Senior pastors and academics often view the practice and study of youth ministry as lightweight. They see youth directors as hyperactive young adults who prefer unserious kid’s stuff to the responsible pastoral practices of shared suffering and proclamation of the Word. They think youth ministry classes are filled with PowerPoint slides of suggestions for games, skits, and materials. They assume that while the theology, history, and Bible academics discuss important theories, youth academics teach students how to plan trips, play games, and lead Bible studies—all perhaps important in practice, but low on the food chain of academic scholarship and theological rigor.

But if these beliefs aren’t true, what are we really up to in youth ministry?

I would posit that many see the practice of youth ministry as lightweight—both intellectually and ministerially—because we, as youth workers, have failed to see ourselves as theologians doing a fundamentally theological task.

Maybe We Really Aren’t Singing Very Well

Frequent scenes on early episodes of each American Idol season are profanity-laced tirades by some of the very worst singers after they’ve been rightly rejected by the judges. Through their rage and tears they often assert that they are actually great singers and the judges are wrong/misguided/jealous.

The perception of youth ministry as shallow has often led us to insist that we’re not the problem; it’s the uptight pastors and ivory-tower academics who are judging wrongly. But like the rejected Idol contestants, maybe we really aren’t singing very well. It may be that the genesis of the perceived thinness of our craft rests more with us as youth workers and our insecurities about who we are and what we do. We desperately want to be respected but feel stung by a lack of acclaim, which often leads us into two problematic traps.

The first is the overwhelming need to justify ourselves. We’ve made arguments to personnel committees and church boards and in books and articles for why we’re important and necessary. We’ve spent a great deal of energy and ink seeking to justify why youth ministry is important both as a ministerial office and an academic discipline.

The second trap is isolation. We’ve decided to spend all of our time reading, writing, and participating in conversations solely about youth work. We’ve been slow to enter into cross-disciplinary or cross-ministerial conversations, slow to open up our understanding of our vocation to those in other fields. It’s rare in staff or faculty meetings to hear the youth ministry pastor or student understand the doctrine of reconciliation or the writings of a leading theologian as well as (or better than) the senior pastor or senior professor. We’ve networked with fellow youth workers but are less willing to network with other pastors. In the academy we’ve been willing to apply the theories of other fields, but we’ve yet to open up our own work to deep conversations with those outside our field of study.

If youth ministry is to have a future beyond these traps of self-justification and isolation, it must move boldly, both as a practice of ministry and field of study, into deep theological construction. In other words, we should begin to see ourselves not primarily as youth workers and professors, but as theologians who do constructive theology in the context of ministry with the adolescent population.

Seeing ourselves as theologians will move us beyond concern for de facto respect by drawing us into more significant conversations with our colleagues in ministry. As we remove ourselves from isolation, others will recognize that we aren’t simply seeking to justify ourselves but that we’re trying to construct deep theological articulations of how God is at work within the world.

We’ll have a place at the table of meaningful ministry and academic scholarship only when we achieve a richer theological imagination.  But we must begin by understanding how theological reflection happens in the context of ministry and what difference this practice can make in our work.

Theology as Ministry/Ministry as Theology

During the initial class of my core Children, Youth, and Family course, I often set up my students by giving them a pop quiz. I ask them to circle all of the following statements they believe are true:


Good theology leads to good ministry
Good ministry leads to good theology
Bad theology leads to bad ministry
Bad ministry leads to bad theology
Good theology can lead to bad ministry
Bad theology can lead to good ministry


There’s more than one right answer depending on how one perceives the questions, but I use this exercise to make a particular point: The second statement—Good ministry leads to good theology—is the “most” correct or true. I argue that ministry always precedes theology (and becomes fodder for constructive theological thought) because of our claim that God is living and active in the world; God ministers first and theology follows.

