INSIGHTS FROM PRACTICE RECONCEIVING YOUTH MINISTRY

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INSIGHTS FROM PRACTICE RECONCEIVING YOUTHMINISTRYDon C. Richter a , Doug Magnuson b & Michael Baizerman ca Emory Universityb University of Northern Iowac University of MinnesotaPublished online: 10 Jul 2006.

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INSIGHTS FROM PRACTICE

Peter GilmourAssociate Editor

Reconceiving Youth MinistryDonC. RichterDoug Magnuson

Michael Baizerman

Laughter, Power, and Motivation in Religious EducationJerome W. Berryman

A Woman at the Well: Drawing the Ancestral Waters;A Korean-American Woman's Reflection

Su Pak Drummond

RECONCEIVING YOUTH MINISTRY

Don C. RichterEmory University

Doug MagnusonUniversity of Northern Iowa

Michael BaizermanUniversity of Minnesota

Abstract

Teenagers today are socially constructed as "youth" and "adoles-cence." Social representations of teenagers are cultural/symbolic,socio-structural, political, and personal. These representations medi-ate the experiential possibilities of young people, including spiritualexperience. Vocation is an anthropological and religious interpreta-tion of personhood in relation to others and to God. As such, vocationis an alternative framework of lived personhood through which youngpeople, in partnership with the church, can challenge and transcendsocial practices that distort their realities and limit their possibilities.This article draws upon research conducted by the Youth TheologyInstitute (Emory University) and the Project on Vocation, Work, andYouth Development (College of St. Catherine).

INTRODUCTION

The words "youth," "adolescence," and "adolescent" conjure a va-riety of images. To think about youth in the church, youth and thechurch, the church's responsibility to youth, and reaching youth—allof these invoke images and representations of what youth are andare like, who they are, their interests, their capacities, their potentials,and their possibilities. Whenever we talk about youth, youth culture,or adolescent behavior, we use words and phrases that plunge us intoa value-laden social world. This social world presents a variety of

Religious Education Vol 93 No 3 Summer 1998

B1CHTER,MAGNUSON,ANDBAIZEBMAN 341

metaphorical strategies and thought-patterns to govern the way wethink about the growth and development of youth in the church.

This article examines youth and youth-hood from four angles ofvision: cultural/symbolic, socio-structural, political, and personal. Thecultural/symbolic perspective considers youth as an "idea" that hastaken different form for particular cultures during different historicalepoches. The socio-structural perspective considers youth in terms ofthe social stations, roles, and scripts made available to teenagers inrelation to those made available to other age groups. The politicalperspective is closely connected to the socio-cultural, but considersyouth as a generational cohort within a defined system of law andpublic policy. The personal perspective considers youth from the per-spective of individual agency, existential meaning-making, and reli-gious faith.

We begin our analysis with a foundational theological descriptionof the imago Dei as imago relationis. Essential to being human is to becalled into relationship with others. Human relationality is charac-terized by the twin features of a) finitude and b) self-determination.Additionally, we suggest that persons in the image of God live in re-sponse to a calling, a response to the "address of God" and the addressof the world. The dynamic of call and response is fundamental topersonhood, and Christian faith frames "vocation" as one's response tothe call of God. Thus, it is essential to life in the Spirit to acknowledgeone's finitude, to exercise one's freedom of self-determination, and tochoose responsibility to God, to others, and to oneself. From our in-terviews with teenagers, we identify ways youth perceive and respondto the address of God in living their finitude and agency.1 We concludeby suggesting how these stories of living a vocational response mightinform current practices of youth ministry.

IMAGO DEI AS IMAGO RELATIONIS

The 1997 summer academy of the Youth Theology Institute (YTI)featured a day-long workshop on racism and racial identity. An initial

1 Since 1993, the Youth Theology Institute (Emory University) has conducted150 personal interviews with high school seniors who attend a four-week, residentialYTI summer academy. During the same period, The Project on Vocation, Work, andYouth Development (College of St. Catherine) conducted personal interviews with145 youth as part of a study of youth development.

342 RECONCEIVING YOUTH MINISTRY

activity was to read Genesis 1:26-31 and (in groups of eight) to definehow participants understood what it means to be created in God'simage, according to God's likeness. When groups reported, most per-sons defined the image of God in abstract categories such as "free-dom, creativity, rationality, or intelligence." Hardly anyone portrayedthe divine image as relational, although in the Genesis passage,human beings are created to be in relationship to God, to each other,and to the whole created order. To be human is to be called into rela-tionships. This is our fundamental vocation prior to any other call-ings. This vocation is also the first casualty of sin, as evidenced by thebreach of relationship between Adam and Eve, between humans andthe earth and its creatures, and between humankind and God.

