When I am training people to do youth work, I often ask them how young people are commonly described. Often, the list of derogatory terms is longer than the list of positive ones. Words such as 'hoodie', 'rebel' and 'feral' all have negative connotations and shape a particular view. Yet in the church there's another set of words that can be used. Young people are defined as disciples, or evangelists.
In his book Faith Generation, Nick Shepherd suggests that young people are often cast in the role of learners within churches and never move on, with the first actual decision they might make being to leave the church.
What I want to suggest is that instead of a sociological view of young people, we adopt a theological view and consider that young people are actually theologians.
Theologians? Seriously?
Aren't theologians are the geek guys who do dull sermons? They're the writers and the academics – and that's not who young people are, is it?
Implied in some aspects of youth ministry is that young people 'just need a simple faith', the easy stuff, something relevant, attractive... and there's no way young people want to be theologians. They want to be nurses, sports physios, teachers and artists.
The trouble is, young people are already theologians. It's too late.
Part of the human condition is a continual curiosity. This is borne out in Paul's speech in Antioch, in Acts 17:27: Paul says we have been created with an inbuilt desire to continually search after God, in the hope that he might be found. Theology is in everything we do in churches and in youth ministry. We operate as theologians, we speak theology, it's in the everyday. And if we do it, so do young people.
These are some of the ways children and young people act as theologians. They can be:
Innocent theologians
There is often an innocence to the curiosity and intuition of children in their spiritual awareness. It is from their pure hearts that truths of flow out of their innocent connections with God.
Curious theologians
This might be all of us, but maybe most notably those who deliberately search, who ask questions, who find God in the process of the search and the depth of the soul. Young people might not study God, but they might be studying the world to find a source of meaning. Or searching to find a way to make sense of the purpose in their life, to find a story that enables everything they know to fit together. This might be a God story or a different one. Curiosity is part of being human. It's about life–long learning and being brought into new and expansive understandings of God.
Intuitive Theologians
Kenda Creasy Dean suggests that young people are intuitive theologians. It is as if they can sense God at work. They do this out of the same innocence and curiosity. So it might be worth thinking about the creative spaces where young people are intuitive and showing that they have the desire for deep meaning, for making sense of the world, for something to believe that might be true. And it's in the 'how' of something being done that young people might discover the 'why'. Often as a youth worker this happens in the everyday conversations, even just on the streets.
Practical Theologians
Young people not only want something to be true. It needs to be useful – a hopeful, practical faith. It needs to be the daily encounter with God in the midst of the ordinary that directs, guides and prompts action. It's not in the arguments about truth where God might be found, but in the everyday spaces. As practical theologians, young people want to find the usefulness of faith in the everyday, the joys, sufferings, pains and losses.
Performing Theologians
For a young person to perform theology is to give them opportunities to act in accordance with their beliefs about God in the world. The language of performance and theatre in theology implies that faith is about drama and action. As performing theologians, their knowledge of God becomes an action that also forms them as they do it. When it comes to performing the kind of life Jesus asked of young people, most of this is wrapped up in expectations of attending events and services. As performing theologians, young people should be given opportunities to become performers and creators of their own understanding of faith, with churches leaving spaces for young people's performances in accordance with the gospel of good news: acts of sacrificial love, mercy and justice – performing out of love for God and in the world to transform it. To be hope in communities, not hope in holy spaces.
If in working with young people in our churches and organisations we consider young people to be theologians, what might that mean for resources, programmes and practices? How might they be treated differently as a result? If viewing young people as theologians is our starting point for children's and youth ministry, how might this affect how we facilitate their formation on a pathway to being performers?
In this understanding, we're to develop a theological language for young people that sees them already adept at being attuned to the knowledge of God from birth. We're to create spaces and practices to continually form them as theologians, who find, interpret and perform out of their faith in the everyday, and are practical and prophetic in that performance.
James Ballantyne has been involved in detached youth work and youth ministry for 13 years. He is currently completing an MA in Theology and Ministry at Durham University and is in the process of developing detached and pioneer youthwork in North East England with FYT.
He can be contacted via his blog for youthwork training, consultancy or supervisions.
