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Experiential Youth Ministry Handbook
How Intentional Activity Can Make the Spiritual Stuff Stick Chapter One
Experiential Basics One great thing about youth ministry is variety. You might be a small group leader for a church or you might be a camp counselor. One minute you're tossing jellybeans onto a face covered with whip cream, and the next you're praying alongside a hurting kid.
I'm fortunate to have worked in several kinds of ministries. I've spent many summers at camp, including a few at Indian Village, a rustic facility that's part of Forest Home Christian Conference Center. The campers slept in tepees, ate outside, and hiked a lot. They knew the staff members by their Indian names; I was Bear.
During my first summer at the Village, I was a lead counselor, meaning I led about 35 kids and five to seven counselors for a week. Armed with a backpack and leather vest, I taught kids about Jesus, led them in singing, taught them outdoor skills, and guided them on hikes.
The hikes especially were hot and dusty. I often shed my vest and backpack and found a willing camper to lug them around for me. The kids were surprisingly excited to carry the heavy backpack or to wear the thick leather vest. They were happy. I was cooler. A classic win-win situation.
Several years later I was the Indian Village director. While interviewing potential staff members for the coming summer, I spoke to a guy who had been a camper in my tribe during my early years. He told me that I had a huge impact on his life. I asked if the impact was because of a Bible lesson I had taught or if it had been a worship time I led.
He shook his head. "Nope. It was the time you let me carry your backpack." He must have seen the confusion on my face as he continued. "I was blown away that you trusted me enough to carry your backpack. You thought I was responsible, and nobody had ever trusted me like that before."
As he explained how this act-significant to him, insignificant to me-started him on a new life path, I could think only about how giving up the pack was not about his growth but my comfort. He wasn't supposed to be learning then, was he?
The Bible studies, worship times, and evening meetings we put so much effort into are supposed to be what touch lives. Yet for this camper, the most significant impact came from the real-life experience of carrying a backpack.
While the traditional teaching times play an important role in ministry, I've found that the most powerful lessons occur during real-life interactions. In all the ministry I've done, either working with students or training staff, experience has always been the best teacher. Whether accidental or intentional, experiences touch lives deeply.
In the case of this camper-turned-staff-applicant, my accidental lesson was powerfully positive. I shudder to think of all the accidental lessons I passed along that were significantly less encouraging.
There are no throwaway moments in youth ministry. Not only is someone always watching us, someone is always learning. Accidental experiences, like the boy with my backpack, do not always result in positive lessons. There is potential to learn something from every experience, but the lesson may not be helpful, especially if we aren't paying attention. But if we know that experience teaches and if we learn how to use experience intentionally, our ministries will touch lives in deep, positive ways.
Experiential methods intentionally use experience to transform lives. This approach to ministry utilizes events from life and from programmed encounters to teach, increase depth, and strengthen communities.
When you read the phrase experiential methods, you may conjure images of a small group of dirty, sweaty backpackers slogging along a mountain trail. Or maybe you envision a person perched on top of an 80-foot telephone pole, building up the courage to leap for a trapeze bar. If you're familiar with experiential methods at all, it's probably in the context of outdoor and adventure programming, two powerful applications of these methods. Group bonding and positive self-image are two common outcomes of this application.
Understanding how experiential methods work can help you move it from mountains to meeting rooms. Biblical truth can be brought to life by creating programs based on these methods. A basic understanding of the following models will help you better understand and apply the activities and programs presented later in this book.
But be warned. These methods commonly produce extreme results. Lives will be transformed permanently and continuously. Providing information will never be enough for you anymore.
Praxis
Praxis is a little word that packs a big punch. It's an old word that's finding new life in the world of theology and in education. Some have used it as a fancy way of saying, "Learn by doing." Others have given it more depth by describing it as the movement from theory to practice.
There's more to it really. Praxis is a way of understanding the world when, through reflection, what you do impacts how you think and how you think impacts what you do. It's the ongoing collision of theory, action, and reflection. Understanding the components and dynamics of Praxis can help you improve your current programs and can help you intentionally design new ones. The insights gained through this theory will benefit staff and students alike.
Praxis has three parts: theory, action, and reflection. While theory, action, and reflection can stand alone as important parts of programming, in Praxis these three connect, interact, and impact each other. Let's look at these parts separately first to make it easier to understand the dynamics between them.
Theory
Schools, seminaries, and other training opportunities are based on a particular theory or model. They lay out a perspective on why and how things work. Theories are important because they express a collective memory on specific topics.
"If I see any farther, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants." -ABRAHAM LINCOLN
They are the "shoulders of giants" that Abraham Lincoln stood upon to see farther. Because of theories and models, we don't reinvent the wheel or rediscover fire every generation. Hard-won lessons are passed on as an inheritance from those who preceded us, so we can move further along, add to our collective understanding, and pass new ideas on to those who come after us.
The desire to be innovative-on the cutting edge-sometimes lures us away from existing models and theories. But being creative doesn't mean we must ignore ideas that have worked.
Another mistake is to place too much emphasis on a theory or model. The purpose-driven model, the seeker-sensitive model, and this experiential model are powerful, but they're created in a specific context and written in generalities. They can't be copied elsewhere and produce the same results. Students are different, the community is different, and you are different. Theories and models can't be ignored, nor are they the total solution. Theories must be considered along with who they'll be applied to and how they'll be acted on.
Theory makes up most of the content of formal education. It's easy to package, and the diagrams are interesting. From the teacher's standpoint, theory is tidy. Schools have limited time to get through mounds of material. Nice, neat models make packaging this material efficient and create great opportunities to pass along the collective wisdom born from the experience of those who have gone before.