The YTI racism workshop demonstrates how we attempt to tran-scend our alienation by appealing to abstractions such as "creativity,"rather than by attending to the particularity of the other. Our effortsto transcend racial difference are rooted in a desire to stand togetheron common ground. By carefully managing how I perceive the imagoof the racial other, I avoid the difficult and painful task of discerninghow the divine image is both present and distorted in our relationship.Yet it is precisely this level of awareness that is necessary for relation-ships to be restored. Reconciliation requires attending to the imagoDei before me rather than projecting an abstract imago onto theother. This is the case with all relationships, not just those character-ized by racial difference.

As YTI participants began to grasp how racism is a sinful dis-tortion of our relationship to God and to others, we were movedto confess our sin and seek forgiveness. Perceiving the reality of ourseparation allowed us to pray for God's reconciling Spirit amongus. The healing process was initiated as we began to see and hearothers in their particularity. Youth participants had to rethink theirearlier position that "racial differences no longer matter becausewe're all one in Christ." Being "one in Christ" now meant seekingunity within diversity rather than expecting unity as predetermineduniformity.

To be human is to be called into relationships—relationships thathave all become distorted as a consequence of sin. To understand howthese distortions of imago Dei persist throughout history, we will drawupon categories from Edward Farley's theological anthropology.Then we will inquire how these categories help us portray the situ-ation of contemporary youth.

RICHTER, MAGNUSON, AND BAIZERMAN 343

DISTORTIONS IN HUMAN RELATIONALITY

Edward Farley's Ecclesial Man (1975) is a theological prolegom-enon that addresses this question: Are there any realities behind thelanguage and liturgies of Christian faith? According to Farley, Chris-tians suspect that their religious language and practices are groundedmore in fantasy than in reality. This "reality loss" has resulted in: areduction of religious realities to psychological and sociological cate-gories; a shift from "face-to-face" congregations to "the anonymouspseudo-congregation"; and a shift to a pluralistic social world in whichredemption is presented as one of many competing reality schemes(9-13).

Farley's constructive proposal is an ecclesial anthropology thatemploys social phenomenology to investigate human existence underthe conditions of sin and redemption. For our purposes, Farley iden-tifies two structural (a priori) features of human being that becomedistorted under the specific conditions of historical existence: finitudeand self-determination.

Human beings are capable of self-transcendence, which leadsto the apprehension that we are finite beings. This awareness of fini-tude generates a resistance to chaos as the ultimate framework of ourendeavors. The human response to imminent chaos is the attempt tosecure ourselves and our world by establishing some sense of order(cosmos) to alleviate the threat. Death is the paradigm case for humanfinitude. Death confronts us with our non-necessity in the universe: allthat we are, all that we have, and all that we do are finite.

Human beings are also endowed with a capacity for self-determi-nation, a structural openness that leaves us vulnerable to being deter-mined by others. From birth on, humans struggle for self-agency andagainst being coerced by others. Human vulnerability generates aresistance to coercion and a desire for social rules and law (norms)to protect and enhance individual self-determination. Murder is theparadigm case that exposes human vulnerability, although coercionoccurs in many non-lethal forms (such as ridicule).

Finitude and self-determination are structural, relational featuresof human nature as such. Nothing is fundamentally flawed aboutthese features. Nor is anything sinful in human beings' resistance tochaos and coercion. Insofar as the image of God is a relational image,we can say that finitude and self-determination rightly qualify allhuman relationships and are essential to our vocation as.human

beings. To apprehend the self's relationship to God, to others, and tothe non-human created order, one must legitimate the selPs intrinsicresistance to chaos/coercion and desire for cosmos/nomos. Theolo-gies that describe pride as the quintessential sin generally neglect theproper role of self-agency in the human equation.

life would be blissful if everyone accepted the condition ofhis/her finitude and respected the vulnerability of others. Sadly, this isnot our typical experience of life. However we interpret the accountof "original sin" in the Genesis creation saga, the natural human de-sire for law and order tend inevitably toward corruption in the courseof human affairs. As Farley maintains, our resistance to chaos and ourdesire for cosmos lead to self-securing idolatry. We give our loyalty toany person, thing, or idea that is a candidate for allaying this funda-mental insecurity (130-133). At the institutional level, people protectand promote their idols by means of various ideologies. An ideologyis a particular definition of reality that comes to be attached to a con-crete power interest and that functions to maintain a symbolic uni-verse (Berger and Luckmann 1966).

