Previous Posts:
• Introductory thoughts

Before I begin, I would like to applaud Dare 2 Share (D2S) for making their Deep and Wide Youth Ministry Thesis available for free rather than turning it into a book or a training tour that you have to pay to get access to (and if they do decide to do either of those things, that’s fine as long as we can still have access to the free stuff). If there is anything in the world that should be open-source, it should be things related to Christian ministry. I hope youth ministers, churches, and other Christian organizations will follow this path and make their insights free to all.

If you really want to follow along with me, you should download and read the whole document. It’s only 34 pages long and divided into five sections. Spend about 10 minutes a day for the next five days reading a section and you will have it read. Without any further ado, here we go.

Page 2: Deep and Wide Youth Ministry Introduction

After giving a summary of the Thesis on page one, page two gives a one-page basis for the creation of this Deep and Wide approach to ministry (a prolegomena of sorts). The paper starts out by describing youth ministries has having a “false dichotomy” between evangelism and discipleship. In this point, we are in agreement. As I began to learn in Dr. Castleman’s class years ago there is no such thing as “discipleship and evangelism,” but there is only “discipleshipandevangelism.” The two are not separable; there is no dichotomy. To be an evangelizer, one must be a disciple; to be a disciple, one must also be an evangelizer. I see discipleship and evangelism as existing together in a continuous loop that feeds one another. Without both, the loop does not exist.

Once stated that there is a false dichotomy between discipleship and evangelism, the Thesis states that the way to keep discipleship and evangelism in “balance” is through the “Deep and Wide youth ministry model” (1). To me, words like balance reinforce the false dichotomy that the Thesis says it is trying to combat. To keep something in balance is to say that there are two things independent of one another (i.e. they are dichotomous) that have to be held in equality. If discipleship and evangelism do suffer from a false dichotomy, then they cannot be held in balance because they are not separate entities, but they are inseparable parts of the same whole. To take away one is to take away the other.

Moving on, the basis for the Thesis comes from the words of Jesus in the Great Commission, which gives me a moment of pause (but not because I am against the Great Commission!). To build an entire philosophy of ministry upon a single verse of scripture is something that just rubs me the wrong way. Of course, there is plenty more scripture found in the rest of the document to support other points, but Matthew 28:19 becomes foundational for ministry. As someone who is skeptical of reductionism and foundationalism, I have a hard time reducing the corpus of scripture to a single verse upon which everything in our communal life builds. Ministry is built upon a person, who is the Head of the Body, not an irreducible principle.

Bells started going off in my head when I read the opening statement in the next paragraph:

Effective youth ministries move teens deeper and wider in a concerted and strategic way.

I’m not convinced that it is our goal in ministry is to be effective. I’ve asserted before that youth ministry’s obsession with being successful could be the very thing that has led to its inability to produce lifelong faith in the lives of students. It has been my contention that our goal in ministry is not to be effective, but to be faithful. When considering methods that are “concerted and strategic,” I looked to the ministry of Jesus. While he was doubtlessly concerted (“take up your cross and follow me”), I’m not convinced he had anything remotely resembling a strategy for his ministry other than to do the will of the Father (For a humorous take on Jesus and strategy, see this post at the Faith and Theology blog. Warning: it contains some profanity). Such ministry “strategy” is rooted in cultural notions of efficiency, success, and results. I do believe in helping to move teenagers “past apathy or mere casual interest into a deep spiritual passion for the things of God,” but I’m not sure how strategic that process can be.

I will say more about the “X-factor” later.

As you can see, I share the goals and motivations of D2S to help erase the false dichotomy between discipleship and evangelism and to see people move from apathy to passion. These things we agree on. My contention with their approach seems to lie in epistemology as much as anything. As someone who rejects foundationalism (apart from the person of Jesus Christ), I find it hard to swallow any approach to ministry that tries to build upon an irreducible principle or direction.

Lastly, I’m pretty sure that our definitions of discipleship and evangelism are a bit different. On page 3 evangelism is defined as “sharing gospel truth with those that don’t know Jesus.” Again, my contention is that there is no such thing as a dichotomy between discipleship and evangelism. Thus, I take the stance that at all times we are evangelizing, the only question is what is it that we are evangelizing? I prefer to describe biblical evangelism as sharing the person of Jesus Christ, not the truth about Jesus Christ. Our goal is to be at all times to be sharers of Jesus. This includes verbally, communally, personally, and actively.

Tomorrow we will move on to the next part of the DWYM Thesis.