Relationships Unfiltered: Help for Youth Workers, Volunteers, and Parents on Creating Authentic Relationships

For more than 50 years, relational or incarnational ministry has been a major focus in youth ministry. But for too long, those relationships have been used as toolsas a means to an endwhere adults try to influence students to accept, know, trust, believe, or participate in something. While our motives may be good, its possible that by focusing on these goals, were not ministering the whole person. When we choose not to engage in the full life of a student, we run the risk of failing them and our ministry. In this thoughtful and insightful book, Andrew Root challenges us to reconsider our motives and begin to consider simply being with and doing life alongside teenagers with no agenda other than to love them right where they are, by placesharing. As he shares stories of his (and others) successes and failures in relational youth ministry, youll find practical ideas to help you recreate the role of relationships in your youth ministry. If youre involved in the lives of teenagers, whether as a youth pastor, volunteer youth worker, church leader, or parent, youll want to read this book and work together to discover the value of placesharing in the lives of teens. Youll see that its time to tear down the old structure of relational youth ministry and start again.