The End of Youth Ministry? by Andrew Root

Author:Andrew Root
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Youth Ministry/Parenting;Church work with youth;Church youth workers;Youth—Religious life;REL109030;REL091000;REL012030
ISBN: 9781493420179
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Getting back to J’s words, I respond, “That’s a big move, to decide right there in the waiting room that you’re done being the lead counselor of fun.” I’m so intrigued by that moment of transformation that I ask J to say more.

She reflects for a few seconds and then says, “When I was supposed to make things fun, I felt like parents were asking me to play a small part in keeping their kids happy. But what I learned from Lorena’s experience is that things are really different when you aim for the Good as opposed to the fun. I mean, that’s my point about hearing all the ‘it’s not good’ or ‘it will be good’ at the hospital. I started to realize that all I wanted for Lorena, all her mom wanted—I mean, her mom would have even died—was the Good for Lorena. Not happiness, but Good. I just got captivated by the thought. I realized I didn’t want to be a successful youth pastor; I wanted to be a youth pastor who sought the Good. I didn’t want our kids to think church was just a place to have fun and be happy but a place to look for, even participate in, the Good. Again, that’s why it’s joy. Because joy is the experience—the emotion, I guess—of encountering the Good.”

“And only God is Good,” I jump in, repeating the text from the night. “Only God is the fullness of Goodness. So joy is the experience of the Good. The Good has its source in God, in the love of the Father for the Son in and through the Spirit,” I say, embarrassingly getting a little too theological.8 But I can’t help myself, and I find myself adding, “That means to feel joy is to touch something that is bound within God. It is a gift that transforms, because it’s the inner feel of God’s trinitarian life.9 It transforms because it gives us a new aim and direction to our lives. We seek the Good. And when we seek the Good, we experience joy.”

Youth ministry is to help kids not waste their lives. Making youth ministry about God helps them aim their lives toward the Good. Seeking a living God means not just committing to some ideas (or even ideology) but encountering God in our lives. God is there, not to keep us happy,10 but to be an encounter of the Good. To encounter God in our lives means living a life that is taken up and drawn into the Good. A life that encounters the Good is never wasted, because a life that is aimed toward the Good is opened toward a transcendent horizon, toward encounters with the living God. No one is against happiness. But a full life, a truly well-lived life, is not simply a happy life. It’s a life that encounters the Good.11

A life aimed toward happiness as its summum bonum still seeks goods, as we’ve described above. But these goods are locked on the track of hedonism.

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