On the Importance of Challenge

I remember sitting at a conference once when a prominent youth ministry professor went off on our propensity in youth ministry to want to “challenge” students. His argument was essentially that students are stressed enough. The last thing they need is us adding another expectation to their plate. It’s a good caution, but I ultimately disagreed with this youth ministry luminary.

On the other hand, I have encountered a number of youth workers over the past several years who seem to want to go to the other extreme. For them, we must constantly challenge students. Unfortunately, that challenge typically takes one form: learn more theology…or perhaps better, learn my theology.

I’d like to maintain challenge as an important element of ministry–indeed, an important element in our lives. However, I think that we need to be careful that, as we challenge folks to greater faith, we don’t make the mistake of challenging them to be more like us. The Christian life is about becoming more like Jesus. It is not about becoming more like me, or the other Calvin, or a favored pastor, teacher, or theologian.

When we are not challenged in life, we tend to sit still. We reach a certain equilibrium and we stop moving, growing, changing (I am overstating here, since we still change, just normally not toward anything helpful). We need for folks to challenge us, to encourage us to change and grow. In my own life I have often been most thankful for those people who challenge me to think differently, or to consider something from a different angle, or to make some change. Iron sharpens iron.

At the same time, when we talk about challenge in youth ministry we must be especially careful because, as adults who care for students, we wield a great deal of influence in their lives. When we challenge a student to do something, we can often end up adding a great deal of stress to that student’s life as they try to add our expectation on top of the many they are already juggling. Challenge is important, but it is also powerful, and so we have to think about it in those sorts of terms. Very rarely in my life does something declare “You must do X!” and receive a positive response. I don’t need more expectations! On the other hand, those closest to me often encourage me to process something in a new way, or to try something I haven’t, or to devote more energy to a particular area of my life.

Too often I think that in the church we can become hesitant to challenge folks. We are nervous that if we talk about something like our enslavement to a consumerist culture, that people will become upset and leave. We worry that we must not expect too much of our people, or else they may leave their seats. Yet it is part of our job as a community to challenge one another. Certainly as followers of Jesus it is proper for us to–within relationships–process with one another our own enslavement to a culture that demeans life, seeks to make people less than they are, elevates violence and the rights of one nation against others, and a whole host of other vices. When we fail to challenge one another, we often sit thinking that we are in the right and can comfortably rest in our own righteousness.

There are students in my ministry who need to be challenge in a variety of ways. Some need to take more seriously their faith. Some need to worry less about acquiring knowledge and more about reflecting on and contemplating what they have already acquired. Some need to pray more, others need to read Scripture more. Some need to be more humble. Most of them need to be more loving and accepting of people who are not like them. They need challenged. They need to know that Jesus calls them to be more like him in the fullest sense possible.

So challenge is vital. But challenge must occur within relationships and as adults speaking into the lives of students we must always be careful that we are allowing the Holy Spirit to challenge and transform students into Jesus’ image, as opposed to into our own.

Calvinism and Pantheism

Wesley Walker has a guest post over at Scot McKnight’s blog where he takes aim at Calvinism. While I think the post is interesting and helpfully points out some of the strong problems with Calvinist thought, it probably goes too far. Ultimately there are problems with a strongly Reformed theology of sovereignty because it essentially makes God the author of evil–which is problematic to say the least. At the same time, however, there is as much variation within “Calvinism” as within any other theological camp. Plenty of Calvinists do not follow the theology to it’s logical (reductio ad absurdum?) and final conclusion. Thankfully.

At the least, you get some controversy for your new year.

Bonhoeffer, Youth Work and Absence

It has been far too long since I’ve given voice to my thoughts on this blog. There are probably many reasons for that, but at least one reason is that I’ve been busy. In any case, I can’t promise that regular updates are suddenly going to resume, but I do hope to slowly pick up the blogging again. This will take a variety of forms, most notably interacting with books and articles about youth ministry. I’ll also blog about other interests of mine. Don’t expect anything profound.

I recently picked up and began working my way through Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker by Andrew Root. It’s an excellent read so far, as all of Root’s books tend to be. Today I want to make just one or two observations about the first chapter or two of Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker. Scot McKnight is blogging his way through the book, and his own summary and thoughts are worth the time it would take you to read them.