Correlative to idolatry/ideology are attempts to resist coercionand secure the self by various modes of flight and fight. The flightmode of resisting coercion is by outwardly succumbing to it whileinwardly harboring hidden resentment and discontent. Depressionand passive-aggressive behavior are classic flight modes of responseto coercion. An alternate mode of resistance is through attempts todominate and manipulate others. The fight mode of response is also adefensive maneuver of the self, a flight-disguised-as-fight. At the in-stitutional level, patterns of flight/fight are legitimated by oppressivesocial roles. Stereotypical social roles reinforce ideologies. In turn,ideologies legitimate these roles symbolically, and they become rei-fied, taken-for-granted realities.

Human beings are created to be in appropriate relationship toGod, to others, and to the non-human sphere of creation. The struc-tural features that qualify human relationality become distorted as aconsequence of sin. Symptomatic of alienated historical existence aredehumanizing ideologies that legitimate oppressive social roles. Associal constructions, ideologies and roles are not sinful per se; theyare, however, always subject to the corrupting influence of sin. Giventhese anthropological claims, in what ways is the social constructionof adolescent reality rendered problematic at the cultural/symbolic,social-structural, political, and personal levels?

BICHTER, MAGNUSON, AND BAIZERMAN 345

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONOF ADOLESCENT REALITY

Cultural/Symbolic: Idolatry and Ideology

Chinese society venerates elders. British literature cherishes chil-dren. For North Americans, De Sotos quest for the Fountain of Youthis an enduring, enchanting trope. Throughout the twentieth century,when the ideology of adolescence was promulgated to meet the politi-cal and economic requirements of consumer capitalism, "youth" wascelebrated as a life stage even as teenagers were being marginalizedpolitically (Kett 1977). David Elkind heralded the irony of youth dis-placement in the opening line of All Grown Up and No Place to Go:"There is no place for teenagers in American society today—not inour homes, not in our schools, and not in society at large" (1984,3).

North Americans idolize youth and youthfulness, but not youth intheir particularity. We may admire the athletic ability of a teenagegymnast or tennis star, but we also take public consolation in the dis-closure of an eating disorder or drug abuse problem that demystifiesand redefines these young people as "typical adolescents." Whenyouth are idolized, they are reduced to the telos, purposes, and fea-tures of "perpetual youth-hood." To function successfully as anti-chaos, youth are de-historicised and invested with perfections, pow-ers, and marvelous attributes. (The teen models who adorn numerousfashion magazines have no visible pores or skin blemishes!) Sincesex is natures solution to death, teenagers as symbols become idolsof unbridled sexual energy. Adult-generated "youth culture" such asMTV propagates idolatrous imagery, and these adult projections areinternalized by young people as appropriate images of the teenageself. In this way, the ideology of adolescence perpetrates a funda-mental dishonesty about the nature and destiny of youth—as wellas adults. Farley notes how "we must constantly bend reality to makethe idol which is itself threatened by chaos into the anti-chaos"(1975,143).

We recognize how "youth" functions as a self-securing idol for usby the extent to which we deny the finitude of young people andimbue them with immortality. We can also view our fear of youngpeople as an expression of idolatry. Young black males frequently ex-perience themselves as feared by others, regarded first and foremostas a dangerous stereotype: chaos incarnate. The news media report

sensational stories about youth violence, ironically blaming violentmedia imagery as the culprit.

G. Stanley Hall popularized "adolescence" as a period of Sturmund Drang, a tumultuous period in which young people were destinedto be swept away by their impulses and emotions. Hall viewed theteenage years as a stage of life when the individual was recapitulatingthe emergence-from-savagery era of human evolution. The desire toprotect young people during this "new birth" stage is accompanied byfear of what might happen to them if they are exposed prematurely tothe vices of adult society.

Elkind echoes Hall's portrayal of adolescence as a fearful stageof life. The chapter titles of All Grown Up and No Place to Go resoundwith alarmist tones: "Teenagers in Crisis, Perils of Puberty, PeerShock, Vanishing Markers, Schools for Scandal, Teenage Reactions toStress, Services for Troubled Teenagers." Elkind intended his popularbook to sound the alarm, yet his rhetoric reinforces a crisis-drivenview of teenagers as adolescents.