By looking at God’s ministries of creation, covenant, incarnation (including the crucifixion and resurrection), and Pentecost, I maintain it’s obvious that God isn’t a theologian but a (or more accurately the) minister. God is committed to be the minister of and to creation—theology is a reflection on and articulation of God’s ministry. If it’s true that God is alive and moving in the world as minister, then all constructive theological work must be done in conversation and connection with this same world to which God is ministering. Simply put, to be in contact with this world is to be in ministry, and therefore is to do theology.

Furthermore, our own works in the world are only truly ministries if they’re connected to God’s continued ministry—therefore our theology is only constructive (and helpful) if it’s done in the context of God’s continued ministry. And because youth ministry doesn’t primarily seek to connect to adolescents, but rather to God’s own ministry to adolescents, we’re obliged to study theology (the study of how God works in the world).

To be faithful ministers we must begin to articulate how God is active in their (and our own) lives—which, by the way, makes us very different from local after-school programs! The very humanity of each and every adolescent becomes significant to us, not because it’s our job to love them, but because God has so loved them, and to join God’s ministry we, too, must love them. Therefore, when all is said and done, we love through the power of God’s ministry and not through our own abilities or power.

To do theology one must be in ministry—by this I mean one must be seeking to discover how God is active in the lives of people in the world and join with them. Our actions in ministry with people God loves—and stands with and for—are the material of original and deep theological thought; and in the same way, our ministerial actions loudly assert theological truths. In a real way, ministry is a theological task; for if it is ministry of the gospel, it must be faithful to God’s own ministry.

What Difference Will This Make?

What significant difference will it make to see ourselves as theologians?

First, seeing youth ministry as a theological task moves youth ministry beyond utilitarianism and demands of us real reflection on the practice of ministry and the young people to and with whom we minister.

By understanding yourself as a theologian, you’re freed to function as more than the congregation’s program director. You’re called to discern the multiple layers and nuances of God’s activity in the world and to seek creative ways to help people understand how they fit into it.

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

But if we’re merely a youth programmer for the church, we may be justified in ignoring an adolescent’s deep suffering; after all, our job is to provide meaningful events, and dealing with suffering throws wrenches into well-oiled programmatic machines. But if ministry isn’t about the utilitarianism of programming but seeking to join God’s ministry in the world, then we cannot turn from the suffering adolescent, for with her stands the crucified Christ.

Second, seeing ourselves as theologians helps us move past much of the fragmentation in today’s church ministries.

It’s often assumed that the theologian on the church staff is the senior pastor; everyone else is just trying to keep things running smoothly. But from a constructive theological perspective, all of those involved in ministry within the church are involved in theological reflection. Any individual who deliberately reflects on God’s action in people’s lives is involved in theological construction. From this perspective, youth ministry isn’t merely an appendage—connected but not integrated into the church’s ministry—it’s rooted within congregational life. Every staff member, every congregation member, is a theologian, and it’s our job (as paid pastor or professor) to guide them to this realization.

Third, to embed youth ministry in theology, we must recognize that the persons to whom we minister exist in multiple contexts and are impacted by multiple forces.

Constructive or practical theology demands that the practitioner sees the adolescent from a contextual perspective. It isn’t enough to only be concerned with Wednesday night or Sunday morning programming. The youth director is called to relate to youth within their families and cultures. By giving direct attention to how an adolescent exists in multiple systems, the minister recognizes that the young person’s family is also impacted by the forces of a pluralistic world. Likewise, 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, communal, and sociopolitical contexts in which students and their families live (this is the justification for youth ministry professors doing interdisciplinary work).

Finally, by seeing youth ministry as a theological task, theory and practice are held together.

We too often hear that youth ministry is for doers and not for thinkers. Yet good doing demands good thinking. Understanding ourselves as theologians demands that we 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 humanity.

