Relationships Unfiltered: Help for Youth Workers, Volunteers, and Parents on Creating Authentic Relationships

by Andrew Root

Publisher:

Zondervan

, 2013

Overview

For more than 50 years, relational or incarnational ministry has been a major focus in youth ministry. But for too long, those relationships have been used as tools—as a means to an end—where adults try to influence students to accept, know, trust, believe, or participate in something. While our motives may be good, it’s possible that by focusing on these goals, we’re not ministering the whole person. When we choose not to engage in the full life of a student, we run the risk of failing them and our ministry. In this thoughtful and insightful book, Andrew Root challenges us to reconsider our motives and begin to consider simply being with and doing life alongside teenagers with no agenda other than to love them right where they are, by place-sharing. As he shares stories of his (and others’) successes and failures in relational youth ministry, you’ll find practical ideas to help you recreate the role of relationships in your youth ministry. If you’re involved in the lives of teenagers, whether as a youth pastor, volunteer youth worker, church leader, or parent, you’ll want to read this book and work together to discover the value of place-sharing in the lives of teens. You’ll see that it’s time to tear down the old structure of relational youth ministry and start again.

Product Details

• Title : Relationships Unfiltered: Help for Youth Workers, Volunteers, and Parents on Creating Authentic Relationships
• Author: Root, Andrew
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication Date: 2013
• ISBN: 9780310515340

About Andrew Root

Andrew Root (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has written extensively about youth ministry. He is the author of numerous books, including Faith Formation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker, The Children of Divorce, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, and Relationships Unfiltered, and the coauthor (with Kenda Creasy Dean) of The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry.