As Zac Veron, Youthworks CEO, discussed in last month's issue of Southern Cross, we know that the teen years are a significant time of life for people to make lasting decisions to follow Jesus: 74 per cent of Sydney Anglicans surveyed in the 2006 NCLS came to faith in Christ before the age of 20.
So what approaches are churches employing to connect today's unchurched youth with Jesus?
One set of approaches can be gathered under the heading of "relational youth work'. These approaches typically draw on the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ as the central theological motif for youth ministry outreach.
Influential English youth ministry author Pete Ward in his book Youthwork and the Mission of God (since retitled God at the Mall) described two complementary disciplines of youth ministry back in 1997: inside-out and outside-in.
The inside-out discipline is the familiar youth group " starting with the young people who are inside the church, the group reaches out to others to attract new members so that they might be introduced to Jesus (p1).
To reach beyond those young people who are within easy reach of existing church members, Ward identifies an alternate, parallel approach which he calls the outside-in, or incarnational outreach discipline.
With this approach, youth ministry steps beyond the church into the local community. The youth worker follows the incarnation of Jesus as an example of how to minister: just as God became a human being to build a relationship with human beings, so we are called to go to young people, to meet them where they're at, to address their issues and concerns (p13).
This incarnational approach (also referred to as "relational outreach') follows five basic stages: contact, extended contact, proclamation, nurture and church. The aim is to move young people who are well outside the social group of the existing church to see them established in their own church, one where the gospel is contextualised within their own culture.
Pete Ward says "going to places where young people naturally hang out"; extended contact: "moves a relationship physically away from the point of contact", with the youth worker "signalling that [the young people] are significant to him" and the youth are "expressing an acceptance of the youth minister".
The aim of this relationship building is to move to a new stage when the youth worker looks for an opportunity to proclaim the gospel message. The importance of contact and extended contact as precursors to this stage is summed up in the imperative that youth workers "earn the right to speak".
Once young people make a response to the gospel, the focus of the ministry moves to nurture and church. Notable in Ward's approach is that this work of discipleship needs to be done outside existing church groups.
The final outcome will be a new church where the gospel is "contextualised amongst a group of people who were not previously part of the Church. The hope is that Jesus can become real within the subculture which these people share" (p18).
This approach to outreach ministry among young people, particularly as it has been practised in North America, has been significantly critiqued in a recent book, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry by American youth ministry professor, Andrew Root.
Root has been hailed as the person "poised to lead the field in rethinking youth ministry'.
Summarising relational youth ministry as "personal influence relationalism" (p70), Root critiques this approach as merely "a tool for cultural assimilation through personal influence" (p79).
Firmly in his sights is the idea that a relationship with another is seen merely as a lever that can be used to influence them to adopt our preferred ideology while bypassing any real engagement with the young person with whom we claim to be in relationship.
For Root, "God became human to be with and for us, not to simply influence us toward this or that end " The incarnation is not about influence but accompaniment. It is not about getting us right but bearing what is wrong with us, so that we might find that we are only right in the embrace of a God who loves so much to be with us!" (p79).
For Root therefore, instead of moving through the stages of contact and extended contact in order to "earn the right to speak', the incarnation calls us to be in relationships with young people where we will be "the concrete location of Christ's presence in the world" (p80).
Using Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of "place-sharing', the relationships we're called to have with young people will be transforming because the relationship itself will bring them into the concrete presence of God.
How then shall we respond to these two proposals for outreach among young people?
What is notable in each approach is the clear theological underpinnings yet with very little biblical analysis or reflection. If we are going to build an approach to ministry on the doctrine of the incarnation we must first ask the question whether the New Testament writers themselves built an approach to ministry on the incarnation and, if so, what their agenda was. Only from there will we be placed to see how (and if) we could talk of an incarnational ministry for youth outreach today.
In an extended research project A Theology for Urban Youth Work on the work of Youth for Christ among inner-city young adults in the UK, Sally Nash focuses on Philippians 2:5-11 as an important biblical text for defining incarnational youth work (p102).
Nash quotes from a YFC position paper: "When God chose to communicate with us he took the form of a human person. Jesus gave up all he had, became a human being like us, and entered our world because he wanted to communicate with us" (p140).
The difficulty in using this passage to direct a strategy for youth outreach is that Paul is not using the passage for a similar purpose. The hymn in v5-11 is the ground for Paul's instructions to the Philippians regarding their relationships as church members to one another; it is not being used to provide a rationale or framework for Paul's missionary activity.
For that we need to look elsewhere "” specifically to 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.
Though Paul does not mention the incarnation of Christ explicitly in this passage, the theme of incarnation is clearly present. The communication principles of "being like" and "entering another's world" are here expressed in the well-known phrase "be all things to all people".
It is clear from the context that Paul is here talking about more than simply enculturated relationships: in 9:16-18 his focus is clearly on preaching the gospel, a theme he returns to in v23 stating that his cross-cultural activity is done "for the sake of the gospel".
But what does being "all things to all people" actually mean? Did Paul dress, talk and eat like a Jew one day and dress, talk and eat like a Gentile the next? Will being "all things to all young people" require 40-year-old youth workers to dress in skinny jeans, have multiple piercings, listen to emo music and learn youth dialects?
Paul's point in chapter 9 is that while he has certain rights and freedoms as an apostle and as someone set free in Christ, he will readily choose to give up those rights in order to serve others more clearly with the gospel. Where his rights may get in the way of the gospel of Christ being clearly heard he will forego his freedom so that others might be saved. Thus for Paul, being "all things to all people" is not about what he puts on in order to be like someone else (his aim is not to "go undercover' or pretend to be what he is not). Instead he is concerned with what he will put off in order to not cause any unnecessary offence so that the gospel of Christ might be clearly heard.
For Paul "earning the right to speak' comes not from extended contact but from his authority as an ambassador for Christ. After all it is God who is making his appeal through us, our invitation comes on Christ's behalf (2 Cor 5:20) and as creator, saviour and judge he has the right to speak. The cross-cultural challenge for us is to know how to speak on Christ's behalf in a way that will not cause unnecessary offence.
Clearly though, we must speak from God and on behalf of Christ. It is right that we heed Root's warning against relationships that become mercenary and manipulative. Yet the "concrete presence of Christ" will not come simply through our "being with' young people, but through our preaching as we are sent by God (Rom 10:14-15).
Reflection on the incarnation of Christ for our ministry practice will lead to further discussion about youth ministry as cross-cultural mission and the opportunities for thinking not just about ministry to young people but ministry by young people to other young people.
Likewise, taking our lead from the mission principles of the New Testament, outreach to young people today must be marked by clear gospel preaching that allows God to speak into the lives of those we are in contact with, and by culturally sensitive gospel preaching that freely gives up the rights and freedoms (not to mention preferences and prejudices) of youth ministers in order to present this good news with clarity.
Committed to these tasks, we join Paul to be all things to all people, not least to young people, so that by all possible means we may save some.
The Rev Graham Stanton is Principal of Youthworks College.