In a recent study entitled The Romance of Risk (1997), Lynn Pon-ton draws upon her clinical practice in adolescent psychiatry to rede-fine teenage rebellion as a potentially positive testing process wherebychallenge and risk are the primary tools young people use to discovertheir identity. As with Elkind, the point of departure for Ponton isparental fear: "In my work two things have remained absolutely clearover the years: adolescents are going to take risks, and most parentsof adolescents are terrified about this" (2). Veteran pollster GeorgeGallup echoes the rhetoric of parental fear in his 1995 publicationScared: Growing Up in America.

It is appropriate for adults to be concerned—even fearful,perhaps—about the kind of society in which we. are raising our chil-dren. When this fear becomes focused on the life stage of adolescence,however, we tend to view young people through the lens of this fear.Whenever we idolize youth as a projection of chaos or anti-chaos, ourideology of adolescence legitimates the roles and scripts that definethe social world of teenagers. In the next section, we describe socialscripts that collude to structure the life station to which youth areexpected to subscribe.

Social-Structural Scripts for Teenagers

Just as the emergent field of psychology helped legitimate theideology of adolescence, developmental psychology provides an

IRICHTER, MAGNUSON, AND BAIZERMAN 347

understanding that supports the prevailing social script for modernteenagers. Youth are expected to construct a coherent identity in theface of role confusion (Erikson 1968). Youth are encouraged to em-bark on journeys of self-discovery, to "find themselves" in the midst ofvarious competing social roles. As adolescents, youth are taught to"play" different roles without identifying themselves fully with any ofthem (Osmer 1996,15). The psychological script emphasizes choicefrom among a range of options, analogous to the way we must nowchoose which telephone companies will handle our local and long-distance calls.

The marketing metaphor is fitting, for youth are viewed as con-sumers rather than as persons who help create and shape their culture(Schultze et al. 1991). Teenagers do not create youth culture, nor dothey inherit it by virtue of their chronological status. Youth culture is acommodity to be bought and sold, and this marketing mentality hasextended to the marketing of youth themselves. Young people whobelieve their value lies more in what they achieve than in who they arehave learned to market themselves in order to convince others, them-selves, and perhaps God that they are worthwhile and have value.Youth are encouraged to view the work of adolescence as chalking upmore and more experiences on their resumes, regardless of whetherthese experiences are interpreted or integrated into a coherent wayof life. When reading YTI applications, a member of the admissionscommittee quipped that the "cv" of a 17-year-old stands for "cosmicvitae" as much as it does "curriculum vitae." Marketing oneself to thecosmos has become an ontological enterprise for youth!

Viewing youth as consumers means viewing diem as "purchasersof services," and the church is expected to market itself to these con-sumers. The church must become competent at market research,learning to meet the perceived and actual needs of youth, as well ascreating new needs. Youth-as-consumers are also viewed as "tourists."As tourist—rather than as pilgrim—the youth s job in life is to sampleidentities, try out experiences (preferably safe ones), think about andplan for the future, and most importantly, allow adults (tourist guides)to clear the way, to offer protection, and to provide services.

A popular script for teenagers is "youth-as-exotdcs." In this view,the essence of youth-hood is what makes youth unlike adults. Someapproaches guided by this metaphor use an ethnographer's sophisti-cation in respecting youth culture. In youth ministry, this meansemploying "experts" in youth culture to translate the gospel into cul-turally appropriate terms. Youth ministers are like the domestic arm

of the Wycliffe Society. Not only do they translate the gospel intoyouth culture terms, but they translate youth culture for the lay adult,often portrayed as the bewildered and hopelessly out-of-date parent.This reassures adults in the church that "at least someone understandsour kids," and it also absolves adults from significant caretaking re-sponsibility.

In some instances, viewing youth as exotics means targeting themas a modern-day mission field. The church then aims to eliminate un-desirable aspects of "pagan" youth culture in its members' lives or torescue church youth and other youth from that culture. These strate-gies may be counter-cultural or they may be grounded in sociallyacceptable, middle-class values. The responsibility of adults in eithercase is to keep "the bad guys" away, however such destructive influ-ences are conceived. Both counter-cultural as well as mainstreamcongregations wish to protect their youth from "the heathen." Protec-tion can become domestication when youth are constantly admon-ished to "play it safe" and "stay out of trouble." Youth are then taughtto navigate between narrow, socially-acceptable boundaries, avoidingdangerous impulses on one side and any summons to heroic action onthe other (Long 1994).

