Teen 2.0, like all books that I try to reserve for my small group of “Best Youth Ministry Books,” is a game-changer. On reading this post by Mark Ostreicher, I decided it was time to pick up this book by psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein. The premise of the book is pretty simple: adolescence, defined as a period of turmoil (and that word is particularly important to the definition) between childhood and adulthood, is an unnecessary social construct and not a required developmental or biological life stage. He goes even further, and spends 400 pages arguing, to say that not only is adolescence not necessary, but it is actually harmful. For those, like me, in youth ministry who have devoted lives to ministry with people in this very stage of turmoil, that’s a pretty big assertion.

Assuming we accept his thesis, how did we get here? How did we create a life stage called adolescence? In Chapter 2 Epstein gives his account, saying that adolescence as we know it today did not exist until modern industrialization, between 1880 and 1920. Child labor laws and public education systems began to isolate teens from adults, causing the aforementioned turmoil that is common during adolescence. When teens started acting out, the reaction was further laws, further restrictions, and further separation between teens and adults. We have lived in a society with this vicious cycle ever since. Epstein says that for most of human history people have gotten married and started working to support themselves soon after puberty. We have come to the point in America when the median age of first marriage is 27.7 for males and 26.0 for females (p. 30). By treating teens like children (Epstein calls this infantilization), we are creating this stage of turmoil. In one of the most provocative sections of the book a study is given which says that modern teenagers have less significantly freedom than prison inmates or soldiers (p. 11), a recipe for rebellion and turmoil.

Each chapter of the book seems to debunk myth after myth, mostly based on competency tests:

• A high percentage of adolescents score above the average adult on a test of “adultness.”
• Intelligence peaks in the teen years and steadily declines throughout life.
• Teens are just as capable as adults to love each other, and there are no studies which indicate getting married at a young age is more likely to lead to divorce.
• Peak physical condition often occurs in the teen years and then diminishes for the rest of life.
• Creativity peaks in early childhood, diminishes slightly, and then peaks again in the teen years, again to decline steadily throughout life.
• Young people have the potential to be as responsible as adults when it comes to things like employment.

In sum, we are not utilizing the capabilities of our most intelligent, strongest, most creative, most responsible citizens by limiting teens to a life where they are required to go to less-than-ideal schools, are not allowed to be significantly employed, and cannot legally make any decisions for themselves. We are not treating teens according to their potential, but are restricting them in a way that is harmful.

Against this, Epstein wants all people to be judged not on age, as in our current system, but on competency. If someone has the wherewithal to work 40 hours a week, they should be able to, regardless of age. If someone is able to understand contracts, they should be able to sign them, regardless of age. If someone understands how our country works, they should be able to vote. I think you get the idea. The implications and suggestions in the book are staggering.

If you are thinking, like I did, about all the research devoted to adolescence and all the studies that talk about the development particularities in adolescence, Epstein provides a fairly broad rebuttal to that body of evidence: almost every single study out there shows correlation, not causation (195 ff). Of particular interest in adolescent research is brain development, and Epstein spends a few pages dissecting a fairly typical teen research study. He concludes with these words:

But it’s also the case that a wide variety of behaviors–meditating, reading, drinking, having sex and so on–literally change the brain. It’s fundamentally wrong to say that all behavior is caused by the brain, and it’s fundamentally wrong to blame all teen behavior on a teen brain. (p. 197)

I’ve only touched on a few of the assertions and implications that Epstein gives in his book. There are many more worth pondering, not the least of them dealing with our education system (if you want a chapter-by-chapter review and discussion, you can go to Joel Mayward’s blog). I need to do a bit more research on my part before jumping in and assenting to everything Epstein says, but he does give some weighty arguments that challenge almost every popular preconception our culture has of teenagers. If you are someone who works with teens, you simply must read this book. We must. There may be a bounty of untapped potential just waiting to bust forth.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

• Book Review at YMX: Choosing Church
• Youth Ministry as Liberal Theology Update
• Recommended Books for Every Youth Worker’s Library

