A few weeks ago, I was sitting with two fellow seminary professors, both talented biblical scholars, discussing the present and future of our seminary. I explained to them that those of us in the Children, Youth and Family Department were planning on deepening our commitment to our Ph.D. program in the next few years. They both responded positively and encouraged the possible new endeavor.

When it became clear the conversation was about to shift topics, however, one of them turned to me and, with a half smile that said he knew his next comment would draw my ire, inquired, “My only question is, who is going to teach the Ph.D. seminar on group mixers?”

Despite youth ministry’s long history, its practice often has been viewed by senior pastors and academics as lightweight. It has been assumed the youth worker is a hyperactive person in his or her early 20s who prefers unserious kid stuff to the responsible practice of shared suffering and proclamation of the Word in pastoral ministry.

So, while the theology, history and Bible people discuss rigorous theories, youth ministry people teach students how to do things such as plan trips, play games and lead Bible studies—all important in practice but low on the food chain of academic scholarship.

Is all this true? If not, what is it that we are really up to in youth ministry?

I believe the practice of youth ministry has been seen as lightweight intellectually and ministerially because we have failed to see ourselves as theologians doing a fundamentally theological task. What does that mean? What difference could it make to see ourselves as theologians? How does theology work within the practice of youth ministry?

Singing a New Song: Youth Minister as Theologian
A frequent sight on the early episodes of “American Idol” (which I have to admit I’m addicted to) was profanity-laced tirades of some of the very worst singers when they left the audition room. Through their rage and tears, they often asserted they’re great singers, and the judges were wrong.

We as viewers know, of course, the individuals are actually very bad singers, which makes their angry tantrums sadistically funny and so entertaining to watch (at least to me). Sure, the judges may be harsh, but they’re not wrong when it comes to these contestants’ singing ability.

Much like the “American Idol” candidates who can’t sing, some of us have a conflated view of ourselves that has developed from the imagined or actual perception of youth ministry as shallow. We aren’t the problem, we assert; it’s the uptight pastors or ivory-tower academicians who judge wrongly. Our ministries are singing beautifully, or would be if our so-called ministry judges understood us. It may be that the genesis of the perceived thinness of our craft actually does rest more with us and our explicit or hidden insecurities about who we are and what we do.

Desiring to be respected but feeling a lack of acclaim, we’ve often fallen into two problematic traps. The first trap that our insecurity has led us into is the overwhelming need to justify ourselves. We have made arguments for why we are important and necessary to personnel committees and church boards. We also have spent a great deal of energy and ink explaining why youth ministry is important as a ministerial office and as an academic discipline.

The second trap of insecurity is isolation. We have decided to spend all our time reading, writing and participating in conversations solely about youth work. We have been slow to enter into cross-disciplinary or cross-ministerial conversations that would open our understanding of our vocation to those in other fields. In staff or faculty meetings, rarely have we understood the doctrine of reconciliation or the writings of a leading theologian as well as (or better than) the senior pastor or senior professor. We have networked ourselves with fellow youth workers but have been less willing to network with other pastors.

If youth ministry is to have a future that avoids these deadly traps of self-justification and isolation, it must move boldly into deep theological construction. What I mean is that we must begin to see ourselves not primarily as youth ministry directors, but as theologians who do constructive theology in the context of ministry with the adolescent population.

Truth be told, the theological legitimacy of the senior pastor often is based more on ordination credentials or years of past education or a pulpit to preach from than on constructive theological thinking in the practice of ministry.

This only makes things more difficult, giving senior pastors and others a reason to keep us youth workers theologically ignorant so we might not see that all pastoral ministry needs a turn to the theological. I know this is cynical, but too often it plays out this way. When it does, we youth workers find ourselves always scratching for some respect.

Seeing ourselves as theologians has the potential to move us beyond concern for de facto respect by drawing us into more meaningful and significant conversations with our colleagues in ministry, if they are willing. As we enter into mutually significant conversation beyond our isolation, they will recognize we are not seeking to justify ourselves, but rather are trying to construct deep theological articulations of how God is at work within the world.

