2

Becoming a spiritual guide: formation in contemplative youth ministry

It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in Gods presence, to listen to Gods voice, to look at Gods beauty, to touch Gods incarnate Word, and to taste fully Gods innite goodness? (Henri Nouwen)

In the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project we wanted to form youth leaders who are spiritual guides, people who know how to tend the life of Jesus within them. Youth ministers have a great capacity for care. But as Henri Nouwen believed, this eagerness to care and to teach, though it is valuable and important, is not the heart of Christian leadership. To be a spiritual leader one must rst and foremost become familiar with the Spirit. A spiritual leader is a person who respects and responds to the longings of the human soul. A spiritual leaders gift to a community is that he or she desires to dwell in Gods presence and then helps others do the same. In order to teach people to practise contemplative youth ministry, we worked to design a formation process that would help people notice and respond to their desire for God. We wanted to create a 19

The project programme that would help youth leaders dwell in the transforming presence of God. Working with pastors and youth ministers trained to consume ideas and techniques like fast food, we had to nd a different approach from standard academic and vocational training. We couldnt simply present lectures on contemplative prayer; we had to nd an approach to teaching that would help youth workers develop a new way of being in ministry as well as a new way of thinking about ministry. The question was: how? How do you help people become not just religious educators but spiritual guides people who know how to tend the spiritual hunger within human beings? How could we help youth ministers, pastors and church members not just increase their knowledge but also expand their experience and awareness of God, self and neighbour? How do you help people become not only good caregivers but people who know, in Nouwens words, how to listen to Gods voice . . . look at Gods beauty . . . touch Gods incarnate Word and . . . taste fully Gods innite goodness? How do you evoke the kind of mystical passion that Nouwen claims is necessary? How could we help people experience the same journey that the Russian wayfarer in The Way of a Pilgrim undertook: the journey from the mind to the heart? One of the most poignant examples of adolescent spiritual formation is Chaim Potoks The Chosen.1 It is a story of the transformation of Danny Saunders, the bright son of a traditional Hasidic Jewish rabbi or tzaddik. Danny comes from a long dynasty of tzaddiks and is raised with the expectation that he will one day replace his father as the reigning rabbi for the community. The adolescent Danny is extremely bright. His teachers and the Jewish community within which he lives are awed by his ability to memorize, categorize and cite not only the Torah but the many commentaries that contain Hasidic Jewish thought. Midway through the story, the reader discovers that since Danny was a boy, his father has brought him up in silence, speaking to his son only when they study the Talmud together. When Dannys friend Reuven, the narrator of the story, asks him about his relationship with his father, Danny responds, 20

Becoming a spiritual guide My father believes in silence. When I was ten or eleven years old, I complained to him about something, and he told me to close my mouth and look into my soul. He told me to stop running to him every time I had a problem. I should look into my own soul for the answer . . . The fathers silence isnt explained until the climax of the book. As Danny prepares to tell his father of his decision to break the rabbinical lineage and pursue psychology, the old rabbi invites Danny and Reuven over to his study. Speaking to Danny through Reuven, the rabbi explains his silence: The Master of the Universe blessed me with a brilliant son. And he cursed me with all the problems of raising him . . . there was no soul in my four-year-old Daniel, there was only his mind. He was a mind in a body without a soul . . . I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!2 The fathers decision to refrain from speaking to his son is a severe and even cruel parenting strategy. Yet all of us who seek to form young people in the spirit and life of Jesus know the struggle and pain of the boys father. We too wring our hands over a world overcrowded with amusing distractions, compelling ideas and mindblowing experiences. We, too, worry and suffer over how to grow souls in such a culture. The wise tzaddik recognized that to raise a compassionate soul he had to use the language of the soul. He realized that study, even rigorous theological study, is not enough. He knew that just as the intellect needs stimulating ideas and the emotional body needs passion and inspiration, so the soul has particular necessities for growth and development. In the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project we learned that youth and youth directors were hungry for soul food. We recognized that intellectual stimulation (although many would argue this is also absent in youth ministry programmes) and emotional inspiration 21

The project were not enough.3 We were convinced that it takes transformed adults to transform young people. We wanted to form youth ministers, pastors and churches who knew how to help young people cultivate the soul of a tzaddik.

Forming contemplative youth workers

One of the rst realizations within the project was that youth workers had to discover a new way of seeing and perceiving their role and ministry if they were to invite youth into the contemplative dimension of the Christian faith. In response, we produced a series of ve formation weeks intended to assist youth leaders in embodying the skills and disposition for teaching and practising contemplative youth ministry. These events were presented in a retreat atmosphere and sought not only to present the principles and practices of contemplative youth ministry but also to model and embody the contemplative disposition upon which the teaching relied.4 Therefore, although we entered each formation week with a predetermined schedule, the staff met daily during each event for prayer and discernment so the schedule could be altered according to the needs of the group and the movement of the Spirit. While each training offered various contemplative practices, our primary aim was to encourage a different way of being with young people and a different set of processes for discerning and implementing youth programmes. The progression throughout the various weeks of formation was a movement from prayer to presence, from loving God to loving others. Our desire was to help participants engage in contemplative prayer and then to carry the sensitivity and awareness nurtured by such prayer into mentoring relationships with young people. We took care to see that each formation event was grounded in the following practices and dispositions designed to enlarge the soul of youth ministers, pastors and churches.

Rest
In a society of busy, tired and overworked people, rest can be a radical act of liberation. One reason that keeping the Sabbath is 22

Becoming a spiritual guide included among the Ten Commandments is because the human soul comes alive in holy rest. Its in experiencing Gods rest that we sense an invitation to loosen our identication with our roles and tasks and remember our larger identity as daughters and sons of God. In contemporary society, and even within the Church, weve forgotten how to rest. We even sleep two to three hours less per day than people did 100 years ago. Author and retreat leader Wayne Muller writes, Illness becomes our Sabbath pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.5 Unlike most training events that tend to pack schedules full of meetings and workshops, the schedules for our formation events included regular opportunities for naps, walks in nature and downtime. We also included a mid-week Sabbath day in which participants were encouraged to sleep, spend time in nature and enjoy good food and fellowship. If we were going to form youth ministers as people who had the soul and spirit of Jesus, we needed to provide people with the same sense of holy rest that Jesus embodied. Just as Jesus spent time in solitude and silence, just as Jesus took time to rest (even in the middle of terrible storms of activity), just as Jesus went away to quiet and deserted places, so we sought to provide Sabbath rest and reection for participants.

Prayer
At the beginning and close of each day, within teaching sessions and small groups, among the larger community and in periods of solitude, participants were invited to turn their hearts to God in prayer. Sadly, within the Church and within ministry, prayer is too often a secondary activity, something we tack on to the beginning and end of an activity. We wanted to reverse that practice. We tried to create a formation programme in which prayer was always the central habit. We did this because we had faith that the best way to cultivate the souls of youth leaders was by inviting them to turn their attention to God. We believed the more time and space we gave for participants to tend to their life with God, the more receptive they would become to Gods healing and guidance. 23