CHAPTER 2
DEEP METHOD: WHAT’S OUR PLAN FOR GOING DEEPER?
Chap Clark and Kara Powell
At the top of my long list of favorite quotes from The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard writes, “But now let us try a subversive thought. Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.”1
If our goal is deeper youth ministry, we need a whole new way of doing ministry. This, in turn, means we need a whole new way of thinking about ministry. This new path out of the shallow end has to be pretty special because of all we’re trying to balance:
We want thorough, deep reflection…but nothing too complicated. We want specifics…but room for creativity. We want it to be practical…but more than the usual Youth Ministry Tips and Tricks. We want sensitivity to our own unique contexts…but to still learn from other ministries.
If all that isn’t tricky enough, we ultimately want our ministries to be all that Jesus wants them to be.
Yowza.
DEEP DESIGN: AN OVERVIEW
This book revolves around a four-step process we call Deep Design. It’s a continually moving and evolving template for ministry growth and change completely tailored to your needs because the issues of your particular ministry define and shape the process and make it work.
Let’s unpack it further.
Step 1 provides the opportunity to discern God’s transforming activity in your ministry. Step 2 has you reflect upon fresh insights from Scripture, historical thinkers, current research, and experience as you consider what’s happening in your ministry. Step 3 invites you to observe others who are integrating these new insights into their own settings and compare them with your situation. Step 4 completes the cycle by helping you apply findings from Steps 2 and 3. As your ministry grows and changes, you will flow naturally from Step 4 back to 1.
To simplify this process, we’ve developed one overarching question for each step:
Step 1 (Discernment): Now? Step 2 (Reflection): New? Step 3 (Observation): Who? Step 4 (Application): How?
For those of you who like visual aids (probably most of us), we’ve created a diagram of the Deep Design process that we’ll walk through and add to throughout this chapter.
The left half of the diagram represents Our Ministries—both as they are Now, and How we’d like to see them deepen. While it’s tempting to jump immediately from realizing there’s a problem to implementing a solution, the reality is that we won’t get to choose from the maximum array of solutions unless we engage with the right half of the diagram, Others’ Insights, which includes considering New information available and carefully observing those Who are making use of innovative strategies. The flow of the four steps helps develop the correct balance between looking in the mirror and looking out the window, so to speak.
Practical Theology: Not So Oxymoronic!
Much of our Deep Design process, as well as this entire book, is derived from the academic discipline of practical theology. Yes, we’ve heard all the jokes—it’s an oxymoron and a contradiction in terms…yadda, yadda. But we believe quite the opposite.
We believe our theology impacts everything we do: how we eat, drive, relate to others—you name it. And it certainly affects the depth of our ministries. We all practice our theology—even when that theology is poorly conceived, and even when we don’t realize it. The more intentional we are in considering our ministries in light of our theology, and the more we let our ministries raise important theological questions, the quicker we’ll swim out of the shallow end and into deeper waters.
A Caveat: It Will Be Messy
In this chapter, we’ll present the Deep Design process step by step, question by question. But you’ll find that the actual process isn’t always clean, neat, or linear. In fact, it never is.
But we think it’s helpful to understand the sequence in which the components unfold most naturally. Consider how a tennis coach teaches new players to hit the ball using a logical sequence: step forward, move the racket back, make contact with the ball, follow through. Once players get these basics automatically, they hit forehand and backhand shots in one fluid motion. That makes tennis (and deep ministry for that matter) more organic and even messier at times—but a whole lot more fun and effective.
What’s that cross doing in the middle of the Deep Design?
In the midst of our Deep Design, we want our reflection and the intersection between our ministries and others’ insights to be continually filtered through the lens of God’s activity. How do we know if we’re aligning ourselves with God’s activity? While our finite brains prevent us from ever fully knowing, one way we understand God’s activity is through his revelation, which we know primarily from Scripture. We’ve placed the cross at the heart of our Deep Design as a reminder that we want all of our personal and ministry reflection to revolve around the model and grace of Christ as a central example of God’s activity.2
So as we break down each step in the Deep Design process—while dropping into the template a practical example that will allow you to see Deep Design “in action”—consider this chapter your primer on your way to doing deep ministry much more fluidly, organically, and naturally.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 1 (DISCERNMENT) : NOW?
