Back in college, my youth ministry professor turned me on to a book by Kendra Creasy Dean entitled The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry. Much like Bro. Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God, this book helped shape my heart for ministry in ways that I hadn’t yet experienced. Every so often, I get the itch to re-read The Godbearing Life and everytime I do I learn a little more. Dean makes the argument that we- youth ministers, pastors, teachers- have been invited to become Godbears to the world in which we live. While Mary physically brought God into the world in the birth of Jesus Christ, “God invites all of us to become Godbearers- persons who by the power of the Holy Spirit smuggle Jesus into the world through our own lives, who by virtue of our yes to God find ourselves forever and irrevocably changed.” This powerful image has stuck with me from the first moment that my eyes read the words on the page. What an awe inspiring invitation. You cannot help but be passionate about that task.

Dean’s newest book Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church begins with another powerful image of invitation. Although this one is a little more daring and scarry. Dean believes that just as Abraham was asked to offer Isaac before the Lord, we too must make that same choice. Do we allow our children to go off into the world to face the culture on their own or do we offer them up to God so that they might have a new life and a new heart? The choice seems simple but, according to Dean, the choice can seem terrifying when you are faced with the full reality of having a child who is entering into adolescence.

No amount of searching the text or teaching or preaching quelled the rage that mounted when I read that abraham bound Isaac to an alter, automotron-like, following the divine dictum that he present his child as a burnt offering to God. What kind of parent would do such a thing? What kind of God would ask such a thing?

And then my son turned twelve.

Now, it seems, there are only two choices. Brendan could come of age alone, as scores of his pubescent peers will do, heading into the wilderness of adolescence to face decisions- many with irreversible consequences- once reserved for adults. I know he can’t survive this alone. He has youth, smarts, and vigor, but few skills of resistance, and precious little experience excersising wisdom over whim. Consumer culture would surely eat him alive. Its greedy teeth marks show already.

The other option is to accept God’s invitation: “Take your son, whom you love, and offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Genesis 22:7). I can climb this coming-of-age mountain with Brendan just so far, knowing that very soon I will run out of ways to protect him.

Surely God does want Brendan’s heart, the way God desires the heart of every adolescent. Yet if Brendan were to run, where would he go? Back to the shelter of childhood? He could try, but he’ll soon learn that no adolescent can be a child again, no matter how immature he acts. Forward, then, to adulthood? A rather optimistic plan, given the fact that no one today knows where, exactly, adulthood actually begins. To his peers? Maybe. But they’re lost in the wilderness too- although we can still hear their voices, most of them, calling out through the media that tempt them off this holy mountain. He could go back to his parents- well, I guess not. Anyway, we’re not home. We’re along for Brendan’s adolescent journey too, which means facing the fact that very soon we are either going to have to give him up or give him over to God.

Given the options, I’m banking on God.

And so his dad and I find ourselves these days hammering away at an alter, made of practices of faith and a fellowship of believers we’ve been attending to over the years- the combustible stuff of Christianity, faith fuel that ignites in the presence of holy fire.

For better or worse, one of these days we will arrive at the sacred place, and I will lay him down on this alter of faith. And when that day comes- when the car keys, the career plans, the dates, and the decisions are his, not ours- his dad and I will offer him up to God, who has a plan.

Question: What does all of this have to do with practicing passion? Answer: Everything

If we are not zealous about teaching and raising our children to follow the Lord than we are like a boxer beating the air. If we do not show our young that the call to follow Jesus Christ is a call to exhibit the Passion of his everlasting love than they will not hear us. Youth ministry is a about ministering to the entire church, re-introducing to this passionate life, and living out its kingdom values.

What an invitation!