Book Review

Practicing Passion
Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church
Kenda Creasy Dean Wm.B.Eerdmans 2004 260p

Review by Ray Hoekzema

An appealing title that has you thinking of a popular, light read. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book digs deep into “Youth Ministry” and is directed to people whom God has called to “translate” doctrine for forming young people in the name of Christ to become envoys of God. For a definition, Dean sees it as a ministry by, with, and for people between the onset of puberty and the enduring commitments of adulthood. She says that they are searching for passion even - maybe especially - in church. What do we mean by “passion”? Christians proclaim a double meaning for passion. It connotes “suffering' in the sense of being unwillingly overwhelmed by a powerful experience as well as being willingly overtaken by great emotion.

In a prelude, the author likens Abraham offering Isaac on an altar to parents letting go of their adolescent children on the altar of freedom of the world, of adulthood. She says: “We must give them up, and either turn them loose or bind them to something sacred – and hope!” What compels young people to search for “a love worth dying for” is really God’s gift of passion - a quest for Love who died for them, the Love who never disappoints, who will not let them down, and who will not go away. The search of young people is in fact a deep human longing for authentic love that is particularly acute during adolescence.
When young people acknowledge the Passion of Christ, their adolescent passions give way to faith and fueled by love, this faith leads to ministry. But youth ministry is ultimately about something much more than youth ministry. Though it has routinely capitalised on the passions of adolescents, little attention has been given to connecting them to the Passion of Christ. Already in 1934, theologian Dietriech Bonhoeffer suggested that the ‘problem’ of youth would not be answered by youth ministry, but by theology. The future of the church does not depend on youth but only on Jesus Christ. Their task is not reorganising the church but listening to God’s Word. The church’s task is not the conquest of young people, but the teaching of the Gospel. Faith, it turns out, is far more likely to take root in the contexts of families, congregations, and significant adult-youth relationships.

Christian passion encounters global culture that offers distorted views of passion that range from sex to jihad. Whether young people discover the true source of passion – whether they ever connect their desire for love with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ or with the church at all, for that matter – largely depends on whether the church bears witness to a love more true then those available in the popular culture. Most young people come to us brimming with passion. Could it be, asks Dean, that instead of fanning this youthful zeal into holy fire, we have more often doused it, dismissed it, or drowned it in committee meetings?

The book is generally divided in three sections advocating a theological awareness of youth ministry - for the sake of the youth, obviously, but also for the sake of the church. Shared Passions - theological resonance between the Passion of Christ and adolescents‘ experience of passion. Dimensions of Passions – the probing of contemporary culture’s distortion of three dimensions of pathos - fidelity, transcendence, and communion. Practicing Passion - suggesting a framework for youth ministry. Christian identity takes place in the midst of both belief-shaping practices, and practice-shaped beliefs.

The author, who is associate professor of youth, church, and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, has drawn significantly upon Jurgen Moltmann's reflections on passions. One critic rates her the liveliest theologian of youth culture in the United States. Well, whatever, she provides us with a load of well-researched material, which makes the book a valuable contribution to a debate that will only ever end when Jesus returns.
 

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