We youth workers often function like emergency rescue workers—responding to the latest 911 call from a kid after dousing the remaining fires that sprang up at last night’s youth group meeting. We often get so busy doing ministry that we lose sight of what God is doing now in our ministries.
Step 1 invites us to slow down and discern what God is up to in our ministries Now. This begs an obvious question: what exactly is “God’s activity”? Academics and theologians sometimes use the word telos to describe God’s actions. In this context the Greek word telos means God’s divine intentions or purposes.
That helps somewhat, but we’re still left with the question of what God intends: is it the advancement of his kingdom? The reign of his peace? That all people worship him? Yes, to all of these—but in its simplest essence, God intends transformation. He desires this transformation to happen on multiple levels—in our individual lives, in our churches and communities, and in our larger world. (We’ll dive more deeply into the relationship between our individual and communal transformation in Chapter 4.)
One scriptural passage that helps us understand more about the transformation God intends is Romans 12:1–2. After urging his readers in Rome to be “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” in verse 1, the two commands in verse 2 shed interesting light on the transformation process. Paul uses the imperative verb phrase “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world…”—in a sense telling the reader, “Stop allowing yourself to be conformed.” And yet, in his next command to “be transformed,” the verb is in the passive voice, clearly suggesting that God is the one who does the transformation in us. So while we agree that God’s grace, love, and power are core to transformation, we as humans still have some participative role—albeit small—in it.
We spent a lot of time with the wording for questions 2 and 3. We wanted to avoid phrases that made it seem as though God is completely dependent upon us, yet at the same time we wanted to avoid terms that made it seem we have no role whatsoever. “Creating space” and “hindering” are the best we’ve come up with—but please feel free, as you apply these questions to your own ministry, to come up with terms that better capture your own theology.
In our Deep Design, the goal of the first step is to discern God’s transformation in our midst today. More specifically, we ask three Now subquestions:
What type of transformation is God bringing about now? What is creating space for God’s transformation now? What is hindering God’s transformation now?
STEP 1: NOW?
GOAL: To discern God’s current transformation by asking:
What type of transformation is God bringing about now? What is creating space for God’s transformation now? What is hindering God’s transformation now?
So what’s the process for answering these three Now subquestions? The short answer is through experience. But not just your experience as a youth leader. We’re talking about collective experience. It’s impossible for any individual to alone see the true reality of anything, let alone the complicated whirlpool we call youth ministry. We need the insights of others in our community as we reflect on our shared experience. So hopefully you can invite other adult leaders, parents, and students to be part of your Now conversation.
In your personal reflections and communal discussions, it’s helpful to consider your ministry from the perspective of God’s story as presented in Scripture: where in your ministry do you see actions and attitudes that resemble Jesus’ life and ministry? Where in your community are the passions of Jesus being expressed? Poignant answers to these questions are often revealed through corporate prayer, spiritual disciplines, worship, and discussions about God’s narrative presented in Scripture.
If possible, we recommend that you include the perspectives of those outside your ministry setting to give you an even broader collective experience. By reading others’ writings, attending ministry gatherings, or dialoguing with colleagues in other ministries, you can gain a broader sense of God’s transforming activity in your midst and how you are and are not participating.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 1 IN ACTION: OUR SMALL GROUPS NOW
(For the purposes of demonstrating the Deep Design in action, we’ll consider hypothetically how Kara’s church might examine the small group portion of its youth program.)
After spending time in personal reflection and discussion, I might be able to offer the following responses to the Now questions regarding our small groups:
What type of transformation is God bringing about now?
After months of our prayerful recruiting, God has provided enough small group leaders. God seems to be bringing a few new students to our ministry every month who want to be connected in small groups.
What is creating space for God’s transformation now?
We offer small group leaders some initial training in September that is very thorough and practical; some of our small group leaders are integrating brief times of worship (with and without music) into their meetings that students are enjoying.
What is hindering God’s transformation now?
