Youth Work After Christendom

The Anabaptist Network co-sponsored a well-attended launch event with Frontier Youth Trust and the Midlands Centre for Youth Ministry on Tuesday 8 July, hosted by Anthony Collins Solicitors in Birmingham. Hosted by Dave Wiles, speakers included Stuart Murray Williams, Sally Nash and the authors themselves. When the Anabaptist Network steering group was planning the series, we expected to commission volumes on worship and mission, faith and politics, using the Bible, church life, discipleship and ethics, and several other topics. Some of these have since been published; others are being written and will be published in the next couple of years. But Youth Work after Christendom was not on our list. But when Nigel & Jo Pimlott approached us and proposed this additional title, we were both surprised and delighted. They had read Post-Christendom and had realised that this perspective on mission and culture had many implications for youth work, especially youth work on the margins of society. Youth work, in fact, was another lens through which to investigate the Christendom legacy; just as post-Christendom was a new lens through which to search for appropriate and creative forms of youth work in a changing culture. It has been fascinating to learn more about the influence of the Christendom mindset on youth work practice and to imagine alternative approaches that may be better suited to post-Christendom. Those who engage with young people and youth culture have long been aware of the impact of the cultural shift from modernity to post-modernity. Here is an invitation to take a fresh look at current and future youth work assumptions, expectations and priorities in light of a rather different (though not unrelated) cultural shift. If youth culture represents the leading edge of cultural and societal change, or at least reflects the pressures and possibilities emerging in our society, this volume may be one of the most important in the ‘After Christendom’ series. For if we can re-imagine and re-shape youth work for a post-Christendom culture, perhaps other dimensions of ecclesial and missional transformation will follow.

Our hope is that Youth Work after Christendom will be an invaluable resource to youth workers, stimulating their thinking and enhancing their ability to engage sensitively and contextually with young people in and beyond the churches. We hope, too, that this volume will introduce post-Christendom perspectives to those who might otherwise not recognise their significance, but who will be inspired by reading this book to look at many other dimensions of life and faith from this distinctive angle of vision. And for those who have read the earlier volumes, here is another – maybe unexpected – subject that cannot remain unaffected by the demise of Christendom and the coming of the strange new world of post-Christendom. To read an extract from this book, go to http://www.anabaptistnetwork.com/node/456. The book itself is available from Christian bookshops or from Metanoia Book Service at www.metanoiabooks.org.uk