Review of Mark Yaconelli’s “Contemplative Youth Ministry”

After my plea for help with religious education resources, a leader in Unitarian Universalist religious education e-mailed me to suggest reading Mark Yaconell’s Contemplative Youth Ministry, a book about Christian youth ministry.

I’m happy to enthusiastically recommend this book to other UU’s interested in working with youth. It’s a nuanced book and embedded in the Christian tradition, so I can’t do it justice in a blog post, but I can note a few lessons I drew from it that may apply to Unitarian Universalist youth ministry, whether in a Christian or a non-Christian context.

The central premise of the book is that successful youth ministry programs grow from spiritually healthy youth group leaders who are attuned to the needs of youth in their congregation or community, and to the direction in which God is calling these youth.

Rather than give a one-size-fits-all formula for a thriving youth program, Yaconelli suggests that through spiritual practice and attentiveness to youth, leaders will be able to discern the unique shape that their congregation’s youth programming should take.

As a UU minister of religious education recently told me, “the people are the curriculum.”

Of course, shifting the focus from finding the right formula to following the spirit is a leap of faith. Yaconelli is well aware of this, and encourages persistence and patience as the remedies to the anxiety and desire for quick results that many youth leaders feel.

In line with his emphasis on trusting God to lead youth programs in the right direction, Yaconelli urges a discernment-based approach to youth leader recruitment. He discourages what I would call the sinking-ship approach to leader recruitment (i.e. “Help! Someone! Anyone! The youth program is sinking. Come on board.”) Instead, he suggests asking members of the congregation to recommend other congregants whom they think would work well with youth. Yaconelli cautions against looking for people who are young and “hip,” but instead suggests seeking people of all ages who have the spiritual and personal qualities needed.

One final piece I want to highlight is Yaconelli’s attention to the dynamics between those adults who are leading a congregation’s youth ministry. He writes:

Most congregations — and most youth ministry leaders — tend toward either a chaos approach or a control approach to staff meetings. Yet neither of these extremes — nor the continuum that lies between them — is grounded in Christian living….Instead, there should exist a spiritual community — a covenant group that is attentive to God, discerning of the Spirit, and caring for one another.