Many of our new leaders are young and are asking for more mentoring and coaching than we’re currently providing; small group leaders and members often tell us the relationships in their groups are pretty shallow; students don’t seem all that interested in studying Scripture, and small group leaders are getting frustrated with their kids’ apathy; small groups are pretty focused on themselves and aren’t serving those on the outside.
The great theologian Woody Allen once said, “80 percent of success is showing up.” This first step of figuring out the Now of your ministry helps you evaluate who (and what!) is showing up in the first place.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 2 (REFLECTION) : NEW?
The goal of Step 2 is to reflect upon New ideas and insights that speak to the issues that arose as you discerned God’s activity in your ministry Now (Step 1).
How can we identify the New ideas that can help move our ministries out of the shallow end? We can gain wisdom from those both inside and outside our contexts by asking four subquestions:
What does Scripture say? What does history say? What does research say? What does experience say?3
STEP 1: NOW?
GOAL: To discern God’s current transformation by asking:
What type of transformation is God bringing about now? What is creating space for God’s transformation now? What is hindering God’s transformation now?
STEP 2: NEW?
GOAL: To reflect upon new insights and ideas by asking:
What does Scripture say? What does history say? What does research say? What does experience say?
What Does Scripture Say?
Scripture has two types of authority. One is its historical authority—it contains God’s commands to people in biblical times. The second is its normative authority, meaning that when properly interpreted, the Bible helps us understand God’s commands to us today. This also means that if Scripture says one thing, and something or someone else says another, we believe Scripture trumps that other voice.
But since Scripture has been around for so long, is there anything New we can find in it? Well, yes and no. Scripture is timeless, so it doesn’t change. But by examining Bible commentaries and other great thinkers who’ve tried to understand specific texts, we gain a larger and clearer sense of God’s truth. We often skim Scripture and draw merely a surface-level sense of its meaning and power. But if we treat it like a great poem, if we meditate further upon its beauty and significance, we’ll keep learning New insights—not just about the scene being described, but the One doing the writing.
What Does History Say?
By “history,” we mean traditions and teachings from the past. In our hunt for “fresh” ideas, we in youth ministry often disregard the “outdated” wisdom of those who’ve studied and served God before us, as if nothing significant has happened since the Bible was written thousands of years ago. Whether because of our ignorance or pride, we’ve turned a collective deaf ear to the whispers of wisdom from the past. Studying our history helps clear the wax from our ears.
Whether your church and youth ministry have been around for 100 years or one month, they are undoubtedly grounded in certain beliefs and traditions. Perhaps you need to abandon these historical principles and practices. Maybe even more likely you need to hold firm to them and re-New them by translating them in fresh ways that make sense to your students. Either way, we can truly bring change only as we value the church and work within the narrative of the church’s own self-understanding.
What Does Research Say?
We move from the past to the present through the third voice in finding New depth: research. When we talk about “research,” we’re generally referring to studies in social-science fields such as communication, psychology, education, anthropology, and sociology.
Clarification:
In trying to hear from Scripture, history, research, and experience, there are times when one or two voices will have more to contribute to your Deep Design than others. Sometimes Scripture shouts about an issue; other times it whispers. Occasionally history has volumes of insight; often it is silent. That’s okay. It’s unrealistic to expect each source to contribute exactly 25 percent to your process. Nothing that matters in life is that neat and clean. As we’ll see in the chapters that follow, the goal is to soak in wisdom from all four when possible, not to artificially squeeze a few drops from a source that’s actually pretty dry on a particular issue.
Now, we know that many of you believe that research is done by boring scientists in white lab coats who study irrelevant questions and end up giving purple pills to one half of the guinea pigs and green pills to the rest. But that’s not the kind of research we’re talking about. We’re talking about Roll-Up-Your-Sleeves-with-Kids research. We’re talking about research that puts adults in the position of listeners and students in the position of youth-culture experts. We’re talking about what is now being referred to in academic circles as “aaction research,” meaning research that reflects the real needs of real people and offers real help. Overlooking these contributions in your search for deeper ministry is a little bit like looking for a dime in the dark. You might find it, but it sure takes a lot longer.
What Does Experience Say?
