A decade ago most folks thought of Mark Yaconelli as Mike Yaconelli’s son. Now Mark has emerged with his own voice and a new book that challenges readers to reconsider everything they thought they knew about Christian spirituality. The director of the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project at San Francisco Theological Seminary, Mark has spent many years and many Lilly Endowment dollars to explore young people’s souls. And instead of urging youth workers to adapt another latest program, he challenges them to look back to contemplative prayer traditions that many Christians worldwide have embraced for centuries.

If we go to seminary or step inside a Sunday morning worship service, we’re immersed in words. A newcomer to these settings might easily assume Christianity is words. It’s reading, memorizing, lecturing, preaching, and writing. It’s books, newsletters, worship bulletins…Words, words, words. But the central problem in sharing the Christian faith with young people doesn’t concern words; it’s deeper than that. The real crisis facing those of us who seek to share faith with youth is this:

We don’t know how to be with our kids.
We don’t know how to be with ourselves.
We don’t know how to be with God.

We know how to entertain them, market to them, test them, and statistically measure them. But we’ve forgotten how to be with them. As a result, today’s youth have become more and more isolated, alienated, and left to fend for themselves within the molesting arms of the corporate media culture. This isn’t just my opinion — it’s the conclusion of countless major studies on adolescent development over the past 15 years. Consider the words of Cara Miller of the Search Institute, who is possibly the most avid researcher of adolescent development and behavior in North America:

“Study after study in the field of youth development makes it clear that the single most important thing that can make a positive difference in the life of a young person is the presence of a caring adult. In spite of that, research shows that most young people don’t have enough caring adults in their lives.”

Sadly, our absence from the lives of young people is connected to a deeper problem: We don’t know how to be with ourselves. Most adults are busy. We have no down time. We move from activity to activity, with few real relationships and little introspection. We’re distracted from our distractions by our distractions, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot. The result is that we’ve become “dis-spirited.” We live narrow lives. We tend to act as if we’re nothing more than our roles and our jobs. We become what Thomas Merton calls “the false self.” Anthropologist Angeles Arrien relates that in many indigenous cultures, a dis-spirited or disconnected person is diagnosed by asking four questions:

Where in your life did you stop singing?
Where in your life did you stop dancing?
Where in your life did you stop telling stories?
Where in your life did you stop listening to silence?

When I look at the world around me, I see very little singing that isn’t play-listed, very little dancing that isn’t connected to soft drinks, very little storytelling that isn’t violent and disjointed, and a complete absence of silence. The sad truth, if we’re willing to be honest, is that youth are being raised in a culture of people who no longer live from the center of their lives. The results are catastrophic for those of us who tend to the spiritual lives of teenagers. Anyone who befriends young people knows they’re people of spirit — people drawn to song, dance, story, and silence. We cannot hope to touch the hearts of youth if we have lost our own spiritual rooting.

In the Christian community there is an even deeper block: We no longer know how to be with God. In the church we love to debate God, defend God, protect or promote God. We talk to God, praise God, and even serve God. The one thing for which we have little time or patience is actually spending time with God. If you’re a pastor in a church, one sure way to get fired is to set aside 10 minutes of silence during a worship service for people to just be with God. Try this a few times, and soon the church leadership will be inviting you to just “be” somewhere else.

If we want our young people to live lives of faith, we need to live in the presence of Jesus. If the Christian faith is to offer any light, love, or truth to young people, we have to move beyond words. We have to share not only the teachings of Jesus but, more importantly, the presence of Jesus.

What does it mean to be present? It means being open and available to others with as much of ourselves as possible, as unguarded as possible. To be present is to be awake to  the mystery of God within each moment. It means relating to youth in the way Jesus related to people — with authenticity and transparency.

Most of us have rarely experienced such presence in our own lives. If we added up the amount of time spent in the presence of another person who truly listened to and cared for us, it might equal less than 30 minutes. Yet Jesus demonstrates that this kind of patient presence is possible — and then goes on to tell us that we have the capacity to share this kind of presence with others. He calls us to love one another — and for young people today (and, indeed, all of us), love means being there.

