In my previous post on this topic, someone in the comments recommended I read Practicing Passion by Kenda Creasy Dean. This is a book I'd seen and Jonny Baker had recommended it, but I'd not yet picked up. This morning a copy arrived in the post and doing my customary flick-through read, I came across this quote:
Now may be a good time to ask yourself: Does youth ministry as I know do these things? Does ministry with adolescents where I go to church resemble the faith community in Acts, or does it seem more like a moral club or a service organization? Is my canvas for ministry with young people stretched onto the beams of wholesome entertainment, content mastery, and good works - valuable services, but bereft of power to bestow identity because their transformational connection to Christ's life, death and resurrection has been lost? Immersing young people in practices of self-giving love in a self-fulfilling culture makes them subversive, dangerous, odd - much like the Christ they follow. How subversive, dangerous, or odd are the Christian youth I know? For that matter, how subversive, dangerous, or odd am I?
(Practicing Passion, 2004, Eerdmans, pp156-157)
Good to know I'm asking the right sort of questions. I'm hoping the rest of the book will help me work on some answers.
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