Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus (Youth Specialties) [Hardcover]

Mark Yaconelli (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 25, 2006 | Series: Youth Specialties

'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

Editorial Reviews

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan/Youth Specialties; First Edition edition (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310267773
• ISBN-13: 978-0310267775
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars prophetic youth ministry a welcomed book August 9, 2007

By Joshua D. Jones

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Contemplative youth ministry is a welcomed book. It's a book that seeks to put God at the centre of youth ministry instead of programs that stem from good ideas. The title of the book sums up the theme and direction of the book. Basically if Brother Lawrence had done youth ministry, he probably would have written a book like this. He instructs youth leaders on how to listen to God, how to minister from a place of silence and hearing God's voice, and how to encourage these activities among the youth.

One of the strengths of the book would be his testimony at the beginning of the book in which he describes himself as being program driven and success seeking. He then recounts his transformation to a place where he ministers out of love instead of anxiety. I felt that I could relate.

The part that I got the most from was when he called us to be "fully present" to the individual youths. He made me realise how often I've only given someone half of my attention. His challenge to me to slow down and give a youth my full attention and listening ears is much appreciated.

I felt the book had a couple of weaknesses that made me give this otherwise unique book only three stars. First of all, he fails to ground his (what are for many) new and somewhat radical ideas in scripture. With the exception of the odd verse, he bases his ideas more in church history than in scripture. Not to say that I think that his ideas are unbiblical; for at least the most part they are not. But, when calling the church to fundamentally change how we do things, we want a surer guide then a few testimonies and a "this is how Ignatius Loyola would have done it". Often I thought that he had a good idea which made me think of different texts of scripture, but he failed to ever interact with them. I felt that this decreased the potential power of the book.

The second weakness I felt the book had was the somewhat negative tone towards preaching or what he called "word heavy youth ministry". Preaching is very uncool in today's post-modern era where authority is downplayed. There is a general shift away from preaching and teaching and I feel like this book is affected by that wave of thinking. The author encouraged the exercise of meditating on scripture together and then sharing what each person felt that the text was saying. What the author failed to teach us was what to do when some outlandish, nut-job or even heretical ideas are being shared. How do we bring correction and instruction into a moment like that? Is there really no value at all in having a gifted teacher authoritatively say, "here is the text, let me explain what it means and how to apply it to your lives"? The gospel needs to be preached and not just reflected in the way we live.

Also, the author never uses the term "prophetic", but what he describes in some areas could be termed "prophetic youth ministry". Hearing what God is saying and acting on it is a prophetic action. Though this is unfortunately terribly under lived among us, I felt a desire to say during the book, "There are other types of prayer we can engage in to make effective youth ministry. What about the "loud crying and tears", what about the intercession? We need to do more than just listen to what God is doing; we also need to pray things into being."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Resource April 5, 2007

By Martha Grace Reese

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a stunning book. It's grounded in a seven year Lilly Endowment study of youth ministry. The power of the book is in its authenticity, its deep reality. We lived in a speeded-up, multi-tasking society. A richer life lies in a real connection with God and deep relationships with others. Youth yearn for real conversations with loving adults, they need and respond beautifully to authentic prayer and silence. Please read this book - use it. Our youth, our adults, our churches deserve the chance to shift to God's timing and God's reality. What a gift of the Spirit!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read only one book on youth ministry read this one March 6, 2007

By Timothy J. Hower

Format:Hardcover

I have read a pile of books on curriculum and events and how to engage youth. I was looking to go deeper with our youth because some of them have been asking me to do that. They are looking for a more meaningful relationship with Christ not just another fun youth group event. This book is full of story's and examples along with practical applications to help me as a youth leader grow stronger in my walk with Christ and how to lead others in their walk. My book is full of sticky notes for all kinds of useful information and inspirational story's for me to use in youth ministry. This is the best youth ministry related book I have read and I anticipate going back to it often.