Youth as role-players, youth as consumers and tourists, youth asexotic . . . these scripts define the life station for North Americanyouth. In pre-modern societies, one's life station was viewed as one'sdivinely ordained place in the social order. Persons fulfilled their call-ing and destiny insofar as they lived their lives in concordance withtheir appointed stations. Modern societies are characterized by ahigher degree of role differentiation in which one's social location isnot perceived as static and preordained. However, the life station ofcontemporary adolescence has a structural quality that is both con-stricting and coercive for youth. Most teenagers are given a limitedrange of social scripts, scripts that conform to our prevailing worldview about "adolescents." Rarely are youth invited to perform rolesnot pre-scripted for them by their life station. The norms of youth'ssocial station shape how they are perceived politically as a group andhow they are perceived personally as individuals.

Political: Youth as Generational Cohort

Doug Coupland described the post-Boomer generation of NorthAmericans as "Generation X." More recently, demographers Howe

and Strauss have labeled this generational cohort "the 13th genera-tion" and the subsequent cohort "the Millennials (1993). Generationalcohorts are assigned a life station, especially as they move throughtheir teenage years. The political significance of the adolescent cohortcan be seen in at least three ways.

First, because teenagers live in an increasingly age-segregatedsociety, they have less frequent contact with adults, and this contacttends to-occur in role-specific ways with adults who are paid to spendtime with them. Most teenagers are excluded from the decision-making processes of mainstream political, economic, religious, andcommunity life. When youth are excluded from the public domain,except as passive recipients of public policy, the basis for youth's po-litical agency is jeopardized.

A second political consequence of the cohort-effect is that thelegal rights of teenagers are attached as age-group rights and deter-mined by the state. If a fundamental feature of being human is re-sistance to coercion, many youth.experience their legal status as co-ercive. The individual teenager—regardless of how responsible he orshe may be—cannot secure a driver's license or buy property or voteuntil reaching a certain age determined by the state. Any adult, on theother hand, is legally permitted to do all of these things until provenirresponsible.

A third political consequence of the cohort effect, closely re-lated to the second, is that the rights of teenagers are always subject tomodification due to social and political exigencies. Municipalitiesenforce curfews for youth to curtail crime. The federal governmentinstitutes a draft during an international military crisis. The statusof teenagers as a group is thus subject to political whims of adultlawmakers. Politically, youth are not represented in shaping the lawsthat govern them, nor in challenging the suspension or revision ofthose laws. This absence of political agency colludes with the ideologyand station of adolescence in ways that profoundly shape individualyoung people.

The Challenge of Becoming a Person

The bureaucratic view of society as a Gesellschaft of interchange-able individuals heightens one's personal sense of non-necessity. Themarketplace assumes individuals rather than persons, and youth wehave interviewed express their yearning for "a place to go where folks

are glad to see you just because you are there, just because you showup." The challenge for youth—as for adults—is to resist being re-duced to an individual representative type of some group. The chal-lenge of becoming a person is to resist all social forces that threatenone's capacity for transcendence. This is hard work for teenagers be-cause, as described above, the social forces that limit and define youthas "adolescents" are typically presented as a closed system. Neverthe-less, the possibility of transcendence is always alive insofar as thehuman spirit is intact.

Teenagers striving for transcendence must resist not only theirpre-scripted station as adolescents; they must also resist being over-determined by categories such as race, class, gender, and locality.For example, Beverly Tatum (1997) describes the genesis of racialidentity in the response of young people to this sentence stem: "Iam ." Anglo youth are likely to complete the sentence withwords such as "happy," "worried," "smart," or "friendly." Youth-of-color were more likely to complete the sentence with a racial/ethnicdescription: "I am black." "I am Hispanic." Tatum claims that strongracial identity is a functional necessity for persons who have histori-cally been oppressed and marginalized. Youth learn who they are byidentifying with the racial/ethnic legacy of their people. While affirm-ing this claim, we also note that race is an additional station youthmust negotiate along with being labeled "adolescents." To become aperson, a black teenager must resist both racist stereotypes associatedwith being black as well as stereotypes associated with being an ado-lescent.

