Matt Brain is not your stereotypical youth minister. He’s over 30, he’s married, he has five children, and a PhD.

Matt has spent over twenty years involved in local church youth ministry including a time as the Diocesan Youth Officer for the vast Diocese of North-West Australia. He is currently the director of Synergy Youth in the Diocese of Canberra-Goulburn and lectures in Youth Ministry at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre.

Engage! Is the result not just of Matt Brain’s PhD thesis but also the fruit of many years of experience as a youth pastor and church leader. In particular this book is about the challenge of trying to bridge the gap between the church and the ‘digital natives’, a new generation of Australian young people who have grown up in a world very different from the culture of the church. The book explores what it would take for the church to engage with young people who are immersed in a culture with very different assumptions about what makes for a spiritual life?

The book comes in three stages: Part 1 attends firstly to the experience and expression of spirituality by Australian young people. Drawing extensively on the research of Mason, Singleton and Webber (The Spirit of Generation Y, John Garratt, 2007) Brain describes a secular spirituality pursued by young Australians that is highly individualised, technological and consumerist. Importantly however, this secular spirituality leads to high levels of stress and dissatisfaction but without providing adequate tools to overcome these pressures. Meanwhile Australian young people are disconnected from church not simply through non-attendance but in their pursuit of a very different spiritual path. Brain concludes that churches and young people have been left ‘without a common spiritual language or even relationship.’

The second chapter turns to ‘attend’ to the ancient world of Paul and his ministry in Corinth with a particular focus on 1 Corinthians 4. In contrast to the worldview of young Australians (marked by estrangement, vulnerability and a this-worldly spiritual epistemology), Paul’s ministry presents a worldview that is engaged with the world, finds strength in spite of apparent vulnerability through drawing on an other-worldly spiritual epistemology.

Chapters 3 & 4 review Lesslie Newbigen’s theology of mission to lay the groundwork for considering how digital natives might be connected with the sort of faith that Paul demonstrates. Brain is able to connect the three themes evident in secular spirituality with three corresponding themes in Paul’s ministry that suggest avenues for productive engagement between digital natives and the church.
Newbigin’s Trinitarian approach to mission locates the origin of mission in the other-person-focussed relationships of the Trinity. These same intra-trinitarian relations give shape to the church as a community of mission. It is at this point that Brain introduces a key concept from Newbigin, that the Christian congregation is ‘the hermeneutic of the gospel.’ That is, the church interprets God’s mission to the world both by expounding the gospel message to their contemporaries and by being conformed to the likeness of Christ. In particular a church conformed to the Trinitarian mission is to be characterised by ‘authenticity,’ ‘proximity’ and ‘intelligibility.’ These three characteristics comprise the bridge over which the church can travel in order to engage the digital generation.

The final section of the book develops each of the three key missional characteristics of the church: Firstly, the church is called to offer authentic witness to Christ by displaying a ministry of meekness and perseverance through trial. This sort of Christ-like service is likely to challenge the common assumption among young people that the church is only interested in its own power. Such witness is not given merely to effect a response but to lead young people to the sovereign work of the Spirit. Secondly, proximity with young people calls for patient engagement by whole church communities with young people in a way that is open to their humanity. Empowered by the Spirit the church has no power to control outcomes but instead must hand responsibility back to God. Finally intelligibility comes through apprenticeship where older people serve as wise interpreters of the digital landscape as they open the Bible with young people. The church community comes to young people with a deep knowledge of the Christian tradition coupled with an openness and generosity towards a new culture. Both the judgement and restoration of God is experienced, in the life of the church as well as the life of young people.

What Matt Brain presents in this book is no easy task. This is true in two respects. The agenda for change that he lays out is a long term plan calling for deep culture change in the church. In his words, this is not like a quick trip to the shops to change the décor of our buildings. Key in his challenge is the counter-cultural idea of embracing powerlessness (in ourselves) in order to open the way for Jesus’ message of life-in-and-through-death to be the transforming power in the lives of young people. This indeed is no easy task. Yet it is not an unfamiliar task for the Christian church. The agenda for the church to engage a new generation is the same agenda pursued by the Apostle Paul. This is not just a set of ideas that feel like they might be useful. The heart of the book is in solid biblical reflection to lay bare Paul’s methods and motivations. It is a blessing to the church that this careful work has been done in service of young people and youth ministry.

In another respect this book itself is no easy task. It is no surprise that the book began its life as a doctoral dissertation (a glossary in the opening pages that includes words like ‘alterity’ is a sure indication of hard work ahead). It seems that the task of abbreviating a longer work has made a complex argument dense and in some places (mostly in the presentation of Newbigin’s mission theology) very hard work indeed. In that regard the concluding summaries and the diagrams of the unfolding argument are a welcome guide through the book.

Nevertheless, the hard work is worth it. While not necessarily being a book to put in the hands of all the youth leaders at your local church, this is an important text for church leaders and for those involved in the study and teaching of youth ministry in Australia. Matt Brain has shown that it’s possible to do rigorous biblical exegesis as well as careful cultural analysis without marginalising or ‘dumbing down’ either of them.

Most importantly, he shows how we can be thoroughly immersed in cultural study while maintaining the final authority of Scripture over all Christian life and ministry.

Matt Brain, Engage! How the church can reconnect with young people. (Canberra: Barton Books, 2011)