1. The Bible. There was a time when we could say that “this goes without saying…” but I don’t think we are there anymore. We’ve become so professionalized that often we think that we need to spend so much time reading Relevant Magazine, anything by Seth Godin, or the latest youth ministry book that the Bible has been marginalized. A travesty. A little while back I purchased the same Bible that we give our confirmation students and often use it for personal study. We use the NIV Student Bible.
2. Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation by Andrew Root. It’s the best book written on youth ministry in a few years. If you want to know why it’s so important, read my review and my followup.
3. Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church by Kenda Creasy Dean. Dean argues for the importance of passion in youth ministry. Adolescence is an inherently passionate time, and the heart of the gospel is the passion of Jesus Christ. The two should go hand in hand.
4. Postmodern Youth Ministry by Tony Jones. Some may think this book is getting a little long in the tooth, and it may be, but I still think this is one of the most comprehensive books on the plight of contemporary youth ministry. It was the first book that started me in the process of completely rethinking ministry and the church, not just youth ministry.
5. Soul Searching and Souls in Transition. These books come out of the National Study on Youth and Religion, the definitive study on teenage religiosity in our day. Quite simply, you must be familiar with this study. Soul Searching deals with phase one of the study (teenagers) and Souls in Transition deals with the next phase (following up with those same people when they are 18-23). If you don’t take time to read the books, I’ll sum them up for you: traditional youth ministry doesn’t work. That was freeing to me because it let me know that if I tried something and failed, we weren’t any worse off compared to what we had been doing. There are lots of other important insights that help critique popular wisdom in youth ministry.
6. Anything (actually, everything) by Eugene Peterson. Seriously, Eugene Peterson has a way of weaving together scripture, decades of ministry wisdom, and everyday life in a way that brings you back down to earth. He gives value and meaning to the mundane. Especially in youth ministry, where flash is just as prevalent as any other church ministry, Peterson gives a much needed perspective. I suggest reading anything and everything he has written. If you need a place to start, I recommend: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, or Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work.
7. Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence by Robert Epstein. I haven’t finished this book yet, but it has already profoundly affected the way I think about our teenagers. The basic thesis of the book is that we are hurting our teenagers because we treat them like children. I’m still processing this, but churches have the potential to offer teenagers something they get no where else: value and responsibility.
8. Something(s) by your favorite theologian. I think all youth workers need to read something that will stimulate them theologically. Our task is inherently theological, so keeping your theological wits about you is vitally important. You know how teens like to ask questions that other people are afraid of asking. So, pick your favorite theologian(s) and make sure you read something by them on a regular basis. Some of my favorites are Stanley Hauerwas, N.T. Wright, Kevin Vanhoozer, Walter Brueggemann, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
9. Something missional. We no longer live in a culture of Christendom. Youth ministers are going to have to come to terms, eventually, with doing missional ministry. Some good introductions to the subject have been written by Alan Hirsch, Michael Frost, David Fitch, and Reggie McNeal.
10. Something old. It’s easy to get caught up trying to develop a Simple Purpose-Driven Xtreme Orange youth ministry. Reading books that have stood the test of time help us to transcend the latest fads of the day. Some of my favorite old works include On The Incarnation by Saint Athanasius, The Freedom of a Christian by Martin Luther, and Confessions by Saint Augustine.

That’s my list. What would you add or remove?f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

• Theology & Youth Ministry Project: Want to help?
• New Year’s Resolutions Update
• Now Reading: The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas

If you are fairly in-tune with a lot of the latest conversations around the ineffectiveness of youth ministry then this book will not be much of an eye-opener. You could actually turn to page 78, read the chart on that page, and then pick up reading from there without missing too much. However, if you think youth ministry is rockin’ along, you just finished polishing the 60-inch plasma in the youth room, and are stoked you booked David Crowder to come to your DiscipleNow weekend, then start reading with the forward.

In the sixth chapter, Marko talks about some ways in which to get to a Youth Ministry 3.0 and suggests things like:

• Contextualize
• Get Small
• Help Students Experience God
• Be Communional (hey, read the book if you don’t know what it means)
• Be a Missionary
• Help Students be Missional
• Don’t be Driven

I am in almost total agreement with Marko’s description of the past and where we are currently and his prescription for a move into the future. This is a down-to-earth, readable, brief (125 pages with largish print), imaginative book that should begin to move youth ministry in the proper direction.

For this reason, I’m including it in my “Best Youth Ministry Books” category. The book succeeds at doing what it has set out to do, which is convince us that youth ministry is failing and we need to set a new course. This book would be a great way to get parents, volunteers, church staff, or even older youth involved in the conversation of moving into a 3.0 style of ministry.