We move from others’ insights back to your own through the fourth voice in finding New depth: experience. Your church, your community, and your kids are unlike any others. You as a leader are unlike any other leader. God intends to use all of these unique experiences to help you swim past shallow waters. By putting your experiences under a microscope, you’ll see the tiny nuances and hidden principles that you might otherwise miss.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 2 IN ACTION: NEW INSIGHTS ABOUT OUR SMALL GROUPS
In defining our Now (the first Deep Design step), I realized that while our youth program has enough small group leaders, the groups are not reaching their full potential. The teaching in our small groups is stagnant, and the relationships in them are superficial. Our small group leaders also want more mentoring and training than we’re currently providing. With all those evaluations in the back of my mind, now I’m going to seek out some relevant New insights about community and small groups.
What does Scripture say? While the Bible never mentions “small groups,” it says plenty about the types of intimate relationships God wants. Let’s look at a description of life in the first century church in Acts 2:4247: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (are we poring over the teachings of Christ like they did?) “and to the fellowship” (are we “devoted” to one another deeply and committed to meeting together regularly?) “and to prayer.” (How much time are we spending in corporate prayer?) “Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need” (are we making sacrifices to meet others’ needs?).
Considering these questions raised by Scripture can offer us New insights that can bring greater depth to our ministry.
What does history say? One of the great historical lessons about small groups comes from the example and ministry of John Wesley. The heart of Methodism during Wesley’s life was covenant groups—a.k.a., “band groups”—of five to 10 people each. Their purpose was to “band” together for intimate, soul-searching examination.4 On December 25, 1738, Wesley drafted the following questions to be asked at every band group meeting:
What known sins have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
The intentionality and accountability behind these questions are a vital historical example that can deepen our small group ministry today.
What does research say? In an effort to capture their students’ interest and attention, McMaster University Medical School, Harvard Medical School, and other academic programs around the country have developed a new approach called “problem-based learning.”
As you might guess, in this approach a problem drives the learning. Ideally the problem is one students cannot solve until they gain new skills and/or knowledge. In addition, the problem is immediately relevant to real-life situations they may face. The professors provide the learning environments that support their students’ thinking, but it is the learners who take ownership of the process used to arrive at the solution.
The implications for our small group ministry are obvious. As noted in my Now discernment, my students don’t seem all that interested in studying Scripture. And more often than not, leaders jump into teaching Scripture assuming students will be motivated just because it’s “the Bible.” But a study on the Sermon on the Mount becomes more interesting when connected to the tension of passing a homeless person as you head to church. Examining Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is more intriguing in light of the struggle your students might face when friends suggest watching some porn on cable TV.
While problem-based learning helps students remain engaged with their studies, one nagging question about this relatively New method is whether students receive enough training in the basic elements of the curriculum. Medical school students in problem-based learning programs occasionally score lower than their more conventionally trained counterparts.5 Since the problems emerge from students’ contexts, perhaps those gaps are due to students’ limited experiences. Translating that to youth ministry, your students might end up understanding how the story of Daniel relates to peer pressure but have only a cursory understanding of issues more removed from their daily lives such as poverty, the environment, and the end times.
Given these documented experiences of medical school students as well as our desire to avoid application-driven prooftexting, we in youth ministry probably need a combination of problem-based learning and more traditional Bible study to maximize the effectiveness of our small groups.
What does experience say? Answering this question helps us sort through our own experiences in community to figure out how to develop deeper relationships. Even though it’s been more than 20 years since I was in high school, the leader of our small group during that time left a deep mark on me that the years have not erased. First, Kristi asked us to hold her accountable for changes in her life. She asked us to check in with her to see how she was doing at memorizing Scripture and eating more healthily. We had a reciprocal relationship. We needed her, but she needed us, too.
Second, she spent time with us outside our small group meetings. When her husband was out of town, she’d invite us over to spend the night. She’d meet us for dinner, invite us to go shopping, or simply have us over after school to make cookies. The more time we spent with her outside our official small group meeting, the deeper our conversations during our small group time.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 3 (OBSERVATION) : WHO?
