A new look at Youth Ministry

A few days ago, I wrote a post on the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation, which took place on the campus of Duke University in July. DYA draws kids from all over the country (and this year, Haiti as well) so that they can experience two weeks of intentional Christian community and theological study. Many of the kids who attend are already discerning a calling to some form of ministry. The focus of DYA is on the practices of the Christian life in the areas of Scripture, Baptism, Holy Communion, and the Prayerful Patterning of Time.

DYA faculty director Fred Edie takes those four essential elements of the Christian life and examines them in relation to youth ministry in his new book, Book, Bath, Table, and Time: Christian Worship as Source and Resource for Youth Ministry. I read this book in preparation for my own work as a Ministry Coordinator at DYA this year, and I've got to tell you, it's one of the best practical theology-oriented books that I've read in years. I just published a review of Dr. Edie's book, which you can find here if you'd like to read it.

Dr. Edie's work takes dead aim at a lot of the market-driven, highly individualistic, experience-heavy approaches to youth ministry that are so fashionable today. (I had never thought about how problematic youth ski trips could be; the first few pages of the book offer a devastating critique of them.) He suggests that teen fashion bibles like Revolve are exactly where the market approach to youth formation is going, and he wants the church to step in and say, "Wait!" Dr. Edie calls on the church to realize that it already has the resources it needs to form youth into mature Christians, and these resources are found exactly in those sacred gifts that the Holy Spirit is constantly offering the church: its book (Scripture), bath (Baptism), table (the Lord's Supper), and time (a form of life patterned by worship and prayer).

Don't be mistaken. This is not a book that's going to offer you the 10 Hottest New Ideas in Youth Ministry. But it's going to do something much better. It's going to engage you in thinking about how we form (or fail to form) our youth in truly theological ways. It's going to help you realize how new the oldest practices of the church can be, exactly because we haven't been using them with our very own children and youth. And it's going to suggest that it is really possible to integrate youth ministry into the full life of the church, instead of treating it like some odd appendage on the body of Christ that no one is sure what to do with.

This is a great book not just for youth ministers, but for pastors as well. Dr. Edie is an engaging, witty, and theologically insightful writer. Check it out.