Fractal Generations

“The theological challenge youth pose to the church is blunt: Are we who we say we are? Do we practice passion, transformed by a Love who never disappoints, and live by a faith so convincing that we stake our lives on it? Or are we just another sagging social convention, like Dracula, that needs young blood to survive?”

The first thing to say is that this book is definitely NOT a step-by-step how-to-manual for starting or leading youth groups. If that is what you are looking for I suggest you look elsewhere. The author, Kenda Creasy Dean, is profesor of youth ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary. As the quote above points out, the problem that Dean sees in the church and in the practice of youth ministry these days is the lack of passion. She argues that most of our mainline churches don’t live out what it means to be passionate and we need to offer something for our adolescents who are searching for something worth dying for which would then provide them something to live for.

She argues that when the church does not practice its passion, youth take their passions somewhere else often filling the void left by being unable to live passionate lives with fleeting attraction to other causes, addictions and the like. Dean proposes that youth ministry must be grounded in young people’s participation in the practices of a passionate church.

Dean uses some colourful metaphors and lively turns of phrase throughout. I think my favorite metaphor is that of youth ministry taking place in the “shallow end of the theological swimming pool.”

Dean offers a theological prescription both for youth ministry and also for the whole church. Her thesis is that “a passionless church will never address passionate youth.” Come to think of it, one could argue that it will never address passionate adults either.

This book is well worth a read. It raises some interesting questions and challenges for what it means to be church today, as well as a much-needed critique of the practice of youth ministry.