontal cortex in the adolescent is not fully developed, thus leading young people to a lack of adult judgment. In the midst of the search for identity, the majority of adolescents tend to deal with the issue of “coolness” and strive to earn social capital. This is often highly influenced by the marketing of certain products and behaviors toward the adolescent population.

Besides the inherent tensions that are caused by biological and social factors there is the common issue almost all churches face as students graduate high school. While many move off to college, some will go to community college, trade school, or work a low-wage job; however, almost all students will stop participating actively in their faith tradition while in the 18-25 age range. The lack of the church to be able to translate engaged adolescent faith to continuing adult faith is problematic and possibly a symptom of deeper issues in our churches that would rather be ignored.

Lastly, it is widespread that our young people are highly inarticulate when it comes to expressing the core of the Christian faith. Instead, they adhere to what researcher Christian Smith calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” a faith that is void of the unique characteristics of the Christian faith as expressed through the tradition of the church. That young people cannot articulate what it means to be a Christian leaves one questioning whether it is the Christian faith that they are embracing or perhaps something else.

In addition to these general adolescent issues my specific ministry context brings to mind two more: affluence and competition. Most of the families in my church live in the suburbs of the Dallas area and lavish their kids will all the spoils of such a lifestyle. Almost every single student has a cell phone by seventh grade, iPods abound, and cars are awarded to sixteen-year olds. The deep desire of my students to acquire more “stuff” is quite evident. Possibly more troubling that this, however, is their expectation that most people live the kind of lives that they do. After a discussion on worldwide poverty, a high school junior at the top of her class came to me and said, “I had no idea that most of the world lived like that. I knew it existed, but didn’t know it was so widespread. I thought most people were like us.”

Competition is the second issue confronting my students and is likely related to their culture of affluence. Fierce competition abounds in my youth group, both academically and athletically. Students are constantly trying to build their résumé, overloading their schedules with activities for such a purpose. SAT preparation begins early and at an intensity I did not know less than ten years ago as an academically-competitive high school student myself. Athletic competition is a similar phenomenon. In addition to school-sanctioned sports there are traveling club teams and camps, all vying for a student’s time. Rest and Sabbath seem to have no place in such a competitive lifestyle for fear that they will get left behind while their friends achieve success, however that may be defined.

All of the above issues are possible areas of conflict that if not engaged properly could work against the authentic practice of the Christian faith. Before addressing these issues and how to address them in relation to the Christian faith, it would be prudent to first articulate a theological framework for Christian ministry. Ministry born out of the classic confessions of the Christian faith would attend to a Trinitarian style of ministry.

The Reformers’ intent was to return the Word to the center of life within local congregations. But singling out preaching and sacraments can produce several problems in how the ministry of the church is understood and practiced. These include (a) the tendency to limit the primary communication of the Word to the activity of preaching; (b) the tendency to see only ordained persons as qualified to minister through communicating the Word of God and dispensing the sacraments; and (c) limiting the focus of worship to the act of preaching. (144)

Come back next week for a series on a trinitarian model of youth ministry.