Discussing Incarnational Youth Work – Part 5. What dangers can it cause?

A couple of years ago I conducted an informal survey of fifty-seven full-time youth ministers who considered themselves to be ‘incarnational’ in their approach. 66.7% of them gave out their personal phone number to young people, and 52.6% gave their personal address. Of these 59.6% said they did not give any boundaries for when a young person could contact them. One respondent said he had an open-door policy: ‘For the most part, our door stays unlocked and they know they have the freedom to come in even if we are not home.’

This post is all about the practical dangers with those incarnational methods.

As the discussion so far has had a theological focus, it seemed unwise to give too much space to the practical implications in the middle of the previous posts. As with all poor theology, however, poor practice is sure to follow.

Outlining the practical issues

Unchecked openness

Going back to the survey I mentioned at the beginning, this open door and always on assumption in youth ministry clashes mightily with the need for healthy boundaries. Forgetting for a second that we’re neither God nor parents, what is the realistic risk-reward of making ourselves potential targets of dependency while burning out in the process?

This is exactly the kind of openness that is cautioned against by person-centered therapists, precisely because of the boundaries it rejects and dependency it creates. Modern counselors are  trained to look for these signs so they won’t be this unaccountably open. We might in fact be surprised that a lot of what is specifically suggested by incarnational youth ministry is flatly rejected in modern counseling theory.

I think this might just be this one of the key reasons that many youth workers burnout and most don’t last past one contract, and I’m not alone.

Burnout

Renfro in Perspectives on family ministry says the reason youth workers burnout is ‘because our ministry models are fundamentally flawed’ (2009:10). Bertrand and Hearlson in Relationships, personalism, and Andrew Root, agree saying incarnational youth ministry ‘sets up problems of intimacy between unequal partners and exacerbates the problem of youth worker burnout’ (2013:50).

Todd Billings (who we’ve talked about in previous parts) draws a straight line more specifically between poor incarnational theology and practical complications. He says

Yet because they take the Incarnation as their “model” of ministry, these evangelicals often assume that they—rather than the Holy Spirit—make Christ present in the world… “you and I may be the only Jesus that others will ever meet” …The burden of incarnation—and revelation—is on the shoulders of the individuals. Such a theology often leads to burnout (2012:60).

Pete Ward in Youthwork and the mission of God does address this somewhat, saying that the worker needs to learn to help young people become independent of them (1997:66). Darren Pollock, however, was unconvinced and in The church’s mission to youth, he criticised Ward directly saying his leader-centric model was still likely ‘to foster burnout among leaders’ (2014:299).

Dr. Andrew Root goes further and says we are to us to indwell or inhabit the pain of another so completely that it becomes our own (Revisiting relational youth ministry, 2007:129-130). He calls this ‘place-sharing’. I wrote to Dr. Root about this and he responded saying ‘you can only be a place-sharer to about 5 young people.’ Isn’t empathizing at this complete level this with even just one person dangerous? This is especially true when that one person is at completely a different stage of life and when the openness (according to Root) should go both ways. This is a recipe for burnout for sure, but also quite close to a text book definition of abuse: When two unequal parties share their own respective weights of experience and pain and needs, what will happen to the ‘weaker’ party?

Blurred lines at home

Herein lies the problem with an unchecked incarnational model of youth ministry. It has an inherent mugginess of boundaries that creates a lot of potentially unsafe situations.

You don’t want to argue with a family member at two in the morning, because you’ll both say things you don’t mean. Always being on is something parents do for a set number of years and they make a lot of mistakes, as we all know.

That close family relationship, all-warts exposed, cannot extend to twenty-some young people twenty-four hours a day. It’s a recipe for the happening of terrible things — and it also sets a precedent for those young people. We might be inadvertently teaching them to fall into unsafe behaviours and practices with other people in their lives who perhaps they shouldn’t trust.

Safeguarding concerns

While always being open to young people is a drain on health and family, robbing the worker of their effectiveness, it also creates safeguarding vulnerabilities. Being alone on the phone to a young person at all hours, having them come into the house alone, regularly meeting in quiet spaces, and prolonged private conversations can create unhealthy levels of dependency and exclusivity. Things are easily misconstrued in concealed spaces, especially with hurting and vulnerable young people.

Personal boundaries and healthy safeguarding practices are necessities for today’s youth worker to be in their post for years to come. Longevity demands healthy practice and accountability – things that are often neglected by incarnational models of youth ministry.

An ‘always on’ youth worker is a ‘sometimes off’ husband, or a ‘partially available mum’, or ‘too busy doing ministry’ dad. We really need another way.

So, Tim, you don’t like incarnational youth ministry?

Why, no. No, I don’t. I don’t think it’s theologically grounded, logically consistent, biblically sound, or practically helpful. I think as a theory it has a lot to answer for, and that we as the next generation of youth leaders need to move away from it.

I know ‘incarnational’ is unwritten into our methods. For some of us it feels part of our blood, it’s become a key part of our ministry identity. I don’t want – in any way – for this to pull the rug out from someone’s feet.

There’s goodness to retain, therefore. We might want to consider renaming our approach as relational-contextual­ rather than incarnational, rediscover the importance of proclamation – even without having foundational relationships – and create a wider base of ministry that happens outside of our purview and inside our boundaries.

I think burnout is a main reason youth ministers don’t last long, and that one of the reasons for this is our oppressive links to incarnational theory. Let’s be more sensible, more theologically grounded, and more spiritually helpful. We can still be incredibly compassionate without giving ourselves up to the worlds of young people.

Let’s do better folks.