Observation #1: the idea that Bonhoeffer is a sort of forefather to those of us who want to take a theological turn in youth ministry is intriguing. I have mentioned before how, in college, I hated my systematic theology courses because they seemed to be focused on an abstract system that had no room for experience. When theology didn’t match up with life, your life was wrong, not the theology. I began reading Bonhoeffer in college and in Bonhoeffer I found two things that have irrevocably shaped my own journey of faith. The first thing I found was a willingness to talk about and stand firm on grace, but accompanied by an acknowledgment that grace is costly. Of course, Bonhoeffer is well known for this and it’s probably the thing most American Christians know most about him. The Cost of Discipleship is his most well known work, though the actual title is merely Discipleship. I imagine it would be perplexing or at least frustrating to him if folks thought the cost could somehow be separated from discipleship, as if they were two separate things. Grace is, by its very nature, costly. But, the second thing I learned from Bonhoeffer is that theology is not static or removed from the world (in fairness, my reading of Barth also helped me with this idea). Rather, theology interacts with life on the ground. The priority is not to attain knowledge and understand facts, but to live the Christian life. Theology serves the church, not the other way round.

Observation #2: Bonhoeffer being a potential forefather of the theological turn in youth ministry does not make that turn any easier to make. There are plenty who still see youth ministry as a pill to be prescribed to the wayward youth of America. Most mean well by this, but it doesn’t take adolescents seriously and it doesn’t take Jesus seriously. We reduce the gospel to behavior and miss the whole point of grace. But I digress. The theological turn is no more easy for the modern youth worker than Bonhoeffer’s own convictions were for him.

Voices

Paul Martin has been working through an excellent series of posts on the individuals he sees as the voices in the coming (currently happening?) revolution in youth ministry. This week he mentions theological voices.

I find the inclusion of an entire post devoted to those who are thinking about youth ministry from a theological perspective to be extremely refreshing. Perhaps more refreshing still is that most of these individuals have theological background. They could write a paper for an academic journal. Ten years ago, when I was in college, I remember being disappointed that there were not more voices from theological and biblical studies that were speaking into youth ministry. In hindsight there were voices, I just wasn’t aware of them yet (Kenda Creasy Dean, for instance). But there has certainly been an increase in recent years.

I still find it disappointing that we don’t have biblical studies people speaking into youth ministry. I realize that some will say that biblical studies is an extremely specialized field, whereas practical theology necessarily recommends itself to these kinds of interactions. However, without biblical studies speaking into youth ministry our curriculum will continue to be less than it might otherwise be. We will continue to be comfortable with whatever gets us by in terms of our knowledge of the Bible, instead of challenging ourselves to go the distance. In the 90s no one would have believed that youth ministry would experience a theological renewal, and itself be pushing other ministries of the church to think theologically and have greater depth, but that is exactly what is happening. Maybe youth ministry can be the place where we start engaging Scripture in much more depth than we typically do. In another fifteen years, maybe youth ministry will be leading the charge and encouraging pastoral staff to use the tools they learned in seminary. Maybe youth ministry can be a place where Christians are challenged to acknowledge Scripture for what it is, really wrestle with the difficulties this presents, own it as our story, and allow it to form our lives.

Reason #58

Anyone who has followed me for very long knows that I would love to see more youth pastors who put more effort into studying the Bible. Specifically, I’d like to see more youth pastors who use the Hebrew and Greek they (might have) learned in seminary. To that end, I present reason number fifty-eight that youth pastors ought to learn and do everything they can to retain an intermediate knowledge of the biblical languages.

I recently attended a Christian event where a speaker gave a gospel presentation. This talk was standard evangelical fare, though I was pleased that the speaker placed a high emphasis on people living out faith. Nevertheless, the Scripture text that the speaker used was–of course–John 3.16. There is a bitter irony in the fact that this verse, one of the most well-known in the New Testament, is also one of the most commonly misrepresented.