Similarly, gender roles require modes of resistance by youngpeople in addition to negotiating their adolescence. Carol Lakey Hess(1997) portrays eating disorders among teenage females not as capitu-lation to the cult of thinness, but rather as a mode of resistance to thecultural images of femininity that exhort women to "keep quiet andlook pretty." Like hard-earned racial identity, the anorectic/bulimicteen achieves a measure of transcendence over against pernicioussocial scripts; yet becoming a person comes at quite a cost to the indi-vidual. When youth experience freedom from the various ways theyare socially constructed, this freedom has consequences for everylevel described above: cultural/symbolic, socio-structural, political,and personal. It is these dynamics of freedom that we examine brieflyin the following section.

IRICHTER, MAGNUSON, AtiD BAIZERMAN 351

FREEDOM IN VOCATION

Freedom is experienced as the restoration of the imago Dei. Thisdoes not mean that the divine image is completely restored intact.It means that one is in the process of being redeemed, and as such,experiences moments of freedom and transcendence. For Christians,this liberation is known particularly through the redeeming love andgrace of Jesus Christ. Experiences of freedom are not limited toChristians, however, for the Holy Spirit is free to move within thehuman spirit of anyone at any time.

In regard to the ideology of adolescence, we acknowledge theactivity of the Spirit in freeing persons from clinging to "youth" as aself-securing idol. Teenagers are allowed to be who they are; they donot have to be invested with marvelous powers and libidinal potency;they cease to function as projections of our own fears and failures.Youth are freed to be who God calls them to be, not by defining them-selves in terms of youth culture or youth groups or youth activities,but by defining themselves simply as human beings summoned anddrawn to particular commitments in life. Karl Barth, writing duringthe advent of the modern psychological movement, is instructive atthis point:

We can be young only when we are moved by something which initself has nothing at all to do with youth or age, and in relation towhich we are summoned and drawn even as young people. We canbe young only in specific demonstration of our preparedness, atten-tion, zeal, and obedience, only in youthful objectivity, not by chasingthe phantom of what is supposed to be "youthful." He who wants tobe a child is not a child; he is merely childish. She who is a child doesnot want to be a child; she takes her play, her study, her firstwrestlings with her environment in absolute earnest, as though shewere already an adult. In doing so, she is genuinely childlike, (pro-noun change ours; 1961,609)

Freedom from the dominant, sociological idea of "youth-hood"also frees teenagers to shape their social station as potential sites ofvocation. Social scripts are still necessary, but young people are setfree within the context of these scripts to fashion their own person-hood. In terms of developmental theories, the emphasis shifts fromcapacity to competence. Even mundane chores and work offer possi-bilities for responding to one's calling. For Joanne, a fourteen-year-old

whose mother died when she was eight, caretaldng is the central or-ganizing metaphor for her self-understanding. In the midst of a con-versation about what she is like, Joanne described her life this way:"You need to wash the clothes—just preparing for basically life ingeneral. That's one of the most important things you do at home—washing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning up your room."

It is striking that Joanne does not show much longing for a differ-ent life. She does not describe her responsibilities as a burden. More-over, Joanne knows that these responsibilities are also woven togetherwith unusual opportunities, one of which is her remarkable partner-ship with her father. In her relationship with her father, the expecta-tions for Joanne are based on what is needed in this particular family,not on what a 14-year-old black female is or should be like. Joannelives her life in a context in which the Other and the situation inviteher competence, not because of her age, but because of the needs ofthe family. Joanne experiences a.freedom for others not driven by self-securing defensiveness but based instead on mutual respect.

Being a caretaker means responsibility for Joanne; it also meansthat she is granted more freedom than most youth her age regardingwhere she goes and how she spends her time. Joanne uses this free-dom well. She is an "A" student, a sprinter on the track team, and shewrites as a "hobby." Joanne's occupational goal is to be a medical doc-tor, which she sees as a way of extending her present caretaldngcompetencies into the future. Though her life has been marked bydeep sadness, Joanne demonstrates leverage over against portrayals ofherself as an "at-risk adolescent." For Joanne, vocation can be dis-cerned even in the midst of washing dishes, doing the laundry, andcleaning up her room.

