On Youth Specialties
A Time of Departing
Speaks On Youth Specialties
(Excerpt
from A Time of Departing by Ray Yungen)
"In the fall of 1997 the Lilly Endowment funded
[a] ministry experiment called the Youth
Ministry and Spirituality Project. The project directors
are Mark Yaconelli (son of Mike Yaconelli) and Andrew Dreitcer.
Mike Yaconelli is cofounder of Youth Specialties, a resource
and training organization that has a major impact upon evangelical
youth work across America. These men teach courses at the
Youth Specialties National Youth Workers Conventions and the Canadian National
Youth Workers Conventions. Course titles include, "Space
for God: a Contemplative Model of Youth Ministry," and
"God Encounters: Spiritual Exercises That Trans- form
Students." In addition, Youth Specialties holds a national
convention for pastors each year, three national youth worker
conventions a year and over 100 seminars every year that reach
over 100,000 youth workers worldwide - all with its current
teaching on spirituality. Mike Yaconelli's attraction and
acceptance of contemplative prayer is very similar to the
story of Sue Monk Kidd. In his book, Dangerous Wonder, Yaconelli
relates how lost he had felt after twenty- five years of ministry.
In his confusion he read Henri Nouwen's
book, In The Name of Jesus, and found himself wanting "to
start listening again to the voice of Jesus." 29 In Nouwen's
book we can find the method that began Yaconelli's claim to
a newfound voice of Jesus: Through the discipline of contemplative
prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and
again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and
courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them
– For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future,
a movement from the moral to the mystical is required. 30
Yaconelli took this admonition to heart and is now not only
practicing Nouwen's prayer method but is also promoting it
through his powerful organization."
