Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker: A Theological Vision for Discipleship and Life Together by Andrew Root (review)

Andrew Root makes the case that Bonhoeffer is the forefather of the “theological turn in youth ministry” (8, 171). The theological turn explores the concrete and lived experience of youth as the locus for encountering God. Root distinguishes the theological turn from a turn to theology, focused on instilling Christian doctrine and traditions in youth, and from a turn to the technological, intent on increasing numbers and cultivating certain behaviors (6–7).

This project provided Root an opportunity to explore something in the life and ministry of Bonhoeffer “that no other Bonhoeffer thinker had directly addressed” (ix). His primary audience is youth workers. But he also targets Bonhoeffer scholars, since his book addresses “a lacuna in Bonhoeffer discourse,” a lack of awareness of the centrality of youth work in Bonhoeffer’s life and ministry (x).

Part 1 tells the story of Bonhoeffer’s engagement in youth ministry. From 1925 to 1939 Bonhoeffer “was a youth worker doing significant theological work, or a theologian with young people on his mind” (171). Root highlights where Bonhoeffer engaged young people in his life and ministry. Part 2 explores the relevance of the central themes of Discipleship and Life Together for youth ministry today. These books are the first Bonhoeffer volumes many youth workers read. The key themes Root lifts up are: following Jesus (Nachfolge); costly versus cheap grace; the call; the cross; and church-community or life together.

Root makes several vital contributions to youth ministry and Bonhoeffer scholarship. One, he stresses grounding youth ministry in the encounter of young people with Jesus Christ in their concrete and lived experience. Too often in recent times the church has gotten caught up in indoctrinating youth or entertaining them. Root encourages followers of Jesus to approach youth ministry in a way consistent with our approach to any form of ministry. A second contribution is that he demonstrates the importance of youth ministry in Bonhoeffer’s life and work and provides a full account of Bonhoeffer’s ministry with youth. Third, Root does a fine job of analyzing how deeply realistic Life Together is. He astutely clarifies that for Bonhoeffer “there is no ideal church, that there is no ideal church-community, but only the embodied actual physical communities in which we live” (195). Root observes that the frustration and burnout many youth workers confront has “to do with idealist dreams of what the church should be.” Youth ministry, like any ministry, needs to deal with the “actual broken lives of physical people” (197).

One issue I would raise is Root’s use of “Bonhoeffer’s shockingly consistent ministry to and with young people” as a lens to interpret Bonhoeffer. I commend Root’s efforts to avoid “revolutionary, liberal, or conservative interpretations of Bonhoeffer” (19). I agree that ministry with youth profoundly impacted Bonhoeffer’s life and ministry. But Root appears to confuse a sphere of ministry with a theological lens for interpreting ministry. Bonhoeffer’s theological lens was christocentric—God’s self-revelation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer’s key interpretive question “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” applied to ministry with youth and with people of all ages. Root himself emphasizes that youth ministry focuses on the encounter of young people with “the very revelation of God in Jesus Christ” (7).

Despite this apparent confusion, Root has succeeded in showing how Bonhoeffer did youth ministry theologically; and for that we are indebted to him. I heartily recommend that youth workers and other students and scholars of Bonhoeffer read this book.