So, this book is helpful in that respect. Now, here’s where the book let me down.

As I read it, the book was structured in such a way to say that youth ministry’s forms have adapted to the culture. The reason that we are failing is because youth ministry has not moved along with adolescent culture into the third epoch. Thus, the effectiveness of youth ministry is tied to its ability to make changes in line with the culture.

I have a problem with this cultural definition of success. Essentially, the book seems to be saying that our ecclesiology needs to be informed by the culture. I disagree, and I’m going to get nit-picky here.

Yes, postmodernism has created a cultural shift, but the reason it has done so is because our assumptions about modernism were faulty. Modernism failed. Postmodernism is a critique of the modern emphasis on a scientific, objective, rational epistemology. Why this matters for the church is because we cannot separate epistemology from our hermeneutics, which means we read the Bible differently than before (and I would say, better). Our assumptions are changing about what it means to do and be the Church. This is as much an ecclesiological shift as it is a youth ministry shift.

I wish the book would have spoken more towards some of these deeper issues. We are literally rethinking some of the ontological assumptions about the church, not just how to change the medium through which we proclaim a timeless message. Part of the message is changing. The gospel is no longer a message the the church proclaims, but it is a message that the church bears in it’s essence. We are relearning what Paul meant when he said the church was the Body of Christ and that we are a people of the Spirit. The radical quote by Bonhoeffer that “The church is the presence of Christ in the same way that Christ is the presence of God” is starting to take root.

By making the argument a cultural one, we can say that youth ministry 1.0 was a good thing, youth ministry 2.0 was a good thing, and youth ministry 3.0 will be a good thing because they were simply cultural adaptations. No one’s toes get stepped on that way.

To make the claim that there are ontological shifts occurring in our ecclesiology is to suggest that part of the old way was wrong. I know it’s a bold thing to say, but I think it needs to be said.

That’s not to say that youth ministry 3.0 and the wider ecclesiology that it fits into will be perfect. But I am saying that we won’t be wrong in the same way that the modern church was. The movement that comes after us will likely show us where we were wrong and missing the boat.

Marko has written a book that does a good job for most of our churches at getting people up-to-speed in only 126 pages. Because of that, I will likely buy it in bulk and hand it out. But I will also push people beyond the cultural argument made in the book and try and get at the deeper theological issues that are changing the way we think about our faith.

f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

• Youth Ministry and Ecclesiology
• Further Thoughts on Youth Ministry 3.0
• Now Reading: Everyday Theology by Kevin Vanhoozer (ed.)

While reading the book, I came to the realization that, to my knowledge, there is no youth ministry book that is as theologically deep and rich as Root’s. Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster’s book The Godbearing Life is the only work close to Root’s in nature, but even it does not probe the depths of a particular theological subject like Root’s. In my estimation, Root’s book will be noted as being the first in a line of theological books written specifically for the context of youth ministry. With the publication of this book, a new (and needed) genre has been birthed.

Creating a new genre isn’t bad for a first book.

The reason this book excites me so much is that I believe this book is an eschatalogical event (okay, that might be a little bit of a stretch). Let me explain. Over a year ago I predicted that the next 50 years of youth ministry would see the theologizing of youth ministry. I said, among other things,

This is why I say that the theologization of youth ministry in the next 50 years will determine whether or not it will live or die. In order to be faithful to the gospel, and not bound to success, we must be able to discern when we are being faithful and when we are neutering the gospel. Among other things, theology is the practice of discernment. For those who are called as professional youth ministers, we must possess within us the ability to perceive the theological implications of everything that we do. Instead of seeing the goal and achieving it with any means possible, we must determine whether or not our means is theologically sound as well.

Yes, I do think I made that “theologization” word up.

For me, Root’s book is the expectation of the future coming to pass in the present. With Root’s book we are making the turn towards a new paradigm in youth ministry.

Yes, the book is a bit difficult to read for some; it is truly a theological work. Yes, we want to ask “but will this work?” Yes, sometimes it seems like there is a bit of practicality missing from the book.

But the reason this book might be so uncomfortable, so challenging, so unfamiliar, and so overwhelming for many of us is that we are reading it while still operating out of the current paradigm of ministry while Root is coming to the table with a completely different set of presuppositions. We would do well to listen to it diligently, since it will be our tendency to try and fit the book into our current paradigm. But to do so would be to lose the weight of the book.

