I am heading over to Sydney to meet with the Youth Vision Australia crew next week. We thought that we may as well take in a conference whilst there.
The Sydney Anglican youth department (YouthWorks) are running this Theology of Youth Ministry conference. It looks quite the academic style conference you would expect from the Sydney Anglicans. The week before the conference, all the speakers notes come out in a PDF.
This one caught my attention. The speaker is Graham Stanton, Principal of the Youth Works Bible college. His topic? All Things to All People? The Incarnation and Relational Youth Ministry.
In his notes are the following thoughts and reflections on a book by English Youth Minister and Author Pete Ward;
This incarnational approach (also referred to as ‘relational outreach’) follows five
basic stages: contact, extended contact, proclamation, nurture and church. The aim is
to move young people who are well outside the social group of the existing church to
see them established in their own church, one where the gospel is contextualised
within their own culture. The process seeks to establish a relationship (contact:
‘going to places where [young people] naturally “hung out”’ p.47), and develop that
relationship (extended contact: ‘moves a relationship physically away from the point
of contact’, with the youth worker ‘signalling that [the young people] are significant
to him’ and the youth are ‘expressing an acceptance of the youth minister’, p.53).
The aim of this relationship building is to move to a significant new stage when the
youth worker looks for opportunities to proclaim the gospel message. The
importance of contact and extended contact as pre-cursors to this stage is summed up
in the imperative (attributed to Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life) that youth
workers ‘earn the right to speak’ (p.60).
Once young people make a response to the gospel the focus of the ministry moves to
nurture and church. Notable in Ward’s approach is that this work of discipleship
needs to be done outside existing church groups. Ward notes, ‘we are hoping that the
faith can become real within their own subcultural setting’ (p.63). The final outcome
will be a new church where the gospel is ‘contextualised amongst a group of people
who were not previously part of the Church. The hope is that Jesus can become real
within the subculture which these people share’ (p.18).
(italics mine)
Wow! Sounds like a Forge conference to me! Not sure the S.Anglican crew would recognize it as such, but boy, some of the stuff being suggested looks like something from Neil Coles Organic Church or as I said, a speaker at a Forge gig. Well they say there is nothing new under the sun, and if God is making moves to disrupt the way we have done church and church planting for a while who says it will not be coming out from all sorts of places, in fact it would be arrogant of me to ever think Forge or even the emerging church in general has some right to claim ideas such as the above as their own – they are starting to leak out in all sorts of odd places! Must be God 🙂
No Guarantees 
But Scott, just wondering how the approach you describe here is any different than the centuries-old ‘bounded set’ mentality (us and them) with the ultimate aim of turning ‘them’ into ‘us’ either by attraction or conscription?
So true, it’s couched in some other language. I kept reading the other 49 pages and it got scarier!
Rev. ……….
Greetings from Jesus Loves Ministry!
He said to them; “Go into the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15).
It is really privilege for me to introduce my ministry to you. I am from Pakistan ; I and my team felt the need to establish the Jesus Loves Ministry. We day and night struggle to preach the word of God and real teachings of Holy Bible.
We also make them realize that how great is to be a Christian, because the Jesus Christ has bought us by shedding His blood on the cross. We thrust to bring many people close to God who are faraway from God and are fallen in sin. Apart from the spiritual development ministry is also concerned for the social and economic uplift of the poor, depressed, marginalized and downtrodden people through education, skill trainings.
As I was visiting your site I found that you are doing the marvelous work to preach the Word of God.
Our ministry is doing the following work.
· Door to door Preaching
· Sunday Schools
· Bible Education for Youth
· Prayer Meetings
· Street Prayers.
· Conventions
· Home Schools
· Adult Literacy Centers
· Vocational Training Centers for Women
· Economic Development program for People
· Bible correspondence school
· To show the religious movies
I watch your website and read your valuable material in English, as in Pakistan most of the people are uneducated they are not able to read and understand the English. I can translate your work in our local language so that people may read and understand it in the better way. As we don’t have any regular support for our Ministry work, the income generated by the translation work would be a great help from your ministry or church to run our above mentioned ministry work and activities
I hope you will consider my humble request favorably.
God bless you, your family and work abundantly.
Yours truly, In Jesus,
Evangelist: Saima Benjamin
House #. Street #.
Phn +923003562128
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