One Important Warning…
You can never follow someone else’s plan exactly and be successful in your own context. If you won’t accept that warning, please stop reading this book. It will mess you up. Seriously. You should put the book down now and walk away. The truth is that you live in a different community, work with different students and parents and volunteers (and a different senior pastor), and have a different leadership style.
The goal of Step 3 is to observe others Who have come up with New insights similar to ours (Step 2) and are already trying to go deeper. These people’s willingness to try new ideas and paddle, sidestroke, and freestyle forward can help you take a few bold—or maybe tentative—strokes into deeper waters.
In order to effectively take the third step of the Deep Design process and figure out Who you can learn from—and how their stories relate to your own—you will want to ask three questions:
What are some ways others are applying these new insights to their ministries? In what ways are their situations similar to ours? In what ways are they different?
STEP 1: NOW?
GOAL: To discern God’s current transformation by asking:
What type of transformation is God bringing about now? What is creating space for God’s transformation now? What is hindering God’s transformation now?
STEP 2: NEW?
GOAL: To reflect upon new insights and ideas by asking:
What does Scripture say? What does history say? What does research say? What does experience say?
STEP 3: WHO?
GOAL: To observe others who are already going deeper by asking:
What are some ways others are applying these new insights to their ministries? In what ways are their situations similar to ours? In what ways are they different?
STEP 3 IN ACTION: WHO IS GOING DEEPER IN SMALL GROUPS?
Let’s imagine I’ve been talking with my friend, Blanca, who is already applying some of the New insights we learned from Scripture, history, research, and experience.
How is Blanca’s youth ministry trying to apply these new insights to her ministry?
She asks each group to do some creative prayer element every time it meets; every three months her small groups do a service project in their community. (Without even knowing it, Blanca’s been teaching her small group leaders a “problem-based learning” method.)
In what ways is Blanca’s situation similar to ours?
Like our ministry, her group is also growing with new students who want to be connected in small groups; the adult Sunday school classes at her church are very strong, just like at our church.
In what ways is Blanca’s situation different?
She intentionally keeps her groups pretty small so it’s easier to add new students to them as they join the ministry; our groups are so big that new students feel lost when they show up. She encourages her leaders to do one or two activities every month with their groups outside their normal small group meetings. Blanca has an excellent training manual already developed; we have no training program for our small group leaders after our initial training in September.
By observing the successes and struggles of Blanca (and others) who are incorporating new insights into their programs, and considering the similarities and differences between our situations, we can discover what might work best in our own ministries.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 4 (APPLICATION) : HOW?
Now that we’ve reflected on New depth (Step 2 of our Deep Design diagram) and studied the example of another ministry Who is already applying our insights (Step 3), we are well equipped to answer the final synthesizing question: given everything, How can we go deeper?
STEP 1: NOW?
GOAL: To discern God’s current transformation by asking:
What type of transformation is God bringing about now? What is creating space for God’s transformation now? What is hindering God’s transformation now?
STEP 2: NEW?
GOAL: To reflect upon new insights and ideas by asking:
What does Scripture say? What does history say? What does research say? What does experience say?
STEP 3: WHO?
GOAL: To observe others who are already going deeper by asking:
What are some ways others are applying these new insights to their ministries? In what ways are their situations similar to ours? In what ways are they different?
STEP 4: HOW?
GOAL: To apply information from Steps 1–3 by asking:
Given everything, how can we go deeper?
While this final step only has one question, it is just as complex as the three previous steps (if not more!) since it integrates and applies all your previous reflection. As you see in the table below, our answer to this one question addresses the issues raised in Step 1 by using the insights that emerged in Steps 2 and 3.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 4 IN ACTION: HOW TO GO DEEPER IN OUR SMALL GROUPS
How we can go deeper in our small groups?
Source
We should ask small groups to do either a creative service project or a creative prayer time every month during their normal meeting times. We’ll give them some ideas, or they can come up with their own.
Scripture, Blanca’s ministry
We should consider encouraging each small group to develop a few questions about their relationships with God and with others that can be discussed every time they meet.
Scripture, History
We should encourage leaders to come up with potential “problem-based learning” ideas to start their meetings.