The speaker placed particular emphasis on the word “so,” going as far as having the audience hold out the word for thirty seconds (“Soooooooooo…”). The speaker then explained that this verse shows how much God loves us. He loves us to such an extent that he sent his son. The problem is that the verse doesn’t say that. The Greek of the first phrase reads:

Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον
NIV: For God so loved the world
ESV: For God so loved the world
KJV: For God so loved the world
MSG: This is how much God loved the world

Looking at the English it’s easy to see how our speaker made his blunder. We tend to use the English word “so” in exactly the manner the speaker suggested it was used in John 3.16. But the Bible wasn’t written in English. The Greek word, οὕτως doesn’t mean “to great extent,” but rather “in this manner, thusly.” On the one hand, most translators deserve some of the blame, because they retain a wording that obfuscates what the verse is actually saying. This is especially true of Eugene Peterson, who really makes matters worse here. At the same time, if the speaker had bothered to consult a commentary before giving his gospel presentation he probably wouldn’t have blundered.

Does it matter how we understand “so,” in this verse? Absolutely. The crux of the verse isn’t about how much God loves the world, but in what manner he chose to express that love: by sending his son. Among modern English translations the NET Bible does the best job.

For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3.16

In addition, the οὕτως in verse sixteen pretty obviously recalls the wording of verse fourteen. The Son of Man must be lifted up in the manner that the bronze serpent was. A couple verses later God loved the world in this manner: he gave his son (who happens to be the one who will be lifted up in a manner like the bronze serpent).

I could spend more time talking about how knowing Greek or Hebrew helps one to see a variety of connections within or between texts that is impossible in English, but that’s not precisely my point at present. My point is that as youth ministers, we ought to expect better of ourselves than to commit blunders that a first year Greek student should be able to avoid.

Reason #58 for youth pastors to learn Hebrew and Greek: avoiding blunders that detract from what Scripture says.

Disruption

So, Marko thinks we need some painful disruption in youth ministry. As it happens, I agree. The problem is that I don’t particularly like pain. Nevertheless, I thought I’d take a whack at offering some suggestions based on the questions Mark asks. Although it’s probably the height of hubris for me to enter this discussion, someone can always feel free to smack me back down to earth. To that end, here are three broad areas I think need to change and–if they did change–would cause massive disruption to the status quo in youth ministry.

1. Youth Pastors, learn Hebrew and Greek
I realize I am an oddball. I’m a youth minister who has an MA in Biblical Languages. That’s weird. I get that. But, because I know Hebrew and Greek, I know the Bible far better than most of my peers. I know the cultures of the Bible and the ancient near east far better. I’m able to answer questions about the Bible with more acumen. Right now, a standard undergrad youth ministry program requires a bunch of classes in youth ministry (these are important), a few classes in psychology and/or counseling (also important), your core gen ed classes (still important!), and perhaps a couple Bible survey courses. Learning how to do ministry is important, but learning Hebrew and Greek is far more important. In fact, learning any dead language is a huge help in teaching yourself to think critically. If youth ministry programs started requiring Hebrew and Greek, or if churches started expecting their youth pastors to know Hebrew and Greek, I think we’d see a huge disruption in the way things are. The other advantage to this is that, when one has learned Hebrew and Greek it is fairly natural to have a more theologically and philosophically nuanced approach to youth ministry. Very naturally youth ministry ends up being about more than games or some vague idea of influence and becomes a theologically grounded enterprise that is of vital important. Oh yeah, and you actually know what our holy book says, as opposed to having some vague idea of the chronology of what happens without ever having truly studied it.

2. Less accommodation, more Jesus
This could take many forms. Sometimes we accommodate the least common denominator in terms of maturity in our ministries. We play games and spend 90% of our time on recreation because we are convinced that it’s a sin to bore a kid. But in so doing we really don’t offer students anything different from what they could get anywhere else. Accommodation also takes place in our own lives. It becomes very easy to try to live the American dream. We want raises. We want a nicer house. We get involved in the Church’s version of the rat race in which many of our parishners are involved. In so doing we somehow lose the way of life that Jesus has called us to, a way of life that puts others before ourselves. This happens in the lives of youth workers first, and when that happens then it obviously happens in the youth ministry where we’re involved. We need to learn to accommodate our culture less (and here I don’t mean getting rid of secular music, not watching TV, or whatever, I mean learning to set aside the trappings of our culture such as the need to succeed, consumerism, nationalism, placing the US flag higher than the Christian flag–metaphorically, I could care less about literal flags), and instead allow the Holy Spirit to transform us and those in our churches, not only in our youth ministries, into members of the Kingdom of God. Of course, this will make many people nervous and could be a painful process.