This is the first book to my knowledge that is doing real theology for the sake of youth ministry. But I don’t believe it will be the last. The future of youth ministry is upon us.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

• Best Youth Ministry Books: Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry
• Andrew Root's New LiveBlog: Today at 3:30 PM
• Book Review: Relationships Unfiltered by Andrew Root

In his book, which appears to be a reworking of his doctoral dissertation, Root blows open the traditional conception of relational youth ministry as a tool used to gain the right to speak influence in the lives of teenagers. Root thinks this is theologically void and calls it a way of practicing the theological heresy of docetism. Drawing from research conducted while a doctoral student at Princeton Theological Seminary, Root found that in youth ministries, “relationships have been used for cultural leverage (getting adolescents to believe or obey) rather than as the concrete location of God’s action in the world.” This popular strategy of ministry is often touted as incarnational, because this seems to be the way in which Jesus conducted ministry. Root goes on to say,

I have realized that a youth ministry of influence has very little to do with the incarnation…. God became human to be with and for us, not simply to influence us toward this or that end. (This would actually be there heresy of docetism, which believed that Jesus only appeared to be human in order to influence us.)… The incarnation is not about influence but accompaniment.

For the bulk of the book, Root forges a new genre in the niche of youth ministry literature as he constructs a theological treatise for robust incarnational youth ministry, drawing almost exclusively from the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He seeks to answer three questions and show their relevance to youth ministry: Who is Jesus Christ? Where is Jesus Christ? What then Shall We Do? As I told Rusty and Noah the other day, his book could be subtitled something like “If Dietrich Bonhoeffer did Youth Ministry.”

Root does not simply leave his method to intellectual theological arguments, but gives us a final chapter on what this might look like in real youth ministries. His suggestions and theological insights, if taken to heart, really do have the potential to change youth ministry as we know it.

While reading the book, I came to the realization that, to my knowledge, there is no youth ministry book that is as theologically deep and rich as Root’s. Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster’s book The Godbearing Life is the only work close to Root’s in nature, but even it does not probe the depths of a particular theological subject like Root’s. In my estimation, Root’s book will be noted as being the first in a line of theological books written specifically for the context of youth ministry. With the publication of this book, a new (and needed) genre has been birthed.

This is truly a must-read book. Root’s gift to the youth ministry community is not only in the content he provides, but also in modeling for us what it looks like to think theologically about youth ministry. Taking both to heart will change for the better the way you do and think about youth ministry. In fact, this book is helpful in forging a Neo-Youth Ministry.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

• Revisiting “Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry”
• Get a FREE Copy of Relationships Unfiltered by Andrew Root
• Book Review: Relationships Unfiltered by Andrew Root

“Well, I believe he is Lord for you,” came the response.

“I must not have explained myself,” I said. “He claimed not just to be Lord for Tony but for all humanity – in fact, for all creation.”

“That’s fine. I believe that for you, he is Lord of all creation.”

“But he claims to be Lord of all creation for everyone.”

“Okay, for you he’s Lord of all creation for everyone”

After reading that conversation, I realized my presuppositions of youth ministry that I had brought with me into college would need to be modified, at least a little bit. Unknown to me, this book started me down the long road of radically rethinking what it means to be a Christian, do ministry, and be a church. My theology also ended up shifting significantly. For me, this was the book that got the ball rolling.

In the book, Tony sets forth a philosophy of ministry that is sensitive to our current postmodern context. One of the best features of the book is that other authors were asked to comment on the book and their thoughts are in the margins of the book, right alongside the main text. There are comments by Rudy Carrasco, Brad Cecil, Mark Driscoll, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, Sally Morgenthaler, Doug Pagitt, Kara Powell, Leonard Sweet, Pete Ward, and Mike Yaconelli. The pseudo-dialogue that this produces is great to observe and think about.

Tony has left the youth ministry scene to some extent, now being the national coordinator of Emergent Village, but he still does a lot of work with youth ministry organizations, denominations, and churches. As of 2006, he was still a staple of the Youth Specialties National Youth Worker Convention. You will be blessed and stretched by reading this book.

More posts on this book to come.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

• Best Youth Ministry Books: Postmodern Youth Ministry, Chapter 1
• Best Youth Ministry Books Series
• Recommended Books for Every Youth Worker’s Library