Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus

by Mark Yaconelli

Overview

“Contemplative Youth Ministry is refreshing rain for dry youth workers and barren youth ministries. More than the same old youth ministry tips and tricks, it gives principles and practices to soak in God’s grace, love, and power. I wish I had read it 15 years ago.” - Kara Powell, Ph.D., executive director, Center for Youth Ministry and Family Ministry, Fuller Theological Seminary “Mark invites readers to be encountered by the presence of Jesus who is always near. This book is transparent about the challenges that churches and families face as they desire to be effective in youth ministry. The book is filled with the honest stories of different kinds of youth ministries representing the breadth of Christianity in the United States. I heartily endorse Contemplative Youth Ministry as a rich encounter with the souls of youth and adults whose lives have been transformed by our very present God.” - Bill Kees, director of youth ministries, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) “Mark Yaconelli not only reminds us of some of the long-forgotten pathways of faith, he shares with us how it actually looks when men and women who love God practice it with young people. I especially appreciate Mark’s optimism in his perspective of today’s kids, for his insights are grounded in God’s view of them.” - Chap Clark, Ph.D., associate professor of youth, family, and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary “Mark Yaconelli was experimenting with contemplative youth ministry practices before contemplative youth ministry practices became cool. This book has about it the unique air of authenticity. He shares with us in these pages his own journey as a youth worker who actually believes that God’s still small voice speaks louder than the roaring windstorm of our busy youth ministry calendars. It’s a book about creating for our students places of silence and opening up spaces for God to speak.” - Duffy Robbins, professor of youth ministry, Eastern University; author of Enjoy the Silence and This Way to Youth Ministry “Mark Yaconelli has emerged as one of youth ministry’s most provocative ‘voices in the wilderness,’ calling us back to our theological taproots: The contemplative practices that bind our lives to the life of Christ. If Mark’s research has taught us anything, it’s that these practices do not cause youth ministry to take fl ight into a spiritual never-never land; rather they anchor young people—and their churches—in the fertile soil of Christian tradition, in the nitty-gritty of daily life, and in the explosive transformation that awaits us when we wait upon God.” - Kenda Creasy Dean, parent, pastor, and professor of youth, Princeton Theological Seminary; author of Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310829669
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	03/22/2011
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Yaconelli is the co-founder and co-director of Triptykos School of Compassion. The author of Downtime, Contemplative Youth Ministry, and Growing Souls, Mark lives in Oregon with his wife and three children.

