Practicing Discernment with Youth: A Transformative Youth Ministry Approach

by David F. White

Overview

Throughout history youth have been at the center of their communities' energy and creativity, including their efforts to seek faith and justice. However, today's adolescents have been relegated as passive learners and consumers, lacking full adult power for longer than any age cohort in history. This book traces the modern domestication of adolescence from its ancient roots through several key moments of its descent into passivity. Empowering youth as agents of Christian faith in the world is not only a social need, but is theologically warranted. The church and the broken world need the gifts of youth. This book elaborates four pedagogical movements--listening, understanding, remembering/dreaming, and acting--as key for noticing and nurturing the faith commitments of youth. Too much of contemporary youth ministry represents an attempt to pump energy into our youth--to get them excited about what we have to offer. This approach attends to energies already present in the lived experiences and hidden commitments of youth and connects them to God's mission in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725239012
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	09/13/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David F. White is the C. Ellis Nelson Professor of Christian Education at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Dreamcare: A Theology of Youth, Spirit, and Vocation (2013) and co-author of Awakening Youth Discipleship: Christian Resistance in a Consumer Culture (2007).  


David F. White is the C. Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Professor of Christian Education at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. David’s most recent writing includes Joy: A Guide for Youth Ministry with Sarah F. Farmer and Miroslav Volf (2020), Dreamcare: A Theology of Youth, Spirit, and Vocation (Cascade, 2013), Awakening Youth Discipleship: Christian Resistance in a Consumer Culture with Brian J. Mahan and Michael Warren (Cascade, 2007), and Practicing Discernment with Youth (2005).

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Putting youth ministry in its place 1

Part 1 Discernment as an approach to youth ministry

1 The social construction of adolescence and the vocation of youth: A theological vision for youth ministry 11

2 Cultural forces and the crisis in contemporary youth ministry 33

3 Reclaiming the Christian practice of discernment 61

Part 2 Practicing discernment in your setting

4 Listening: Loving God with your heart-Movement one 87

5 Understanding: Loving God with your mind - Movement two 112

6 Remembering and dreaming: Loving God with your soul - Movement three 136

7 Acting: Loving God with your strength-Movement four 173

8 Appropriating discernment for ministry with youth 200

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“My educated guess is that when students look back at the last two decades in youth ministry scholarship, they’ll call it a renaissance. It will be acknowledged as the period where youth ministry founded its own research programs and matured into a location of rich theological thought. When that history is written, David White’s Practicing Discernment will sit at the top of the list of examples. This book that you hold has broken ground, making space for others like me to do my work. I’m incredibly thankful for David’s work, and honored to endorse the re-release of this important, groundbreaking book. If you somehow missed it before—or it's been years since you read it—dive into this re-release. You won’t be disappointed.”

—Andrew Root, Luther Seminary and author of Faith Formation in a Secular Age



“In Practicing Discernment with Youth, David White paints a lush vision for youth ministry that takes seriously the wisdom, power, and vocation of young people called into a discipleship of action. More than a decade after the book’s original release, youth ministry continues to wander in the desert of domestication, capitulating to approaches smeared with consumerism and spectacle, and White’s vision for youth ministry patterned by Christian discernment remains a crucial map for exiting the wilderness.”

— Andrew Zirschky, Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Youth Ministry, Memphis Theological Seminary, Academic Director at the Center for Youth Ministry Training, and author of Beyond the Screen: Youth Ministry for the Connected But Alone Generation.



“If you read only one book on youth ministry, it should be this book. If you are a practical theologian, here is a thoughtful diagnosis of how our maladaptive culture distorts young lives. If you train youth workers, here is a concise introduction to the church’s treasure chest of discernment practices. If you are a youth worker, here is a detailed, practical guide to equipping youth to discern the call of God throughout their lives.”

—Skip Masback, Founding Director of the Youth Ministry Initiative, Associate Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and Director of YCFC’s Adolescent Faith and Flourishing Program.

Editorial Reviews

My educated guess is that when students look back at the last two decades in youth ministry scholarship, they’ll call it a renaissance. It will be acknowledged as the period where youth ministry founded its own research programs and matured into a location of rich theological thought. When that history is written, David White’s Practicing Discernment will sit at the top of the list of examples. This book that you hold has broken ground, making space for others like me to do my work. I’m incredibly thankful for David’s work, and honored to endorse the re-release of this important, groundbreaking book. If you somehow missed it before—or it's been years since you read it—dive into this re-release. You won’t be disappointed.”

—Andrew Root, Luther Seminary and author of Faith Formation in a Secular Age



“In Practicing Discernment with Youth, David White paints a lush vision for youth ministry that takes seriously the wisdom, power, and vocation of young people called into a discipleship of action. More than a decade after the book’s original release, youth ministry continues to wander in the desert of domestication, capitulating to approaches smeared with consumerism and spectacle, and White’s vision for youth ministry patterned by Christian discernment remains a crucial map for exiting the wilderness.”

— Andrew Zirschky, Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Youth Ministry, Memphis Theological Seminary, Academic Director at the Center for Youth Ministry Training, and author of Beyond the Screen: Youth Ministry for the Connected But Alone Generation.



“If you read only one book on youth ministry, it should be this book. If you are a practical theologian, here is a thoughtful diagnosis of how our maladaptive culture distorts young lives. If you train youth workers, here is a concise introduction to the church’s treasure chest of discernment practices. If you are a youth worker, here is a detailed, practical guide to equipping youth to discern the call of God throughout their lives.”

—Skip Masback, Founding Director of the Youth Ministry Initiative, Associate Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and Director of YCFC’s Adolescent Faith and Flourishing Program.

From the Publisher