3. Less influence, more being
It started when I read Contemplative Youth Ministry (by Mark Yaconelli) and I’ve become even more convinced because of reading Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry (by Andrew Root), but I don’t think youth ministry needs to be about influencing students. We need to just toss that out of our vocabulary and our ministry methodology. Instead we should talk and plan to be with students. On the surface this might not look much different. We still go hang out, we still enjoy concerts with one another, etc. But instead of doing it to earn street cred with students, we do it because we want to be with them. Because by being with them we embody Jesus to them and, what’s more, they embody Jesus to us. This makes youth ministry messier. It means we have to be more open and vulnerable. At the same time it may mean that we have to learn how to be closed and set boundaries so that we really are in relationship with students and not merely a commodity that they consume whenever they want. Being with students is far more messy than the alternative, simply seeking to influence them to live better lives, or be more like Jesus, or whatever. But being with students is a far more Jesus-like way of doing things.

I’m very interested to see where this discussion goes on Mark’s blog and around the youth ministry blogosphere. This is a conversation that we need to have, and I think we’ve avoided having it for far too long. Moreover, this is a discussion that our churches need us to have if youth ministry really is the R&D branch of the church.

Being Open with Students

This is how it hurts when I pretend I don’t feel any pain. -RED, Breath Into Me

Not too long ago I posted about the need for students to see adults living out the faith. I said that this need requires that adults be open and honest with students. This is vitally important for all of the adults in our churches, but it is especially important for youth workers to be open with students. If you are a paid youth minister, than it is even more important for you.

It can be very easy, even for those of us who have devoted our lives to ministering to and with students, to be open with them. As a somewhat recent seminary graduate, I can say with confidence that some seminaries are still teaching that a pastor needs to maintain a certain distances from her congregation and even hide her doubts and pains (this even after Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer). There are lots of fine, logical reasons to maintain this distance. But at the end of the day it simply is not what Jesus did. Jesus fully participated with humanity. God became human. There is a sense in which the incarnation calls us, as co-heirs with Christ, to enter into the same radical identification with those we serve. Please note that this does not mean that youth pastors need to be immature individuals who are merely trying to relive their youth group days. The truth is the exact opposite. Youth pastors need to be well adjusted adults who love students, are willing to be open with them, and who echo Jesus’ call to a different way of life.

The problem with being open and honest with people is that it can be messy. It becomes very easy to keep our doubt and pain to ourselves for fear of destroying a student’s faith. But the fact of the matter is that if we refuse to be open and share when we have doubts, how can we expect students to do the same with us? More to the point how can we expect students to grow themselves? As the Fuller Youth Institute has recently pointed out, “young people better navigate their faith journey when adults share the challenges of their own spiritual paths—complete with past and present ups, downs, and turning points.” In other words, students navigate their our journeys better when we navigate our spiritual journey with them

Being vulnerable isn’t a way to gain influence over students anymore than my vulnerability with my wife is a way to gain influence over her. I am vulnerable with my wife because I love her, she loves me and we are on a journey together. If we refuse to be vulnerable with students we have no right to ask them to be vulnerable with us. What is worse, we make ourselves into hypocrites because we refuse to follow the example Jesus has set for us. The point isn’t to gain influence. The point is to follow the example which our Savior set for us. God became vulnerable to human beings. God-in-human-flesh became vulnerable to the pain that human beings experience. The Immortal One became vulnerable to death.

As I’ve been reflecting on the importance of being open with students over the past several weeks it has occurred to me that, perhaps, one of the reasons we make excuses for avoiding vulnerability (and some of our excuses are even legitimate!) is that we don’t want to get hurt. Let’s face it, teenagers are not exactly the most sensitive of demographics. As we open ourselves to them the likelihood of us being hurt is probably significantly higher than the (initial) likelihood of them responding to that vulnerability in a way we might hope. As youth workers we are generally happy to argue with those in our church who wrongly accuse the youth of everything from breaking a ceiling tile to stealing a misplaced tea kettle. We are happy to suffer in this way. But we aren’t quite as keen on being hurt by those to whom we minister. Yet I think it’s fairly clear that Jesus calls us to exactly that. Andrew Root puts it nicely, “Suffering with and at the hand of those to whom we minister is the call of the incarnation and crucifixion,” (Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, 95, emphasis mine).