Youth are more likely to experience freedom in relation to theirlife station than in relation to the political arena. When we recallthat cultivating a sense of public self is the basis for political agency,however, we can see how the following account illustrates politi-cal freedom for a teenager. Ellen, a Chinese-American high schoolsenior, related this incident following her participation in the YTI1997 summer academy. One of Ellen's classmates, a boy named John,was stabbed to death in his own home. Nobody at the school acknowl-edged John's death, even though a day-long memorial service washeld when a popular boy died in an auto accident. John was viewedas a "troublemaker," and his absence from school was consideredsomewhat of a relief. This angered Ellen, however, and she found

an opportunity to redress her grievance during the annual tal-ent show.

Ellen is a gifted pianist, songwriter, and singer—although prior toYTI she was reluctant to perform before an audience. Ellen had com-posed a beautiful song called "Rest Easy," and she decided to sing thissong as a tribute to John during the school talent show. Prior to thesong, Ellen shared thoughts about the significance of John's life byreferring to passages from Henri Nouwen's Reaching Out (the com-mon text read during YTI). While she was speaking, some peoplestarting whispering and mocking her, but Ellen continued snaring.After pouring herself into her music, Ellen bowed politely and leftthe stage. Her favorite teacher came backstage and told Ellen that theaudience had just given her a standing ovation:

It wasn't a group of people who started it—it was everybody. Theschool's natural and immediate response to your song was expressedthrough their standing ovation. I haven't seen our school this unitedin quite a long time. Once you started to sing your song, you couldhear a pin drop in the auditorium. Everyone listened. No one talked.It was complete silence. Your song touched us. You brought us to-gether as a community, a school grieving and cherishing memories.Many people started crying because something reached their soul.That something was God in you.

Ellen relates her experience of becoming a public theologian, aprimary hope held for YTI scholars. By moving beyond her insecurityand claiming her voice in a public setting, Ellen was able to testify todeep faith convictions in a way that was accessible to a diverse andeven skeptical audience. It would be a mistake, however, to character-ize Ellen as "exceptional" and consign her to the "hero" category.Ellen, like Joanne, was simply exercising her capacity for freedom andtranscendence in the midst of her life station as a high school student.Youth such as Ellen and Joanne challenge the category of "ex-ceptional youth." Instead, we must see them as individuals becomingpersons within the context of daily, ordinary life circumstances. Itbecomes the task of congregations, then, to sensitize youth to therange of possibilities for discerning their vocation and calling withintheir respective life stations.

VOCATIONAL YOUTH MINISTRY

In this final section, we suggest several trajectories for vocationalyouth ministry within congregations. These are not "how-to" instruc-

tions, but are rather signs of what we hope for within the frameworkdescribed above.

At the cultural/symbolic level, it is imperative to envision humandevelopment and growth in other ways than life stages. One alter-native, for example, is to emphasize a congregation's formation inparticular ecclesial practices, rather than to focus so intently upon in-dividual faith development (Bass 1997). How well-developed is thiscongregation's practice of forgiveness, we might inquire? Given thisanalysis, what does this mean for teaching people of all ages moreabout this practice? Approaching curriculum in this way relativizeschronological age and gives priority to a congregation's "developmen-tal stage" in relation to a set of practices.

A more direct way to challenge the ideology of adolescence isthrough ongoing acts of repentance. In worship especially, we can findways to confess our flawed conceptions of "youth" and "youth-hood,"and seek images that liberate young people from their idol status. Apromoter of popular youth ministry materials recently shared thispersonal account of repentance. Concerned about the incessant busy-ness and high-energy activities featured in his youth ministry re-sources, "Sam" made a pilgrimage to Daybreak (L'Arche Community)to visit Henri Nouwen. Upon arrival, Sam had two experiences thatchallenged him to the core.

Sam's initial awakening occurred when a resident, a man withseveral mental disabilities approached him, glared into his face,and muttered, "You . . . busy . . . you always so busy!" Then, press-ing his face almost into Sam's, he asked a simple question, "Why?"Sam reeled back, stunned to be indicted so convincingly by a per-fect stranger. "It seemed," Sam later confessed, "as if he were ad-dressing me right at the core of my being. I felt years of success andachievement melt away. In that moment, I felt like I finally under-stood grace."

The Word must be enacted as well as proclaimed, and for Sam thishappened a few days later when another resident was being preparedto receive her First Communion. Sam wondered why so much of thecommunity's time and energy was being expended upon this severelyretarded woman. When he attended the Communion service, how-ever, Sam was profoundly moved by the power and beauty of theservice. Receiving the cup of grace and the bread of salvation at day-break caused Sam to rethink his training strategy for youth ministers.