Research
We should invite my friend Blanca to come and do some training with our leaders. After all, given the great training procedures she’s already developed, why reinvent the wheel?
Research, Blanca’s ministry
We can give our leaders some ideas on how to spend time with their groups outside their normal small group meetings.
Experience, Blanca’s ministry
We need to consider recruiting more leaders so we can make our groups smaller, allowing new students to join without feeling so intimidated and excluded.
Blanca’s ministry
We should choose a few adult Sunday school classes (especially those comprised of parents involved in our youth ministry) and ask them if they would be willing to mentor some of our students.
Blanca’s ministry
So what have we just done? We’ve used insights from Scripture, history, research, and experience, as well as the observations of others’ ministries to come up with a custom plan for our ministry. Instead of following any single guide or plan mindlessly, we’ve figured out where and how to blaze our own trail.
The Goal of This Book: It’s Up to You to Think It Through!
Our ultimate goal is to help you learn to do deep ministry in a shallow world. Wouldn’t that be great? No matter what challenges you face—from apathetic kids to a lack of adult leaders—you can formulate and customize a strategy that gets you out of the kiddie pool and into deeper waters.
Throughout the rest of the book, each chapter follows the same four methodological steps of Now, New, Who, and How. But the different chapters will do so in different ways. That’s because we didn’t want to rigidly superimpose our Deep Design method onto the data. We tried to find the best blend between our method and the state of youth ministry and research today. Often the data lends itself to following the four steps in order. Sometimes we’ve combined a few steps because this seems like the most logical reflection of what youth workers, theologians, and researchers were learning and contributing. After all, it shouldn’t be the method that’s sitting in the driver’s seat—that’s God’s place. And then it’s you, your kids, Scripture, and the wisdom of others that should be closest to the steering wheel.
To make sure you track with the four steps, we’ve divided each of the remaining chapters into steps—Now? New? Who? and How? For the first three steps, we’ve also placed diagrams and Deep Design Prompts in the margins that help you follow our progress through the Deep Design.
Reminder:
As indicated by the shape of the diagram (which resembles the mathematical sign of “infinity”), every time you reach a new goal by Step 4, you’ve basically created a new Now for yourself—which means the Deep Design process never ends. It’s a constant loop of discernment, reflection, observation, and application; therefore, it never gets old, goes out of style, or loses touch with the realities of your ministry. We’ll get into that more in Chapter 12 on focus groups, but we wanted you to have that thought in the back of your mind as you read.
The fourth step is where we invite you to apply the material to your own life and ministry. At the end of every chapter, we’ve included a few reflection questions and an application table to use with your own ministry and leadership teams.
You might think of each chapter as a jigsaw puzzle. Studying Now, New, and Who is a bit like dumping a box of puzzle pieces on your dining-room table. In the final section, by mulling over some strategic reflection questions, you get to figure out How to put those pieces together into a puzzle that fits your ministry. Sure, we’ll give you some strong hints—but we believe God will show you and your team the best “picture” for your students. Our hope is that by the end of this book, following the Deep Design will be as intuitive as breathing—you’ll do it without realizing it.
Odds are good you’ll get a few ideas from each chapter. You might decide to focus primarily on a few chapters that best address the needs of your own kids and families. In fact, that might be a really smart move—trying to make too many changes at once is tiring for you and everyone else connected to your ministry.
A Few Final Tidbits for You “Process”-Oriented Youth Workers
If you’re one of those “bottom line” youth workers who likes things short, sweet, and straightforward, then you may want to skip right to the application questions at the end of this chapter. We’ve already given you a full explanation of the Deep Design.
But if you’re one of those “process”-oriented youth workers who not only loves getting your hands dirty but also wants to know what kind of dirt your hands are in—and how other people feel about that dirt—then this section is for you. We want to give you a backstage pass to the process that has gone into the development of Deep Design and explain some of the choices we made in this book.