If we insist on pretending that we have it all together we have missed the point. We must become open and vulnerable to students and thereby run the risk of being hurt by them. To do otherwise is to refuse the joys of human relationship, implicitly contributing to the tendency of seeing teens as halfway finished products. Whats more, to refuse the possibility of true relationship is to deny ourselves the opportunity to meet Jesus in our students.

Worship and the Christian Tradition – Part 3

You can find part 1 of this series here, and part 2 here.

Pulling from the tradition which we have inherited is a wonderful way to help students express themselves in worship to God. But, it is often a tricky task, especially when we as youth workers don’t have a strong connection to that tradition ourselves. The first thing we need to do is humbly learn about the traditions we have inherited. This may take time, but it really is vital. I’d love to see youth ministry programs at colleges begin including some kind of class in the history or modern expression of liturgical worship. But, that is neither here nor there at this point.

I grew up in evangelical churches which did not make use of a liturgy. In fact, most of the churches I attended were somewhat hostile to the idea of responsive readings, pre-written prayers, or too much structure in services. I had to figure out much of the great tradition of Christian worship by asking others, taking classes, doing research and–ultimately–a bit of trial and error.

My first experience with liturgy in youth ministry occurred while I was in seminary. I was the youth pastor at a wonderful baptist church in Ipswich, MA. Each Easter our small congregation gathered on the beach for a sunrise service. Each year the youth of the church facilitated this time of worship. As I prepared for this time one year I found that pretty much all of our students were refusing to speak in front of the congregation. I’m not overly sure what the issue was, but–being a pragmatic guy–I decided that if I gave them the words to say they might be less anxious. As it turns out, I was right, and so I began adapting the Great Vigil of Easter from the Book of Common Prayer. The service went very well, and the students, although not overly thrilled, weren’t hostile towards the idea of using a liturgy. I counted it a success.

Some time later, at the same church, I decided to try integrating some communal prayers into our weekly youth meeting. I chose a few prayers from the Book of Common Prayer (remember, baptists really don’t have a prayer book of their own) and I eagerly began using them to open and close our time together. However, by the second week of doing this I realized that it wasn’t going to fly. The students held the papers with the prayers on them (well, most of them held them; some of them made paper airplanes), but never actually joined me in saying the prayers. In hindsight, I really should have explained things better, and started slower since our church didn’t particularly make use of these kinds of prayers regularly (other than saying the Lord’s Prayer each Sunday).

Recently, I saw communal prayers used to great effect. This past summer our high school ministry went to MERGE, an absolutely amazing conference/spiritual retreat. In addition to creating a daily rhythm (the idea of rhythm and sabbath is another aspect of the Christian tradition that the modern western church could use to reappropriate), the event organizers made use of fixed prayers during some of the experiences. Although it was a little awkward at the start of the week, most of the students engaged with the idea of praying together in this way. We also gathered each day at noon to say noon prayers together. At these gatherings one student would normally read a prayer, and then invite us to gather into smaller groups of 2-3 people and pray together. It was, in many ways, a sort of fusion of a traditional way of praying with a more modern way of prayer.

As a final example, we have recently started organizing our Wednesday evening worship time at my current ministry as a creative vespers service. We spend time confessing our sins, reading Scripture, singing songs, praying for one another, and worshiping through creative expression (Art, Body Prayer, etc). It’s too early to pass judgment on whether this goes into the category of successes or failures. So far it seems to be going well, with a few road bumps. I’m excited to see how things proceed. I hope that through these various expressions of worship our students slowly begin to grasp that worship isn’t only about singing, but about a variety of expressions which connect us to God. Most importantly, I hope they realize over time that worship is not about us as individuals, or even us as a community, but about the amazing God we serve.

On Turning Ships

My senior pastor has an analogy that he constantly brings up to those of us on staff: making changes at a church is like turning a super tanker, it takes time. This couldn’t be more true. It’s also very true for a youth ministry, though youth ministries are–by nature–more agile than entire churches.