Unfortunately, the last place many teenagers find people open and available is within churches. Instead of a listening ear, they find advice. Instead of a witness to their lives, they’re offered programs and activities. Yet we know that the people who’ve had the greatest impact on our lives, the people who have changed and shaped us, are the people  who were present to us—people who received us in the midst of our pain as well as our breakthroughs.

If we want our kids to grow into themselves, to be people who know how to offer God’s love, life, and creativity to a brutal, hurting, and stunted world, then we need to share the presence of Jesus with them. We need to remember how to be in relationship with young people.

A Contemplative Approach to Youth Ministry

Contemplation means being with God within the reality of the present moment. Contemplation is about presence. It’s about attentiveness — opening our eyes to God, ourselves, and others. Contemplation is an attitude of the heart, an all-embracing hospitality to what is. Contemplation is a natural human disposition. It’s the way in which we approached the world as children: vulnerable, open, and awake to the newness of the present moment.

Ignatius of Loyola referred to contemplation as “seeing God in all things.” Brother Lawrence called it “the pure, loving gaze that finds God everywhere.” Jean Pierre de Causade defined contemplation as “the sacrament of the present moment.” Teresa of Avila referred to this experience as “awareness absorbed and amazed.”

My favorite description comes from Walter Burghardt, who said contemplation is “a long, loving look at the real.” In contemplative youth ministry we look, long and lovingly, at what is. Contemplative youth ministry is about courageously beholding the reality of our own lives, the reality (whether it be joy or suffering) of the young people we serve, and the reality of God’s love beneath it all.

These definitions of contemplation, I believe, are descriptions of how Jesus was present to others. He engaged people with openness and honesty, unafraid to take “a long, loving look at the real” — at the people and situations he encountered.

Contemplative youth ministry is an invitation to slow down and receive the young people in our lives. It’s a reminder that what youth need most are people who know how to be present to God and present to others. What would it be like if our ministries were filled with adults who took a “long, loving look at the real”? How would our youth respond if adult Christians engaged them with patience and transparency? What would it mean for our own lives if we became people who sought to be present and receptive to what God brings us in life instead of hurriedly striving toward the next task or project?

To be attentive to youth and aware of God in the present moment is always a struggle. We live in a complex age that demands that we multi-task. We grow up trained to attend to many commitments at once. Our minds and imaginations often drift toward the future or dwell in the past. Yet is there any greater gift we experience in this life than that of another person’s full attention? Is there anything more loving than to be fully seen and heard by another? Didn’t most of us become Christians when we sensed that God was present to us?

Contemplative youth ministry isn’t just another ministry model; it’s an opening of the heart, attentiveness to God, receptivity to the Holy Spirit, a growing relationship with Jesus and His way of compassion. Contemplative youth ministry isn’t about becoming mystics or turning kids into cloistered monks and nuns; it’s about helping kids become alive in Christ. It isn’t about candles and labyrinths; it’s about youth and adults becoming present and available to God’s love.

The contemplative tradition of the Christian faith comes to us as a precious gift in an age when no one has time to sit still. It comes as a medicine to a church culture obsessed  with trends, efficiency, techniques, and bullet-point results. It comes to us just as Jesus approached his disciples in the midst of a busy ministry, asking them to “come away for a while.” Contemplative youth ministry is about unashamedly trusting that God desires our presence more than our activity. It involves recognizing that unless we find rest in God, we’ll continue to model for youth lives that are harried, depleting, and in direct contrast with the lives we seek to share with them.

Contemplative youth ministry is an alternative to two of today’s most popular models of youth ministry: the consumer model (which reflects American cultural values by focusing on entertaining young people) and the content model (which focuses on the transfer of information about religion). In reality, youth ministry often mixes all three approaches; but refer to the chart below for their contrasting intentions.

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Taken from Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus by Mark Yaconelli. Copyright © 2005 Mark Yaconelli. Used by permission of The Zondervan Corporation.