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Presence-Centered Youth Ministry: Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation

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Mike King is a long time youth worker who brings 30 years of experience to this book. He shares his stories and frustrations with the way youth ministry has been run for year. And as he grew in maturity he began to boil down youth ministry to what he felt was most important - - Jesus.

This book does a great job of getting the focus back on Jesus and making sure that first and foremost the youth leader is connected to Jesus heart. The students will follow as we become more and more in love with Jesus. King proposes many practices that would be viewed as controversial in many protestant communities but in truth many of these practices are timeless and can really strengthen your faith.

I think this book is valuable for youth leaders because King challenges us to tend to our hearts first. Also, King reminds us that the true success of any youth ministry is not how many students show up to your wednesday night program. Rather, the true measuring stick is how many of those students are connected to Jesus and the church 30 years down the road. To do this youth leaders need to think long term and we need to equip and encourage students to seek Jesus on their own. You can have the flash and bells and whistles in your program but you just better be sure that that's not all you have.

Great read I highly recommend it to any youth leader and to pastors in general.

jasondeuman.com

"Presence-centered Youth Ministry" tells an engaging story of the extremes and challenges of youth ministry over the years, and invites readers to approach teenagers in a more honest and effective way. Mike King's honesty in telling his own story is inspiring. He then moves on to specific practices for youth workers to engage in both individually and with their students. He reminds the reader of the meaning and depth of many Christian rituals and traditions that are often looked past, and I have found these practices effective both for myself and my students.

I gave this book to each of my committed volunteer youth workers and continually refer back to it for assistance in real youth ministry. King is a brilliant story teller and a great guide for youth workers.

Mike does an excellent job of helping youth workers understand the need for presence-centered youth ministry as well as giving practical tips for beginning. As someone who has moved from typical program-centered youth ministry to presence-centered youth ministry in the last few years, I found this book to be helpful when talking with church leaders and encouraging when faced with struggles.

Presently within YM, Presence-Centered Youth Ministry is a great book that will engage the young people of the America church. Mike King serves as President of YouthFront, a Youth Ministry organization. YouthFront works to bring youth into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by creating environments where spiritual transformation occurs, by working with those who are involved in the spiritual formation of youth and by providing church-assisting events. King's youth ministry experience and expertise is highly evident in Presence-Centered Youth Ministry.

King in chapters 1-3 describes why youth ministry is experiencing much hardship. King argues that youth ministry is playing it too safe and comfortable. He states: The call to follow this true God is not safe or convenient, unlike much of the feel-good, carefree god-think being modeled to our young people today. The present of Jesus in the lives of adolescents who are nurtured by the power of Scripture is not safe, but it's the essence of presence-centered youth ministry. (47)

King argues in chapters 4-7 what youth pastors and youth ministries need to be in order for their youth ministry to become presence-centered. Youth ministry is about being with youth, not just as a role model or friend but also as a spiritual guide and a traveling companion. (6 8) There needs to be a new way of doing youth ministry--a youth ministry that experiences and embodies the presence of God. King suggests that when student sense a polished performance and impeccable image, students are immediately turned off. Research reminds us that students are suspicious of bigness, of advertising and ego trips. They want churches to be down to earth and unpretentious. (74)

Chapters 8- 11 illustrates how to implement a presence-centered youth ministry. He suggests the practices of: listening prayer, imaginative prayer, prayer postures, providing signs of the cross, praying with icons, storytelling, incent prayers, sacred reading and contemplation, and lectio divina. King also refers to a website to obtain more presence centered activities: www.sacredgateway.org.

I loved how passionate King was about creating environments that experience God's presence. King wants a youth ministry to connect to the early church and tradition, embody their faith, explore the challenge and cost of being a disciple of Jesus, connect between personal faith and a faith community, arrange a tangible expression of faith within a local community, emphasize on being a servant and living out faith, emphasize on classic Christian formation, and deemphasize the activities that do not lead to genuine transformation. Encountering God's presence will bring forth transformation. Youth ministry should not be a means of information, but a journey towards a life long transformation.

In an era where young people are leaving the church the second they leave most youth ministries, Mike's book does a masterful job of helping people move from program and event oriented ministry to real discipleship and connection with students. By focusing on the things of the heart this book not only helped me put words to what I am experiencing and feeling, but also is great asset in helping us remember that we are on the journey too. Mike's heart for connecting students to God comes through in this book!

I highly recommend this book to youth workers, first for themselves, second for their ministry and finally for those they will gift it to.