In Practice

To live as theologians in youth ministry, we must learn to continually operate from three distinct, but connected, steps. This dance begins with the first of the three steps, experience. Imagine taking the seat behind two tenth grade girls on your bus trip home from camp. Seeking to start a conversation you ask, “Are you both looking forward to getting home?” The one seated on the aisle turns to you and says, “I know she is,” pointing to her friend leaning against the window. She continues, “She hasn’t seen her boyfriend in a week!” You spend the next 45 minutes hearing stories and asking questions about high school dating and sexuality. You’ve just had an experience!

The experience begs for reflection. You may look at some social scientific research asking why adolescents do the things they do; could it be a psychological issue with their fathers? Could it be the effects of consumer culture? As a constructive theologian you seek to understand though reflection and experience the concrete humanity of those to whom you minister. You may be using no theological sources, but you’re using your sources theologically—you’re using them to help you join in God’s ministry of loving solidarity with adolescents.

But reflection demands more; you must also turn to texts of the Christian tradition, asking what Scripture says about our human sexuality and what other theologians have understood about this issue in their own times and places. It’s helpful to have a theologian or two with whom you’re in constant conversation. For myself I have a circle of close dialogue partners, some living, others not (Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Douglas John Hall, and Ray Anderson), and I always take my theological questions to them. For the issue just mentioned, I would think through how it connects with what Barth has said about the imago Dei (image of God) in Church Dogmatics III.2 or Bonhoeffer in Creation and Fall, and how the cross must lead me into a compassionate response (Hall) that calls me deep into solidarity (Anderson).

I don’t agree with everything my theological dialogue partners have said (and they all don’t agree with each other), and I try to read other theologians’ work, too. But these four theologians are significant to me, not for getting things right, but for how they’ve helped me see the beauty and wonder of God’s ministry in the world. When you take this experience on the bus and place it in conversation with social scientific research and theological discussions, you’ve reflected on your experience.

If reflection is born from experience, it will blossom into action. Having reflected on your experience on the bus, you decide to revamp the next month of Wednesday nights, making the topic sexuality. Or you might decide that all-girl and all-guy retreats are in order. Yet, the process isn’t quite finished. Once you’ve made your way through these three steps, the third (action) has a way of instantly sweeping you back to the first (experience). Yet, this doesn’t mean just starting all over; all actions become new experiences and take you again (and again) into the three steps leading us onward in ministry. After the retreat you have new experiences to reflect on which will no doubt lead to new reflections and then new actions. This three-step process helps us do constructive theology grounded in the practice of ministry and seeks to be faithful to God’s continued ministry in the world.

Unfortunately, both youth ministry and the academy have not always held to this three-step process. The academy has been accused (and often rightly) of shutting itself off from the fresh breeze of new experience. It’s perceived that professors have locked themselves in stuffy libraries far away from the experience of contemporary people in our context. In the same way, it’s perceived that many academics care little about action, about what the church actually does. They’re more concerned with writing commentaries and articles for their guilds than producing work that impacts the church. In this case the three-step process looks something like this:

But youth ministry too has failed to hold to this three-step process, but in the exact opposite way. I believe this is the root of our insecurity; the perception of thinness rests in this opposition. Youth ministry’s mistake is not that it’s been closed to experience—youth ministry pastors and professors are great at having experiences. And it’s not that we have failed to move into action—our calendars are filled with planned actions, and we’re often willing to do new and different things. Our problem is that we’ve often failed to attend to deep, rigorous, and reasoned reflection. We’ve been too anxious to slow down and think before doing.

It may be that if we could correct ourselves by spending more time and thought in reflection that the stigma of lightweight shallowness would begin to melt away from the perception of youth ministry. If youth workers are to see themselves as theologians, we must learn to consistently and deeply move within the three steps of experience, reflection, and action.

We must view—and encourage others to view—youth ministry as a theological task. It’s been my hope that in seeing ourselves as theologians we might be drawn deeper into the continued ministry of God in the adolescent world. I’m confident that in this we can free ourselves from our stances of justification and isolation and become significant voices, both within both the church and the academy, for what God is doing in the world and how human beings can faithfully join in that ministry.