"Ideas are poor ghosts until they become incarnate in a soul. Then they reach out and touch the world and shake it with a passion." -GEORGE ELIOT
Theory must be applied to real life to be of value to us on the front lines of youth ministry. But real life is seldom as well defined as the theories and models we're given. Real life is messy.
Action
Many of us who are attracted to youth ministry find talking about theory boring- and maybe a waste of time. Talking about action is a different matter.
"Tell me what to do, so I can do ministry."
Ministry skills give us a head start in performing ministry. If you have little experience, these elements are vital. Giving staff specific assignments or students a step-by-step guide results in immediate and practical action. What we do is what touches the people we serve. Without action nothing gets accomplished.
Tips, tricks, and techniques make up the majority of content in training seminars. When youth workers spend their limited time and money on seminars, they want to walk away with hands-on skills they can use immediately. "Ten Steps to Effective Ministry" creates the instant gratification they seek.
The same principle is true for many sermons. Passing along specific actions can be neatly packaged in a workshop or sermon format. Limited time leads to training that cuts content to the bare essentials. "Just tell me what to do!" Learning the skills necessary for leading an activity, creating a lesson, or disciplining students is essential in becoming an effective youth worker just as learning how to pray is essential for being a Christian.
These skills are not just recipes for effectiveness. They're based on theory. There are reasons they work. Knowing the tricks will help in a specific context, but knowing why tricks work helps you transfer them to other situations. Actions that work in one situation may not be effective in another. Without direction, action may be wasted energy or chaos. The wrong action at the wrong time may cause damage to the people we're trying to build up.
Actions are mere convulsions until they become informed by thought and intent. Then they not only touch the world but also gently caress it. -BEAR
We're all different, with unique personalities and talents. Certain skills required for ministry or spiritual disciplines come easier to some than others. A ministry may adopt a ministry model that requires a specific set of skills. Considering the why and how of ministry aren't enough. The who matters too. The people who will actually be living out the ministry-the students, leaders, and volunteers -must also be considered. If we're forced into a certain course of action that doesn't match who we are, we'll run away or burn out.
Reflection
So what's reflection? Reflection allows the space and time for an experience to impact people. Students and staff members personalize the teaching so it directly transforms their lives. Reflection is that moment that lets them breathe deep and consider how their lives might be impacted and changed by the new experience. It's that simple.
The difficult, scary part is trusting the silence and open space, having faith that reflection is effective. In the constant hustle of our culture, reflection seems like a waste of time. While people are reflecting, we receive few, if any, indications of what's going on inside them. We're tempted to fill the apparent void with more action or to move to the next concept. Fear of the void keeps us bouncing from topic to topic, from activity to activity, never allowing any of them to sink in. The result is that we know a lot but can't apply any of it. Can ministries function without reflection? Sure they can, but they're missing out on huge potential for depth and power.
"I've got to empty out the inside of my head." -DAVID WILCOX
David: Reflection Illustrated
David and Saul were both anointed kings of Israel. God's blessing was taken from Saul, but David is known as a man after God's own heart. What made the difference?
Saul did some terrible things as king. He took credit for what Jonathan did (1 Samuel 13:3), became jealous of David (1 Samuel 8:8), and killed 85 priests (1 Samuel 22:18), just to name a few. The turning point for Saul was when God told him to completely destroy the Amalekites. Saul won the battle, but he selected the best stuff to take home and sacrifice to God (1 Samuel 15:1-26). If we didn't hear God's command to Saul, his actions would seem to be great devotion to God. They weren't. By disobeying God, Saul made the victory about himself, not God. So God removed his blessing from Saul and had Samuel anoint David as king.
David also did some terrible things. He lied to protect himself (1 Samuel 21:2), murdered Uriah (2 Samuel 11:14-15), and had an affair with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:1-5).
How was David different from Saul?
David sat!
David finished with the battles and settled into his palace. There, he thought that God deserved to live in something better than a tent. This seemed like a great idea to everyone including Nathan, David's pastor. But God had different plans. God told Nathan to pass along the message that David was not to build the temple.
At this point in the story, David was in the same situation as Saul. From the viewpoint of everyone on the outside, building the temple would have seemed like a great sacrifice to God. But David knew it was not God's desire. Building the temple would boost David's reputation as a man of God in everyone's eyes but God's. Instead of taking action, he reflected. He went to the tabernacle and sat before God.
This moment of "inaction" is what set him apart from Saul. Reflection made the difference between being a common king and being a man after God's own heart.
You can function in ministry knowing what to do, how to do it, and why. But is that enough? Reflection connects ministry to who you are. Instead of following someone else's recipe, you're following your passion. Reflection encourages you to see how your life fits a theory and how your heart connects to your actions.
Dynamics
Theory, action, and reflection are important concepts by themselves, but separately, their power to transform is limited. Praxis finds its power in their interdependence. One or two of them aren't nearly as powerful as all three of them combined.
Have you ever used a projection TV? Many of them use three different lenses to project all the colors. Using only one of the lenses let's you see a pale, monochromatic image. You can barely make out an image on the screen. With two of the three lenses, you can see the motion better, but the images are strangely colored ghosts, off-color and far from the maker's intention. Only when all three lenses are projecting do the images appear in full color and intensity.
Theory, action, and reflection are the three lenses of Praxis. If one of them is missing, the entire image is distorted.
Continues...
Excerpted from Experiential Youth Ministry Handbook by John Losey Copyright © 2004 by Zondernvan. Excerpted by permission.
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