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

DULCE DE LECHE CAME INTO MY LIFE DURING A SUMMER of anticipation.

My wife and I were living in Princeton, New Jersey; she was pregnant with our first child, and I was finishing my Ph.D. and cultivating the embryonic ideas that would be part of my first book, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry. One hot Sunday afternoon in August, stir crazy and huge, my wife suggested we take a walk over to Whole Foods Market, just a few blocks from our apartment. She wanted to wander the air-conditioned aisles reading the labels on exotic and organic things and check out the free food samples offered throughout the store. We wandered (and ate) our way through imported pineapple and mango, fancy Italian and German cheeses, and dark Belgian chocolate shavings. Approaching the freezer section, we saw a woman offering ice cream samples. I scooped it into my mouth. It was smooth and ribboned with caramel flavors; my taste buds exploded, and I blurted out loudly, What is this? It was dulce de leche, and after stocking up on a few pints (it only came in pints), I gleefully announced to the checkout clerk that Id found my new favorite dessert.

Some time later, my wife tried making dulce de leche. It involved boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for several hours. As the slow boiling process unfolded, the liquid reduced, eventually leaving a thick, deep golden-brown syrup that was less than a fifth the volume of the original liquid.

This book in many ways is a dulce de leche version of my first book, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation (IVP 2007). The book youre holding is not a watered-down version; its written for a broader audience, stripped of the footnotes and direct conversation with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as the philosophical perspective on relationality. Instead, call this book condensed, concentrated. Its sweeter and more palatablenot in the sense of being better, but in the sense of being more direct and more concerned about evoking your thoughts and feelings than making consistent and complex academic arguments.

This book no doubt makes an argumentand one I believe is very theological in naturebut it does so through story, example, and invitation, not through big words or complicated concepts. Its reduced so it might taste better, especially in the mouths of beginning youth workers, volunteers, and parents. My greatest hope is if youre the paid youth pastor or youth director that youd read Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry and then get together volunteers, parents, and others in your congregation to read this book. These two books work together: The other more academic, this one much more practical; the other for the theologically/academically inclined youth worker, this one for all youth workers whore thinking about what theyre doing and why.

The theological argument is the same in the two books: Relational youth ministry should avoid being about influencing kids toward some end (whether that means going to church or youth group, praying a prayer of salvation, attending camp, or avoiding immoral behavior) and should instead seek to follow a God manifested in the person of Jesus Christ, who suffers with us by encountering us in relationship. Relational ministry should be about sharing the place of young people as Jesus Christ shares ours, rather than about influencing them.

But in the same way that creating dulce de leche involves reducing liquid over heat for a long period of time, creating this book involved a lengthy, bubbling process as well. Where the mixture for Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry was stirred in the libraries and seminar rooms of Princeton Theological Seminary using the rich ingredients of my teachers, mentors, and colleagues, this book has been condensed down and made more palatable to a wider audience by heating and stirring the contents in fellowship halls of local churches and classrooms of colleges and seminaries. The process of condensing this argument has come through conversations and presentations around the country and the world with youth workers, volunteers, and parents. Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry was written in the midst of deep intellectual reflection; this book was written in the midst of deep connection to those doing ministry.

This books boiling process began in my second semester on the faculty of Luther Seminary after I decided to teach a class on relational youth ministry. The students in this class were brave enough not only to take a full elective from a new professor but also to continue asking me questions throughout the course; it was through their conversations that the cooking process began. In fact, through observing them grab the ideas, I noticed the ideas changing their understanding of ministry (and themselves); it was then that I recognized the need to condense this work for you. I owe that first YM4572 class at Luther Seminary a great debt of thanks, and therefore it is to them and their ministries that I dedicate this work (see their names on the dedication page).

One of my very talented students was kind enough to spend part of her summer writing the discussion questions found at the end of each chapter. I hope you can use these questions to hash out the ideas in this book with others in your ministry. I would like to thank Amber Espinosa for her diligent work on the discussion questions; her future is a bright one.

I first met Jay Howver in a pub in England, and it is to him that I owe the thanks for claiming this book for Youth Specialities/Zondervan and placing me in such good hands with the YS staff and my developmental editor Dave Urbanski. It has been a pleasure to work with them all.

Finally, my deepest thanks go to my children, Maisy and Owen, and my wife Kara. I thank them so much for the inspiration that finds its way into the pages of this work in story and analogy. But mostly I thank them for their love and patience. Living my life with them reminds me daily that I am a very rich man, blessed with such beautiful children and a wonderful friend and partner. My heart beats for only you.

And now to the God who holds all that is broken and dead and makes life out it, be the glory for ever and ever.

Andrew Root, Ph.D.

Just an Ordinary Tuesday in November