Chapter 3:  Relational Ministry As Place-Sharing

Place-sharing instead of Influence

1.  A relational youth ministry of place-sharing means standing in for the full person of the adolescent.

Relational youth ministry of place-sharing, the point is to stand in for the adolescent, to stand fully in his or her place. Bonhoeffer held strongly to the position that God in Christ shares our place and we then are called to do the same.

2.  A relational youth ministry of place-sharing means “to suffer with”.

Youth pastors that open their own humanity to student, making the students’ suffering their suffering.  Never turn away from students’ suffering but stare it down, invite them to present it to you so that you might know and be with them, not outside it but within it.

3.  A relational youth ministry of place-sharing is a richer picture of the incarnation and the koinonia of the Trinity.

Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth assert that “Jesus Christ is the man who is for others.”  The Trinity point ways from themselves by representing the others.  The beauty about the doctrine of the Trinity is that it is three persons in one essence so there is no hiding, secrets, gossip, but real and raw relationship.

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.