Read an Excerpt

Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus

teen angst and adult anxiety
In our age everything has to be a 'problem.' Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
Sanctity in such an age means, no doubt, traveling from the area of anxiety to the area in which there is no anxiety or perhaps it may mean learning,
from God, to be without anxiety in the midst of anxiety.
---THOMAS MERTON, THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE
I've really begun to understand what deeply spiritual people teenagers are. (Silly to have forgotten,
when I was one myself.) Even the scruffi est middle-
schooler is on a seriously beautiful, completely unique journey, as we all are, and have been, even when we were little kids. Understanding that has perhaps been the best fruit that contemplative prayer has yielded in my relationship with young people.
---MELISSA RANGE, POET, YOUTH MINISTRY VOLUNTEER,
OAKHURST BAPTIST CHURCH, DECATUR, GEORGIA
Teenagers make adults anxious. They just do. In fact, adult anxiety about teens may be the primary reason youth ministry exists.
Spot a cluster of unfamiliar young people laughing outside the church, and adults get suspicious. If these youth happen to paint their lips black or jump skateboards off the church steps, adults can get downright fearful. Adult anxiety toward teens is ancient, even biblical. In the only scene we're given from Jesus' adolescence, the young Messiah sneaks away from his family and hides out in Jerusalem.
When his mother fi nally rushes into the temple and discovers her holy middle-schooler, she cries frantically, 'Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety!' (Luke 2:48). It turns out that even the teenage Prince of Peace can make adults crazy with worry.
There are many reasons why adults feel anxious around teens.
Young people are fi dgety. They fi ddle with things and won't stay still. They exaggerate and mirror adult postures that make us selfconscious and uncomfortable. They always seem to be looking for something---a friend, an adventure, a ride, food, acceptance, a glimpse of who they're becoming. Youth can voice their questions with such open-hearted honesty that we fi nd ourselves blushing. Sometimes their neediness or suffering can be obvious in a way that leaves us feeling helpless or despondent.
Young people are green. They can make adults feel tired, musty,
and unattractive. Emerging from childhood, teens move toward adulthood with fresh eyes and energy. They see white elephants. They ask the obvious and un-faced questions: 'Why do we have to go to church when Jesus never did?' 'How come you tell me not to drink alcohol when you have a beer every night?' 'Why are these benches called pews?' Just the presence of young people within a community of adults exposes weaknesses, raises doubts, and challenges assumed values.
]Young people can be disturbingly (or is it refreshingly?) unpredictable.
One day they seem happy to conform to their parents' wishes and adult conventions; the next day it appears they're making it up as they go along, led zigzag by an internal drummer that even they don't seem to recognize. Young people can express a childlike dependency one moment, then get offended by the lack of independence they're granted the next. Youth are messy. Take this example:
Three years ago while traveling on a bus full of young people, I
noticed I was seated near fi ve or six teenage girls. At the time, my wife and I were expecting our fi rst daughter, and I was eager to learn about the relationships between these teenage girls and their fathers.
I asked the girls if they would be willing to tell me about their relationships with their fathers and to offer any advice they thought helpful.
Although these young women were from all over North America and represented diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, I was surprised at how all the girls in this particular group spoke in very similar, adoring tones about their dads. Then one 15-year-old said, 'Of course, you have to be prepared for times when your daughter might say to you, 'I
hate you, Daddy!' But usually by the next day you'll get a handmade card that says something like, 'You're the greatest dad in the world.''
Bewildered, I looked at her and asked if any of them had enacted this kind of behavior with their own fathers. All but one nodded in agreement. I was incredulous. I asked what had prompted them to use such extreme language. One girl replied, 'Well, it can be anything,
really. Like, a couple of months ago I stopped talking to my dad after he wore black socks and sandals to pick me up from school. But other times I've said similar things for really no reason at all.' When I asked them why, they just shrugged their shoulders. 'It's just something we do,' one of them offered. Youth make adults anxious.
One thing that becomes increasingly disturbing for many grownups is the sense that they have little control over young people. This scares adults. Adults want youth to conform to adult standards. They want kids to act responsibly. They want them to sit down and listen.
They want them to hurry up and get their identities fi xed and grounded. Adults want youth to have a roadmap for a secure and reasonable future, and they get rattled when they notice that most youth aren't carrying one.
Youth workers aren't immune from these anxieties. We worry about the young people in our care. We don't know what they look at on the Internet. We can't keep up with the electronic gadgets they play with. We've never heard of the bands or celebrities they talk about. We don't know what they do after school. We're unaware of the subject or codes in their e-mail conversations. Even the most hip youth ministers can sometimes feel like they really don't understand young people at all.
Perhaps one source of these adult anxieties is the growing separation between youth and adults. For the past 40 years, economic policies, changes in social norms, and a relentless marketing strategy to create and sell to a teenage market have combined to create what sociologist Christian Smith calls a 'structural disconnect' between adults and youth.4 This separation begins long before adolescence.
Many youth spend most of their childhoods segregated in daycares and schools, afternoons and evenings in front of televisions and computers, weekends hanging out with friends. By early adolescence most young people are attuned to a different reality, a different world,
than adults.
The less contact adults have with young people, the more mysterious they seem. Adults can fall into the traps of projection, speculation,
worry, and fearful imaginings. Congregations and church leaders fi nd themselves relying on the media to learn about kids. They absorb stories about teenage gangs and violence. They watch videos and movies that portray youth as hormone-driven, sex-crazed nymphs. They hear news stories and government reports that talk alarmingly about
'at-risk' kids. All of this becomes a fi lter for how young people are
4 Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005), 182.
teen angst and adult anxiety perceived. Adults see teenagers in baggy jeans and oversized jackets and fear they're hiding drugs or weapons. They see a group of young women in short halter tops and lipstick and worry about their sexual activity.

Table of Contents

Contents Foreword by Anne Lamott 9 Acknowledgments 13 Introduction: Practicing the Presence of Jesus 17 Chapter 1: Teen Angst and Adult Anxiety 29 Chapter 2: Life without Expectations 47 Chapter 3: Staying Alive 61 Chapter 4: Becoming a Good Receiver 69 Chapter 5: Allowing God to Love Us 77 Chapter 6: From Prayer to Presence 95 Chapter 7: Being with Young People 103 Chapter 8: Remembering 123 Chapter 9: Forming the Beloved Community 139 Chapter 10: The Liturgy for Discernment 157 Chapter 11: Noticing 177 Chapter 12: Naming 201 Chapter 13: Nurturing 217 Chapter 14: Beyond Fear 233 Appendixes 239