Theologically Informed Youth Ministry: The Difference It Makes
What difference will it make to see ourselves as theologians? Could this have any significant impact? I offer four ways it makes an important difference.

First, seeing youth ministry as a theological task moves youth ministry beyond utilitarianism and demands that we do real reflection on the practice of ministry and the young people to and with whom we minister. By understanding yourself as a theologian, you are free to function as more than the congregation’s program director. Instead, you are called to discern the multiple layers and nuances of God’s activity and the actions of people, and then to seek creative ways to facilitate their understanding of and participation in God’s action in the world.

For example, during a weekend retreat, you may discover that five of the seven adolescents in your cabin come from families with parents who are divorced, separated or never were married. You must stop and reflect on this experience, evaluating it theologically (What is God’s desire for families and children? How do estranged and separated bonds between parents shape children’s experience of their world and the way they see themselves? How is God active in transforming their brokenness?) and psychosocially (How does such a family type psychologically affect a child? How does it affect the relational resources available for their development? What resources can I or the church provide to them?).

If you are only a programmer, you may be justified in ignoring an adolescent’s deep suffering; your job is to provide meaningful events, and suffering throws wrenches into well-oiled programmatic machines. If ministry is not about the utilitarianism of programming but about seeking to join God’s ministry in the world, then you cannot turn from the suffering adolescent, for with her stands the crucified Christ.

Second, I believe seeing ourselves as theologians helps us move past much of the fragmentation of ministries within the church. The Protestant Reformation stood, at least in part, on the belief that all Christian believers were priests—the priesthood of all believers, in other words. In that Reformation context that worked out radically in the areas of prayer, Bible reading and confession, the Reformers asserted that all believers were priests; so all believers could pray, read the Bible and confess their sins without a priest standing between them and God.

Almost all churches and traditions would affirm this strongly today. The interesting thing is that this conception of the priesthood of all believers hasn’t continued on to its logical conclusion, which is that all believers are participants in God’s ministry and are therefore all involved in a theological task. In other words, anyone participating in any way in the ministry of God is swept into a theological task.

What’s often assumed instead is the theologian on the church staff is the senior pastor; everyone else is just trying to keep things running smoothly. From a constructive theological perspective, all those involved in ministry within the church are involved in theological reflection, and any individual who deliberately reflects on God’s action in light of concrete people is involved in theological construction. I believe this perspective releases youth ministry from being merely an appendage, connected but not integrated into the church’s ministry, and instead roots it within congregational life. Every staff member and congregation member is a theologian, and it is your job (as paid pastor) to help them see how and why this is so.

Third, embedding youth ministry in theology demands that we see the adolescent from a contextual perspective, as one who is affected by multiple forces. It is not enough only to be concerned with programming for the adolescent on Wednesday night or Sunday morning. As youth workers, we are called to relate to youth within their families and cultures. Moreover, by giving direct attention to how an adolescent exists in multiple systems, we come to recognize the young person’s family is also affected by the forces of a pluralistic world. God is active in multiple contexts, not only in the church’s youth ministry, but also within the family and larger world. By understanding ourselves as theologians, our ministry is directed beyond the four walls of the church and into the familial, community and sociopolitical contexts in which students and their families live.

Finally, I believe that by seeing youth ministry as a theological task, theory and practice are held together. Too often it’s assumed that youth ministry is for doers and not for thinkers. Yet good doing demands good thinking. Understanding yourself as a theologian demands that you become astute at moving from experience to reflection and then to action by learning to discern and articulate the connections between God’s action and humans.

Andrew Root, Ph.D. (Princeton Theological Seminary) is an Olson Baalson chair as Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He is the author of The Children of Divorce: The Loss of Family as the Loss of Being (Baker Academic, 2010), Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation (IVP, 2007) and Relationships Unfiltered (Zondervan/YS, 2009).

This article is adapted from The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry by Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean. Copyright(c) 2011. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. IVPress.com.