MattCleaver.com

Reimagining Youth Ministry

  • Home
  • Youth Ministry has Failed
  • Best Youth Ministry Books
  • Church Websites
  • Contact Me

Book Review: Awakening Youth Discipleship

Last Updated August 20, 2015 by Matt Leave a Comment

Awakening Youth Discipleship: Christian Resistance in a Consumer Culture
Awakening Youth Discipleship brings together a trio of Methodist and Roman Catholic youth ministry academics to present their thoughts about discipling adolescents in a consumer culture. Youth ministry veterans Brian Mahan, Michael Warren, and David White each offer two chapters in this short book (126 pages), but unlike many youth ministry books written by professors, this volume offers a good balance of sound theological critique and concrete examples and suggestions for ministry. At its core, the book speaks to the common problem found in youth ministry, namely that “while youth ministry has been successful, in some degree, in introducing large numbers of youth in commitment to Jesus, we often contradict our hopes of forming youth in the way of his gospel by reinforcing their relationship with popular culture and habits that engage young people as passive consumers of sensational products like concerts, CDs, T-shirts, and an easily consumable gospel” (36).

Broken into three sections, the book begins with David White offering a fairly unique narrative detailing the historic development of adolescence through the lens of economics. His second chapter offers a variety of suggestions and examples of teaching methods used by the Youth Discipleship Project, a four-week summer program for teens offered by the Claremont School of Theology. These teaching methods offer ways of engaging students minds that begins them down the road of resisting, rather an conforming, to cultural norms.

Michael Warren tackles the ever-present adolescent task of identity, especially how profit-driven marketers captivate the imaginations of youth. Disturbingly, he relates how youth ministry practice is heavily influenced by such marketing techniques. Warren might lose some with his long and repeated citations of Roman Catholic Church youth ministry documents, but readers who persevere through will be greeted with great suggestions for social ministry to combat market-driven identity formation.

Brian Mahan’s section discusses the cultural definitions of success that creep up in our culture and how youth ministry can reinforce these cultural definitions, especially when trying to “spiritualize” the events in adolescents’ lives. Rather than giving lip-service to God when students fail and fall short of their own expectations, Mahan advocates a practice he calls “sacred commiseration,” an amorphous, hard-to-describe practice that is more a group attitude of prayer and spiritual direction than a step-by-step procedure. I actually had to go back over Mahan’s final chapter to really catch the essence of what he was trying to say, but the work was worth it.

Most importantly, this book offers a theological basis not simply for the content of a youth ministry, but for practices that will conform to the gospel while resisting the consumer culture most of us find ourselves in. The problem for many reading this book will be that the practices that are suggested are not highly structured and cannot be explained in a step-by-step format. While the implementation of this book may not be straightforward, the hard work of attempting to discern what it looks like to resist a culture of consumerism might in itself be exactly the kind of practice the authors advocate. Youth ministers of all stripes would do well to read and ponder the thoughts and suggestions offered in this book.

Filed Under: Book Reviews

About Matt

Matt Cleaver has written since 2004 on youth ministry, theology, and the church. His blog was ranked by Youth Specialties as a Top 20 Youth Ministry Blog. Click here for Matt's list of the Best Youth Ministry Books.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Best Youth Ministry Books

These are the books that will completely change the way you think about youth ministry, for the better. Links are to my reviews of each book.

Teen 2.0 by Robert Epstein

A psychologist makes you question every assumption you have about adolescence.

Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry by Andrew Root

Why build relationships? Root’s answer will surprise you.

Best Youth Ministry Books: Youth Ministry 3.0 by Mark Ostreicher

Yesterday I finally read Youth Ministry 3.0 by Mark Ostreicher, and since I’m one of the latecomers to the conversation I won’t summarize the book too much. Marko has linked to tons of reviews on his blog if you are interested in more in-depth summaries. If you are fairly in-tune with a lot of the […]

Best Youth Ministry Books: Postmodern Youth Ministry

Postmodern Youth Ministry by Tony Jones is the book I would recommend to youth ministers if they could just read one youth ministry book. I first read the book in my Foundations and Practices of Youth Ministry class at John Brown University. After the preface to the book there is a page titled, “The Day […]

You can find my new blog on philosophy and teaching at MattCleaver.com

Search

Archives

Categories

  • Best Youth Ministry Books (4)
  • Blogging (42)
  • Blogroll (1)
  • Book Reviews (17)
  • Books (32)
  • Christianity (50)
  • Ecclesiology (52)
  • emerging church (13)
  • Featured (8)
  • Links (27)
  • Ministry (4)
  • Neo-Youth Ministry (8)
  • News (25)
  • Personal (69)
  • Podcast (4)
  • Quotes (14)
  • Random (43)
  • Seminary (16)
  • Theology (48)
  • Uncategorized (50)
  • Websites (15)
  • WordPress (1)
  • Youth Ministry (149)

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in