Getting It All Down

I have to write my thoughts now, otherwise I'll forget them.

So we've talked a lot about narrative, story, and journey and using that as a context to form ministry, theology, and God. With this, God has a metanarrative, a grand story that encompasses all people throughout all of history. God is always working to redeem and restore the world through different mediums whether it be individuals, nations, or groups of people. Within that metanarrative are individual narratives/stories that we each have that define us and help us to discover how God has worked in our lives, which gives us evidence of who God is with the stories of Scripture. If we don't start here, we start with systematic theology which looks to figure God out through things like ecclesiology, eschatology, christology, soteriology, etc. With systematic theology we seek to figure God out. With narrative theology, we discover who God is and interract with Him in the metanarrative.

Ok, so we realize the metanarrative and the narratives exist to form what we know as reality. It's here that ministry exists. Andrew Root (Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry) gives us a way to work within this context through what he calls place sharing. Place sharing recognizes that others have a story and we come alongside them with our own story and place these within the context of the metanarrative. So instead of youth ministry seeking to build a relationship so that we might reach an end goal of say conversion, getting saved, or getting them to say the sinner's prayer, we are now interested in helping guide them in a way that encourages them to see God in their own story and also to see how they fit into God's story. Cool!! In this we go from seeing the student as a project (having an agenda for the relationship) to working from the motivation of sharing stories. We also go from being an "I/it" relationship to an "I/Though" relationship (Buber)

What we have to be careful to not do is just be a disseminator of information and advice. Rather, we should be a type of life coach who encourages individual thought that is consistent with Scripture and who we know God to be through that. We still use Scriptural principles to help guide the student in a way that helps them to discover who they are and who God is. Within this we must let God be God and trust that He will be. We engage in the relationship knowing this.

So couple this with the idea of who Jesus was. Jesus was fully human and fully God. As one who was fully human, we discover what it is to be fully alive. Irenaeus says, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." To be fully alive is not doing the right things just because they are the right things to do. Rather, our motivation to do the right thing is an outward expression of who we are as followers of Jesus and agents of the missio Dei. We live out who we are because we know who we are. Root says, "The adolescent is already ontologically (in the being) what God desires him or her to be: human. Relational ministry is about helping adolescents be authentic human beings as determinied by the incarnate, human Christ.

Last thought...I've been reading through Mike King's book Presence-Centered Youth Ministry and his point is that in ministry we should guide students into spritual formation through the presence of God. In other words, youth ministers are to help students commune with God. We do this through communing with God in our own lives and then creating spaces and opportunities for students to do the same. When they commune with God, the Holy Spirit works to guide them in a life that is holy and righteous. Again, we trust God will do what God does. That's His job, not ours.