Relationships as Communicative Acts in Youth Ministry and Trinitarian Theology

Abstract

This thesis investigates the lived experience of youth ministry practitioners in their mission amongst non-churched young people. It explores relationships as communicative acts through narratives of practice, as voiced by the youth ministry practitioners, through the voice of the literature on youth ministry as missionary endeavour and within the voice of Trinitarian theology.
To do this, a methodology of practical theology is developed and employed. This is negotiated through conducting the research within a theological hermeneutic and by placing qualitative research within an appropriate cycle of reflection. To explore the lived practice of youth ministry, the interview is adopted. The interpretation of this data creates narratives of practice. The data is brought into a critical discussion with key literature on youth ministry. In relation to practice and the youth ministry literature, Trinitarian theology operates as a normative voice. Through this process, Trinitarian theology serves, illuminates and enriches practice and helps to understand enacted youth ministry as a more authentic and faithful expression of the Gospel.
Relationships are affirmed as an overarching theme expressed by the practitioners. These function as communicative acts as a place of connection and transmission and are the threads that run through the narratives of practice. Relationships as communicative acts are circuits of influence and the place of sub-cultural engagement. However, this complex and nuanced practice is summed up through the terms of relationship, like Jesus, being there and time and journey; this is seen as theological shorthand. The theological shorthand reveals an embedded theology that evokes and has a connection with the wider theological picture of the Christian tradition, yet, this wider tradition is not overtly expressed. Furthermore, the classic elements of the church’s practices of diakonia, kerygma and marturia are collapsed into relationships. This turns relationships as communicative acts into a contemporary practice, but this is not intentional.
Therefore, a more explicit and theological re-imagining of relationships as communicative acts is advanced through Trinitarian theology; here, relationships are reframed and located in God’s authorship and divine communicative action.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Ben Quash (Supervisor) & Peter Ward (Supervisor)