Community Building

I have finally got around to starting to read Mark Yaconelli's book Contemplative Youth Ministry. Everyone has been blogging and raving about it over the past months. See Ian and Jonny's thoughts here and here. It's been sitting on the shelf for a while but I thought that I better read it. I'm already loving it as Mark reflects on his time working with a very small group of young people and the pressure he put on himself to 'grow' this group. It's already starting to resonate with my ministry.

A further thing that I have been pondering over for a while was also brought to mind as I read. When I was doing my official youth work training we spent a lot of time talking about what youth work is? We were critical (so easy to be critical in that sort of environment) of youth clubs that didn't really serve a purpose, they didn't have curriculum, defined learning goals and outcomes. We were as 'professional' youth workers looking to do do something bigger, better and different. But as I looked around the club that I set up a year ago on Friday night I didn't see much/any curriculum, not real measurable learning outcomes. Instead what I saw was the way a group of young people have made the group into what they wanted. A place to hang out and to have fun for a small group of young people. As I thought about this I realised something that I already knew that this was a safe community for these young people. They didn't on the while want more stuff to learn or do but they just wanted to be together. It strikes me again that one of my roles is to facilitate the building of community and actually most of the time just providing time and spaces for young people to do this themselves.

It seems again that there is some tension between youth work and youth ministry. I have written loads about this is a number of essays and don't see quite as many tensions as some but this just allowing to be together often doesn't cut it for statutory youth provision.

Disclaimer: I am not saying there isn't a place for any of the things I say we don't have in our place. I guess it's again just realising what is right for each context and group of people. Somehow we need to allow space for these things to emerge/develop organically. I also completely recognise the place of informal education within youth work and see it as being one of the fundamental tools of a youth worker of any form. I see my old college lecturer Arthur Brown has done some writing for May's youth work mag on this subject.