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Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus (Youth Specialties) ReviewContemplative youth ministry is a welcomed book. It's a book that seeks to put God at the centre of youth ministry instead of programs that stem from good ideas. The title of the book sums up the theme and direction of the book. Basically if Brother Lawrence had done youth ministry, he probably would have written a book like this. He instructs youth leaders on how to listen to God, how to minister from a place of silence and hearing God's voice, and how to encourage these activities among the youth.
One of the strengths of the book would be his testimony at the beginning of the book in which he describes himself as being program driven and success seeking. He then recounts his transformation to a place where he ministers out of love instead of anxiety. I felt that I could relate.
The part that I got the most from was when he called us to be "fully present" to the individual youths. He made me realise how often I've only given someone half of my attention. His challenge to me to slow down and give a youth my full attention and listening ears is much appreciated.
I felt the book had a couple of weaknesses that made me give this otherwise unique book only three stars. First of all, he fails to ground his (what are for many) new and somewhat radical ideas in scripture. With the exception of the odd verse, he bases his ideas more in church history than in scripture. Not to say that I think that his ideas are unbiblical; for at least the most part they are not. But, when calling the church to fundamentally change how we do things, we want a surer guide then a few testimonies and a "this is how Ignatius Loyola would have done it". Often I thought that he had a good idea which made me think of different texts of scripture, but he failed to ever interact with them. I felt that this decreased the potential power of the book.
The second weakness I felt the book had was the somewhat negative tone towards preaching or what he called "word heavy youth ministry". Preaching is very uncool in today's post-modern era where authority is downplayed. There is a general shift away from preaching and teaching and I feel like this book is affected by that wave of thinking. The author encouraged the exercise of meditating on scripture together and then sharing what each person felt that the text was saying. What the author failed to teach us was what to do when some outlandish, nut-job or even heretical ideas are being shared. How do we bring correction and instruction into a moment like that? Is there really no value at all in having a gifted teacher authoritatively say, "here is the text, let me explain what it means and how to apply it to your lives"? The gospel needs to be preached and not just reflected in the way we live.
Also, the author never uses the term "prophetic", but what he describes in some areas could be termed "prophetic youth ministry". Hearing what God is saying and acting on it is a prophetic action. Though this is unfortunately terribly under lived among us, I felt a desire to say during the book, "There are other types of prayer we can engage in to make effective youth ministry. What about the "loud crying and tears", what about the intercession? We need to do more than just listen to what God is doing; we also need to pray things into being."
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