As a pastor, rarely do I ever read a book twice. But I picked up King's book again the other day because the plight of evangelicalism's future fell upon me once again and I think King not only provides a much needed critique of evangelical youth ministry, but also a path forward. In his book, King quotes Os Guiness who was asked by a non-Christian foreigner, "How come when I meet a Buddhist leader I feel like I am in the presence of a holy man, but when I meet a Christian leader, I feel like I have met an entrepreneur, a mover and shaker, a wheeler dealer?" King's book seems to offer evangelicals a way to regain some much needed credibility by rediscovering spiritual practices that have been practiced by Christians for generations long before we began writing them off because of divisive nuances in our ecclesiologies.

King is right, youth workers need to see their role as spiritual guides rather than program directors. Probably the more difficult task is not convincing the youth workers, but getting the broader church to understand that its primary responsibility is not to cultivate youth who are nice, well-behaved kids who stay far away from trouble, but to guide youth into the presence of God and to create a passion for joining God in his story.

Highly recommended. I've bought several copies for friends already.

I consider this book to be in the very tiny category of books called "Christian Youth Ministry Books Worth Reading."

Wow...just wow. This book will rock your world. A seismic shift for you and your youth ministry are possible if you implement some of the ideas in this book. Mike King gently leads you to a very good understanding of Presence-Centered Youth Ministry. Some of it may seem challenging...that's okay. When we are talking about the deep spiritual transformation of your students, you should not expect easy.

I read this book somewhat on a whim. I presented it to our incoming youth guy as an alternative approach to the traditional "big box youth model" that is out right now. He comes from that sort of background, and I thought he might not appreciate this book that much. However, he took to it and has begun to implement some of the practices almost immediately. Do yourself and your youth a favor and read this book!

Great book by a youth minister who's being doing this for awhile - his heart mirrored the youth he worked with - a hunger for Christ - transformation that is real and just as promised. Moving from behavior mod to a presence-centered life is what will keep our kids (and ourselves) from losing our connection with our One True Love. This is so good I know I'll keep reading it over and over again.

Mike King is president of YouthFront, an organization creating an environment for youth to experience spiritual transformation. He is also on staff at Jacob's Well Church in Kansas City. King is definitely somewhere in the emergent/emerging camp, but he says little about his doctrinal beliefs in this book so it is difficult to know exactly where he fits. Like many others in the emerging "conversation," King is reacting from unpleasant experiences in conservative and what he could consider legalistic churches (chapter 1). But he does have a legitimate concern--the majority of church-raised young people drop out in their twenties. How are we to reach these young people for Christ?


I found myself in consensus with many of King's general philosophies:


* "The notion of youth workers as entertainers and program directors must give way to youth workers as authentic shepherds, spiritual guides with a holy anointing to lead youth into the presence of God" (pp. 24, 25).

* He believes it to be a mistake to segregate youth ministry from the rest of the church (pp. 33, 37).

* We should not pressure or trick young people into making a decision for Christ, as it is all too common in many circles (pp. 36-37).

* Our worship services should not be seeker-sensitive, rather they should be a bit odd for visiting unbelievers (pp. 38-39).

* And the post-2000 culture is tired of noise, phoniness, glitz and the superficial--it is searching for an authentic encounter with God (pp. 62, 70).


I think, given the fact that people are still flocking to seeker-oriented megachurches, the jury is still out on this last one, but I hope he is correct.


The problem lies, however, with the particulars. King wants to provide young people with an encounter with the presence of God. But what does that really mean? One clue to King's thinking is those he admires and quotes: Thomas Merton, Tony Jones, Tony Campolo, Mother Teresa, Brennan Manning, John Richard Neuhaus, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Howard, Ignatius of Loyola, Mike Yaconelli, and various monks and mystics from the ancient Roman Catholic tradition. In short, King believes that the mystics of medieval Catholicism have the inside track on encountering God. If we can but adopt their practices, techniques and methods, we too can enter the presence of God (e.g. p. 38).


To this end King goes on to prescribe virtually every practice ever invented by Catholicism: sacred spaces--where God's presence is real (p. 87), labyrinths (p. 87), stations of the cross (p. 95), candles (p. 95), incense (p. 96), icons (pp. 132-134), respiratory prayers (pp. 121-123), the Jesus prayer (p. 121-122), prayer ropes (pp. 123-124), making the sign of the cross (pp. 129-132), daily offices (pp. 134-136), lectio divina (p. 147), crucifixes (p. 170) and confession to a priest (p. 171). He speaks highly of monks, monasteries and monasticism.


While King never actually defines what encountering God's presence is, he gives numerous mystical experiences which apparently describe what he has in mind (pp. 74, 84, 114). The most disturbing experience is his own which moves from mere mysticism to occultic visualization (pp. 184-185) King wants us to know that we cannot be certain about the meaning of much in Scripture (p. 141), but apparently we can be certain about mystical encounters with God produced largely from adopting practices developed from the apostate Roman Catholic Church.