Still, these are great books, full of guts and grit and passion and conviction. Nick tells the truth about the kind of anxiety-ridden sexual struggles young people are experiencing and Brennan is a treasure hunter, writing powerfully about what it means to discover the furious love of God that trumps everything. One is full of new wisdom and the other is overflowing with old wisdom. The themes of these books tell you where my head and heart are at right now: what I think matters and is worth investing in; what I’m curious to know more about.
SO WHAT ARE YOU READING?
What’s setting your heart on fire? What’s challenging you? What are you reading right now that I need in my life? In this mad world of digital immediacy it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that transformation takes place in the instant. We’re all multi-channelled consumers of information which means we need to engage in active resistance at times to allow whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is deeply uncomfortable, whatever is vital to understanding the world our young people are navigating, to really impact us. Great pieces of communication (inspiring preaches, songs, slam poetry, training etc.) can shake us up and switch on our thinking, but a book will journey with you in the change. There are some books that I read and reread, such as A.W Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy, Mark’s Gospel or anything by Brene Brown. They help me take my temperature, work out where my heart should be, where I long to be, work out what passions are driving me and give me a wakeup call to go deeper in my walk with God.
But rather than this being about what to read, I want to encourage you to read. Read to know the whole story about something you’re interested in, not just half the story. Read to fuel your desire to be a youth-culture shaper, not just a youth-work-culture survivor! Read to sharpen your critical thinking skills so you can help young people to make sense of the world and to make something of it.
And read a whole book. It might take you a day, a week, a month or a year. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about being smug academics; it’s about recovering the art of reflection in our youth practice. And I think this is a discipline worth pursuing.
There’s something powerful about following someone’s train of thought. The way they dig into a topic, engage in a bit of critical thinking and come to a resolution or conclusion. I don’t have to agree with them to benefit from the process. Reading Nick Luxmoore challenges me to consider what frameworks I’m bringing to my conversations with young people about sex. I truly believe that Jesus is good news for young people’s sexual health. Reading stuff written by someone who doesn’t agree with me on that doesn’t mean there isn’t new wisdom around adolescent sexual development and attachment disorder that I need to wrestle with to enable me to speak with conviction and credibility to young people on this topic which matters so much.
Our culture is squeezing the Church’s confidence in our faith, our calling and our capability to work effectively with this generation of young people, in ways that we don’t always notice. Engaging in a bit of deliberate double listening (a John Stott phrase that rocks my world) where we listen to the world in order understand the need, and we listen to the ‘word’ in order to know how to respond, arms us with insight and resilience. In short, it makes us wise.
So seek out the words, old and new, comforting and challenging, that will help to make you wise. Then get chewing on them — they’ll taste good for years to come.
To end, here’s my cheeky reimaging of Psalm 1:
Blessed is the youth worker…
Who doesn’t get stuck in the banality of banter,
Or sits in the belief that the next best shiny
resource will make all the difference,
Or who drowns out the cries of a generation
suffering the separation from their Father,
But who’s thrilled by God,
And who chews on God’s good news day and night.
They are like a tree that drinks up water even in the driest of times.
Whose life inspires transformation because it’s constantly being transformed,
Who has wisdom to share in every season of the soul.
