Youth Ministry and Theological Shorthand: Living Amongst the Fragments of a Coherent Theology

In this book, based upon a PhD thesis, the author sets out to explore current practice of youth ministers in the Anglican Church, and how the ministers engage with young people, and transmit the Christian faith to them. He also examines the Youthwork magazine Resource Guides, and the words of the worship songs often used with young people.Through this exploration, the author shows what he sees as the shortcomings in current practice, and he proposes a new model of youth ministry. All that he says is referred back to Rublev’s much-loved icon, The Hospitality of Abraham, which depicts the three strangers to whom Abraham gave hospitality, and which has been interpreted as the three persons of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Bailey’s thesis is informed by his understanding of Trinitarian theology, and by the deeper meaning of this icon, as the three persons at the table invite the viewer to join them.My interest in reading the book, lies in my own experience of Christian youth ministry, through my two children, and the experiences they had in their teenage years; and further back, my own experiences of the Church’s attempts to engage me as a young person.The author interviewed a selection of 12 youth ministers for this book, and asked them to describe what they see as the essential elements in their practice, and how they “mediate their care, concern and Christian witness” to the young people they work with.From this exercise he identified a number of frequently used key words and phrases: they all talked about “being like Jesus”, developing “relationships”, about the importance of “being there”; and described how they demonstrated their care and engagement through spending “time” and how it was all about “being on a journey”.The author sets out to show how these concepts act as “theological shorthand”, and lead to what he calls “thin theology”. Ultimately he proposes a new way forward: “to seek to exchange the theological shorthand and fragmentation of theology, with a deeper and more profound understanding of the story.”This is a scholarly book making use of much vocabulary specific to the field of theological study, and will not be familiar to the lay reader; I found it vital to look up the meaning of these words, in order to understand what Bailey is saying. The vocabulary includes words such as Christopraxis; perichoresis; missiological; ecclesiology; theodrama, and many others.The three words most important to know are: marturia (witnessing to the self-giving love of God in Christ), diakonia (serving and helping others); and kerygma (proclaiming the love of God).The youth ministers, Bailey says, act as symbols that point to how God is interested in the whole of people’s lives; they point to God and the deeper realities of their faith. He sees that they all strive to be like Jesus, which is theological shorthand for model and moral example. He notes an “interdependence between the themes, relationship as communicative acts, being like Jesus and being there, these all take time and this is either explicit or it is implied through the idea of journey .” (my italics).He sees the classical church practices of marturia, diakonia and kerygma being “collapsed into the overarching theme of relationships, bringing a loss of focus. This seems unintentional.” The author considers that this has not been theologically thought through.Later in the book he notes the dangers for youth ministers in being like Jesus – leading to overworking and a reliance on themselves that is not healthy.In the Resource Guides of Youthwork magazine, the author notes that there is often “a disregard of context and a proof text approach to scripture that pays little or no relation to the wider biblical narrative to other texts the text’s context/genre.” The church is described through a variety of “buzz” words and phrases that function as theological shorthand – a straightforward and simplistic way of describing a set of complex practices and the theology embedded within them.The author then moves on to worship songs; he says the words of these songs are full of theological shorthand and what he calls “thin theology.”Bailey proposes “a way of moving from being like Jesus, from the ideas of model and imitation, to being in Christ through a more convincing Trinitarian theological framework of participation.” The imitation of Christ, he says, “is only part of the theological picture…. Being in Christ involves more than just following Christ’s example, more than observation….. to be in Christ is to be in the thick of the Trinitarian action.”He observes that “to learn to grow into the story of Jesus is to learn to see, to look along the story and recognise that at its centre is the cross and the resurrection.” He envisions a different emphasis in youth work training which would help the youth ministers to “develop a wise and contextual witness, knowing the grand narrative and helping young people enter this story at different points.”This book is clearly a challenging read for a layperson, and targeted to a specialist readership, but I found it well worthwhile, tracing through the author’s argument, identifying the truths which he opens up, and relating it not only to my own experience of Christian youth ministry, but also to my wider understanding of how we may understand and enter the grand narrative of the Christian faith.

i actually know the person who wrote this book he went to a local church i go to but has now moved on to another church, and would recommend it