Sam is currently designing youth resources based on contemplativespirituality, even though his staff colleagues are not fully on boardwith this agenda. Sam is also in a congregation where weekly Eu-charist is celebrated, and this has become a vital source of spiritualnourishment for him.

Vocation comes to us as a gift, as an invitation to transcendence inthe midst of our social embeddedness. All genuine gifts make de-mands upon us and call us to be and do more than we had projectedfor ourselves. At the socio-structural level, youth are called by thechurch to redefine themselves as more than the sum total of theirsocial scripts. For example, the fundraiser is a popular activity forchurch youth groups. This activity builds group identity and esprit decorps, and is often directed towards worthy group projects such asmission trips. Consider the conceptual shift, however, when youth areviewed as stewards of congregational resources. Instead of the pre-dictable fundraiser, ponder what might happen if congregationalleaders presented youth with the following proposal: "Your youthgroup has been given an anonymous grant of $500 to use in a respon-sible manner. There are no specific strings attached to this grant. Youare really free to use it as you see fit. Adult leaders will be available asconsultants to your decision-making process. We will challenge youto think of creative uses for this grant, but the final decision will be upto you."

Receiving an unexpected gift is a lesson in grace. As such, it is theleitmotif Tor vocational youth ministry. We extend invitations to youththat call them to play unexpected roles and respond to unconventionalscripts. In so doing, we enable youth to experience freedom evenwithin the many givens of their social station. At the political/public/group level, youth programs are not then based primarily on problem-solving strategies, i.e., what to do about youth or for them. Instead,youth ministry initiatives invite young people—both within and with-out the church—to participate in practices that offer responsiblefreedom. The practice of Sabbath-keeping, for example, invites youngpeople into new ways of structuring their time. This ongoing activitymight be initiated by a retreat or a program series, but can only be sus-tained by a community of accountability and care over the long haul.Furthermore, an activity like Sabbath-keeping has explicit economicand political consequences for youth, including young people whomay not be affiliated with the church.

Finally, at the personal level, vocational youth ministry nurturesthe call of the self by tending to teenagers' current holding envi-ronments. In his book Family-Based Youth Ministry, Mark DeVries(1994) underscores the importance of viewing youth within the con-text of their families, the primary context of their socialization. Youthactivities that threaten family ties-must be critiqued and modified,claims DeVries. Age-segregated youth groups that always pull youngpeople apart from their families must be reconfigured. Instead, De-Vries suggests models that allow young people to maintain their familyidentities as a necessary dimension of their personal faith formation.

Even when holding environments are unhealthy or when youngpeople make bad choices, a vocational perspective refuses to reduce aperson to an individual type. In every encounter, conversation, andactivity, vocational ministry with youth responds to the image of Godas it has been distorted and as it is being restored by the grace ofGod. This is the hope that guides us, the faith that sustains us, and thelove that sets us free.

Don C. Richter is Director of the Youth Theology Institute and AssistantProfessor of Christian Education at the Candler School of Theology at EmoryUniversity in Atlanta, Georgia.

Doug Magnuson is Assistant Professor in Youth/Human Service Adminis-tration, School of Health, Physical Education, and Leisure Services at the Uni-versity of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Michael Baizerman is Professor of Youth Studies, School of Social Work, atthe University of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota.

REFERENCESBarth, K. 1961. Church dogmatics. Vol. 4. Edinburgh: T & T ClarkBass, D., ed. 1997. Practicing our faith. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. 1966. The social construction of reality. Garden City, NY:

Doubleday.DeVries, M. 1994. Family-based youth ministry. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity

Press.Elkind, D. 1984. All grown up and no place to go. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Erikson, E. 1968. Identify: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton.Farley, E. 1975. Ecclesial man. Philadelphia: Fortress.Hess, C. 1997. Caretakers of our common house. Nashville: Abingdon.Howe, N., and B. Strauss. 1993. Thirteenth generation. New York: Vintage.Kett, J. 1977. Rites of passage. New York: Basic Books.Long, T. 1994. Beavis and Butt-head get saved. Theology Today 51 (2): 199-203.Osmer, R. 1996. Confirmation. Louisville: Geneva Press.

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Ponton, L. 1997. The romance of risk. New York: Basic Books.Schultze, Q., R. Anker, J. Bratt, W.. Romanowski, J. Worst, and L. Zuidervaart. 1991.

Dancing in the dark. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.Tatum, B. 1997. Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? New York:

Basic Books.

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