Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry part 1

Right now I am reading through a book called Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry. It was suggested to me by a friend of mine in Colorado. He is a friend and a mentor who really taught me to love students and do ministry through a relational style of ministry. This basically means that you are investing in the lives of students where they live, and winning the right to speak biblical truth into their lives. But this book really challenges the thought process of the why behind this what. Traditionally, it seems that we invest in the lives of people (namely students) in order to be people of influence. We are "loving" people for what we can gain, or move people toward. The author, Andrew Root, states that: "relationships have been used for cultural leverage (getting adolescents to believe or obey) rather than as teh concrete location of God's action in the world." We tend to use relationships not to be Christ and to fully experience Christ, but to manipulate people. We tend not to "dwell among them" as Christ did, but to manipulate them...the end has justified the means. Andrew Root challenges us to rethink that. I am being challenged and am loving it. I am working to love my students and to dwell among them.