Andrew Root has recently written on the idea that youth ministry may help churches to reclaim theological thinking. Much like many of the changes to churches in the ’80s and ’90s can be traced to youth ministry, so too a sort of turn back to the theological. I agree with the idea, in theory, but I’m not convinced that the so-called theological turn in youth ministry is quite prevalent enough at present (N.B. On twitter Andrew Root acknowledged this as an issue). Ironically, when once upon a time senior pastors would have longed for more theologically astute youth pastors, now we have youth pastors who are recognizing a need for theological nuance and their senior pastors are staring at them and arguing for a more basic, unnuanced approach. There is a certain twisted poetic justice to this.

I’m thankful that those in my current ministry support my own quest to continue learning and thinking. I’m also thankful for the parents and others in my church who are willing to give things a try. Moving from an entertainment-based model of youth ministry to a more theologically nuanced ministry is not exactly easy. Turning ships takes time. Turning ministries takes time and is often painful on various levels. Ultimately, turning the ship is still worth it because our students deserve to be taken seriously. It’s one of the things for which they’re longing. It’s worth it because the church needs youth ministries (indeed, churches) that have more depth than a dodgeball game and a thrown together devotion are likely to provide. Ultimately it’s worth it because Jesus has called us to something more than a culturally-bound consumeristic expression of his Kingdom.

But it can be very, very hard.

Worship and the Christian Tradition – Part 2

Part 1 of this series can be found here.

In this post, I’d like to discuss the liturgy as a rich history which we ought to draw upon in our worship with young people. Perhaps the most obvious reason to draw upon the liturgy in youth ministry is that we are constantly looking for ways to involve students. Liturgy naturally does this. Liturgy is participatory. Liturgy also creates a natural movement within a worship gathering. In subtle ways it reminds us that we don’t worship alone, but rather with a great cloud of witnesses.

Different denominations and traditions, of course, use different liturgies. But many of them are really quite similar, especially in terms of their modern form. Historically liturgy developed for a variety of reasons. But the focus of the liturgy was always on the person and work of Jesus Christ, especially as experienced in the Eucharist. It is easy to see this in even modern liturgies where many services rise and fall before building to a cresendo in the celebration of Holy Communion. One might say that without the Eucharist, there is no liturgy and this would–in some ways–not be far from the truth. This focus on the Holy in the liturgy serves as a natural, though not fool-proof, guard against a focus primarily on me.

One of the criticisms I most often hear against the liturgy is that it is all a bunch of words learned by rote that therefore have no meaning. Leaving aside for the moment the pedagogical fallacy that things learned by rote have no meaning (where would you be without your multiplication tables?), this simply isn’t true. In fact, the words of liturgies often have great meaning because they have been agonized over.

I used to think this same way. But I have since come to realize that sometimes I am not at a place where I can speak to God on my own. The words would be my own, but they would have no more meaning than gibberish. During these times I can rely on the liturgy to carry me. I know that the words I say are being said by thousands all over the world. When I pray during confession I know that the others around me, and my brothers and sisters around the world, are confessing with me and upholding me thereby.

As we teach our students about the liturgy and begin using it in our times of worship with them they will slowly begin to understand these things and many others besides. I would venture to guess that there are several reasons we don’t generally use liturgy in youth ministry. One of them is that we are afraid to bore a kid. Apparently doing that is a sin. We worry that without novelty we’ll lose them. I’ve generally found, however, that when we make decisions based on fear, it’s a bad idea. I would venture to guess that many youth workers didn’t grow up in churches which used a liturgy, and they may therefore have little experience with it. This is the situation in which I once found myself. But I decided to learn about liturgy by visiting churches that used it, by taking a class in seminary dealing with the history of it, and by slowly attempting to use pieces of it in my ministry and personal life. I’ve come to love liturgy and realize the manifold benefits it brings. This isn’t to say that spontaneous expressions of praise are bad or unwarranted; we need those expressions as well.

Finally, I would posit that youth workers tend to avoid liturgical expressions because liturgies are intensely theological. Unfortunately, overtly theological topics or experiences are often avoided by youth ministers. Perhaps this is because of youth ministry’s origins in evangelistic endeavours that were not concerned with theological nuance. Perhaps it is because youth ministry education often focuses more on the professional aspects of becoming a minister rather than on the theological ideas and tasks with which a youth worker must engage. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that many youth workers shy away from theology.

In part 3 I’ll share some of my own experiences with using liturgy and other expressions from the Christian tradition in worship with students.