wfn.org | Youth ministry leaders need survival skills, speaker says

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Jan. 29, 2002  News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.     10-71B{025}

NOTE: A related report, UMNS story #026, and a head-and-shoulders photograph
of the Rev. Kenda Creasy Dean are available.

By Linda Green*

PANAMA CITY BEAC H, Fla. (UMNS) - Youth ministry is like a barren land, and
developing survival skills is crucial for leaders who want to stay in it for
the long term, according to a scholar on youth, church and culture. 

The average stay in youth ministry is 18 months, said the Rev. Kenda Creasy
Dean, assistant professor of youth, church and culture at Princeton (N.J.)
Theological Seminary. Numerous factors contribute to the high turnover rate:
family conflicts, low pay, low prestige, lack of acknowledgment or respect,
lack of time for development, and the treatment of the ministry as an
extracurricular activity.

The longer a person is involved in youth ministry, the more likely he or she
is to experience the empty places, Dean said. In the barrenness, people have
two options: do something else or figure out a way to live with it long
term. 

"People who are not good at navigating leave, and those who stay are those
who have figured out a way to have a sustainable life and a sustainable
ministry at the same time," she said.

Dean was a key speaker at Connection 2002, a Jan. 23-27 gathering of nearly
360 adult workers in youth ministry in Panama City Beach. The biannual
event, sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, had been
called Forum, but its name was changed to emphasize the importance of
connection with God, neighbors and selves.

The meeting's theme, "Come to the Water," was reflected throughout the
worship services, workshops, Bible study sessions and assemblies. As water
trickled through a pump onstage, Dean took her listeners through the desert
with a message on lives - and ministries -- gone dry. The title of her
message, "God-Barren Life," was a play on words with that of a book she
co-wrote, The God-Bearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry. 

The barren life is the result of a consumer approach to spirituality as
opposed to a life that faithfully represents Scripture, she said. Using the
biblical story of Hannah, Dean showed how emptiness can help teach about
Christian spirituality. Hannah, who was barren, begged God for a son and
vowed that her child would serve the Lord all his life. She later gave birth
to Samuel. 

 From the story, Dean uncovered four myths of spirituality. Most people,
including adult youth ministry workers, think spirituality depends on
myths are based. 
results, feelings, progress and certainty - four factors upon which the

"It doesn't depend on anything," Dean said. "If we think that a relationship
with Jesus depends on these things, then we are left high and dry when those
things are absent."  

The empty places that people encounter in youth ministry result from lack of
professional and personal support, she said. However, she noted, studies
have indicated that United Methodists perceive higher congregational and
pastoral support for their youth ministries than do people of any other
mainline denomination. 

Youth ministers change jobs more than people in any other profession except
for migrant workers, Dean said. "It is exacerbated in part because it is
only recently that it has become more legitimized as a call to ministry as
opposed to a stepping stone."

Addressing the first myth of spirituality, Dean said Christianity is not
about results but about experiencing God. In biblical times, encountering
God was such an experience that ancient people hid their faces. They turned
to a mediator, a minister, "someone who does what we do-youth ministers,"
someone who stands in the gap between the people and God and interprets
God's message to them, she said. 

Each Sunday, Jesus is tossed back and forth like a toy that "can blow us
up," she said. "Do we really know what we are asking for when we say we want
to experience God or that we want to be filled with God?" Like a game of
hide and seek, God hides, knowing that showing up in full power "would blow
us up," she said. 

Christian spirituality involves conforming to the image of Jesus. "Feeling
has nothing to do with it," Dean said, referring to the second myth.  

A study suggests that 34 percent of church-going adults have never
experienced God in worship, she said, asking, What does this say to youth?
Another study revealed that one in seven youth and young adults says that
belonging to a church is not necessary to being religious.

"We go to church to feel something ... and this is wrong," she said. Young
people confuse faith and feeling all the time and think of faith as a "Jedi
belief." "If it feels good, it must be God," she said. "There is nothing
wrong with feeling good about God, feeling moved by the Holy Spirit, but
Christian spirituality cannot depend upon how we feel."

As with Hannah, sometimes God closes off our means of production as a way to
make us empty so that we may make room for God, she said.

The third myth says that Christian spirituality is about progress, but it is
not, Dean said. It is not a journey but a pilgrimage that gets one to God.
It involves catecheses or the handing down of tradition.

Christian spirituality comes with two lungs for breathing in God's spirit,
Dean said. The kataphatic lung is a positive view and the apophatic is the
negative way. Apophatic is the cave, kataphatic is the mountain; apophatic
goes down; kataphatic goes up; kataphatic is light; apophatic is dark;
apophatic is about God's absence, kataphatic is about God's presence;
apophatic has to do with passion, kataphatic has to do with glory.

"Most youth events focus on the kataphatic," she said. The apophatic is
usually reserved for more mature Christians. Youth events focus on
Scriptures such as the Book of John, which deal with light, she said. In
reality, however, a spiritual pilgrimage involves the use of both lungs to
get the entire story. "Both lungs are dependent on the other. To have one
without the other is an artificial presentation to our kids."

The final myth that Dean drew from Hannah's text involves certainty. Mature
spirituality does not depend on certainty but on hope, she said.

"God-Barren Life" was one of three messages that Dean delivered during
Connection 2002.
In another session, she discussed the Christian prayer life and compared it
to watering a garden. "Prayer is like watering a garden," she said. "If you
want to see how healthy your garden is, you don't look for water, you look
for flowers. You look at the flowers and see how they are doing. You don't
look to see if the water is healthy, you look to see if the flowers are
healthy," she said.  

"If you want to know how your spiritual garden is growing, look at the
flowers in your youth, and ask how is their spiritual life doing, how is
their faith growing, are they moving on to Christian maturity," Dean said.
"Is what we are doing with them worth the cost of our Lord?" 

Quoting Teresa of Avia, a nun and theologian, Dean said that it is more
important that you water the garden than how you water it. "If you wait
around for the water to just come, the garden could die of thirst. The point
is to get water to the garden." She challenged the youth ministry leaders to
water their gardens well.

Other Connection 2002 speakers included J.F. Lacaria, Charleston, W.Va.;
Mariellen Sawada Yoshino, San Jose, Calif.; Mark V. Monk Winstanley,
Atlanta; Bishop James King, Louisville, Ky.; and Bishop Larry Goodpaster,
Montgomery, Ala.
# # #
*Green is news director in United Methodist News Service's Nashville, Tenn.,
office.

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United Methodist News Service
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