What role does experience play in the Deep Design? In Step 1, we encourage you to use collective experience as the means to engage with and answer the three Now questions. In Step 2, we urge you to reflect upon your experience in order to gain New insight. While experience has an explicit role in both of those steps, let’s be honest that the role of experience doesn’t end there. How we read Scripture, understand history, integrate research, observe and compare others’ ministries with our own, and apply those insights to our own settings are all colored by our experiences. That’s okay. In fact, it’s good when we acknowledge the impact of our experiences and assess whether they are helpful or harmful.
Why are we trying to integrate so many academic disciplines? If you read these chapters carefully, you’ll pick up threads of Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, Practical Theology, Psychology, Education, Communication, Sociology, Missiology, and a few other “ologies” to boot. That’s because no single discipline has the corner on the market of ministering to your kids. We decided to mine the wealth offered by a variety of disciplines so you could approach your kids and your ministry in the most holistic way possible.
At times that means we can’t delve as deeply into any one of those disciplines as we’d like—or maybe as deeply as you would like. But we felt the benefit of integrating research, theories, and practices from a variety of fields was worth the potential sacrifice.
But don’t various academic disciplines approach studying people differently, and don’t they sometimes contradict one another? Well, yes and yes. After all, they often operate on different assumptions and thus develop different methodologies. But they don’t contradict one another as much as you might think when addressing the topics covered in this book. When differing fields do seem to offer conflicting evidence (such as in Chapter 6 on mentoring), we’ve tried to suggest explanations that resolve some of the differences without diluting the impact of their respective findings.
Why do we occasionally blend the content of Steps 3 and 4? As you read the rest of this book, you’ll probably notice that, at times, some of the questions for Step 3 appear in Step 4. The reality is that there is significant overlap between others Who are applying the New information, and How you will apply it. As you become adept at applying the Deep Design to your ministry, you can choose for yourself where to turn the corner to application—and how sharply or gradually you want to take that turn.
Why do we order the steps as we do? Some colleagues suggested that we put the Who step before the New step. While it’s true that you will partially consider other ministries as you discern God’s transforming activity, we were concerned that placing the entire Who step so early in the Deep Design would short-circuit the process. If readers had already gained a few quick answers from other leaders, they might be tempted to skip over the valuable work of sifting through what Scripture, history, research, and experience have to say.
It’s also been suggested that we skip or abbreviate the Now step so readers could spend more time in the New and Who sections. Yet we felt it was important to encourage youth workers to begin with a thorough examination of the present ministry practices and impact, since so few youth workers take time with their teams to discern what God is doing in their ministries.
Are the steps really as linear as you suggest? As you’re starting the Deep Design, we encourage you to follow the steps in the order we’ve outlined. But once you become a Deep Design expert, you’ll probably find yourself moving through the various steps intuitively. Sometimes you might even want to ping-pong back and forth between Now and New to help you go deeper and deeper in your practices and reflection. In practical theology circles, that type of back and forth between practice and reflection is called a “praxis-theory-praxis” feedback loop.
What’s the difference between “practice” and “praxis”? It’s more than just a few letters of the alphabet. In practical theology, what separates “praxis” from “practice” is that “praxis” includes some sort of purpose, or “telos,” behind the activity.
If it makes sense for you to reorder the steps to suit better how you think and act, by all means, go for it. Be creative and have fun. Just please don’t skip too much.
The exciting news is that there is an ocean of new depth ahead.
And you get to help navigate it!
Application Questions:
Who from your ministry should you involve in these Deep Design discussions? We recommend that you try answering the three questions in Step 1 for your ministry overall before you move to the next chapter. So…what type of transformation is God bringing about? What is creating space for this transformation? What is hindering it? We also recommend that you develop a sense of your unique community and ministry before you read any further. So…what are your students like? How about their parents? How would you describe the adult leaders in your ministry? What about your church? How would you describe the community in which you live and serve? Look again at the table of contents for this book. Given your answers to questions 2 and 3, which chapters in this book do you expect will be especially relevant to you? What role does Scripture usually play in finding New ideas for your ministry? What role do you want it to play? If there is a difference in your answers, what does this tell you? Do you agree that history, research, and experience are all important ways to learn New insights? Why or why not? Who in ministry have you tended to follow in the past? When, if at all, did you diverge from their models, and why did you decide to branch out on your own journey?