Critiquing the Incarnational Model of Youth Ministry

Engaging with Tim Gough's engagement of a popular ministry model

This week, I was invited back to my old haunt, The Effective Ministry Podcast, to record a follow-up conversation to Tim Gough’s critique of “incarnational youth ministry”.

In a previous episode of the podcast, Tim had outlined the history of incarnational ministry as it developed in the 1950s (Jim Rayburn, Young Life and Youth for Christ), as well as two further waves in the 1990s (Pete Ward and Dean Borgman) and the 2010s (Andrew Root’s integration of Lutheran theology, esp. Bonhoeffer). Tim then critiques the model from four aspects: (i) Semantics, (ii) Systematic Theology, (iii) Hermeneutics, and finally (iv) Practical Theology.

Tim Gough’s arguments are clear and compelling and well worth a listen.

In this episode, I was invited to further debrief incarnational youth ministry with my former Youthworks colleagues, Al James and Matt Bartlett. After giving some further thoughts on incarnational ministry and what we appreciated about Tim Gough’s presentation, we then talked about what t…