Christians in secular youth work : Harmony and tension in the expression of faith

ABSTRACT

The youth sector in Australia has secularized considerably over the past five decades, yet many active Christians choose to work within it. Despite Australia’s increasingly multi-faith society, little Australian youth work research exists that would explain how these Christians understand the relationship between their personal faith and their professional role, nor how they integrate the two in practice. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 29 Christian youth workers, this article seeks to remedy this gap. It asks: (1) How do Christians in the secular youth work sector understand the place of their faith within their professional role?; and (2) how do they practice “care” and “dialogical evangelism” as practical expressions of their faith? The article finds that Christians in secular youth work tend to view the nexus between faith and youth work through the theological motif of imago Dei. They see the practical expression of their faith, first, as one of “care” which flows from their theological belief of imago Dei. Second, they value conversation about faith with young people, but place the agency of young people at the center of these discussions, in a practice of “dialogical evangelism.” The article concludes by discussing the implications for educators and academics.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth work
• Christianity
• secular
• Australia
• religion

Introduction

Paul is a youth worker in his late 30s, and lives in northern Queensland, Australia. He grew up, to use his words, “on the other side of the tracks.” This sensitized him to poverty and injustice, and he began a role as a support worker with young people in the child protection system. Through several crises in his life, and encounters with Christians, he converted to Christianity. His approach to integrating his faith and youth work is to ask himself, “What’s one nugget of acceptance I could give this person? And maybe, just like those other people who put me onto a different track, I could do the same.” Generally he finds much overlap between his faith and youth work, but sometimes there are tensions. Paul recounts an interaction with a colleague and a young person:

[T]he young person identified as a Christian … My co-worker pointed at me and said, ‘He’s a Christian too.’ So, I said, ‘Oh yeah. I’m a person of faith too.’ The young person had to bugger off on the bus and she said, ‘Oh look, before we leave, do you mind saying a prayer for me and my family?’ So, I said, ‘I’d be happy to say a prayer for you.’

Paul’s coworker left the meeting and Paul prayed for the young person. He chatted to his coworker afterward and explained he would not have prayed for the young person, except that she had requested it. His coworker seemed comfortable. However:

The next day, my team leader pulled me aside and asked me for a run down on what happened. And then, basically [my co-worker had] gone and dobbed me in for using my faith at work and all that side of things, and sort of blew up a bit.

Paul was exonerated of any wrongdoing when it became clear that the young person had requested the prayer, but it made him cautious about doing it again.

This vignette shows how Christian youth workers in Australia are aware of the harmonies and tensions associated with expressing faith in secular youth work contexts, and how nonreligious colleagues might perceive this. However, little has been written in Australia on the significant relationship between youth work and faith, despite many Christians, and people of other religions, entering the youth work field. Still fewer empirical studies have been conducted. This is despite research on the issue from other contexts and adjacent fields. In response, this article draws on in-depth interviews with 29 Christians who are youth workers in the secular youth work sector in Australia. The data from these interviews is used to examine two research questions: (1) How do Christians in secular youth work organizations in Australia understand their work in relation to their faith?; and (2) How do these Christians practice “care” and “dialogical evangelism” in their professional role, as (respectively) areas of harmony and tension between youth work and Christianity?

I find that Christians in secular youth work tend to view the nexus between faith and youth work through the theological motif of “imago Dei” (the image of God). They see their work, first, as one of “care” which flows directly from this theological motif. Second, they place the agency of young people at the center of their practice of discussing their faith, which I term “dialogical evangelism.” The article concludes with a discussion of some implications of the research.

Given the lack of empirical investigations into the relationship between Christian faith and secular youth work in Australia, this article constitutes a significant contribution to the place of youth work within the sociology of religion. In addition, it is internationally significant, especially for readers in United States and Australia, given its contribution to the growing number of studies within the lived religion tradition.

Harmony and tension between faith and Australian youth work

The youth work sector in Australia is now highly secularized, despite the Christian origins of much Australian youth work. Consequently, the explicit expression of Christian faith in secular youth work contexts now evokes feelings of awkwardness, an uncertain sense of “fit,” and a sense that tectonic plates of worldview are bumping up against each other. Yet, there also exists much overlap between Christianity and youth work practice.

Key terms in this study

There is very little agreement in Australia on the nature of “youth work.” Beyond the fact that youth workers work with young people, consensus is hard to find on the purpose of youth work, and its distinctive practices (Bessant et al., 1998; Sercombe, 2010, pp. 99–100; White et al., 1991). However, a widely-used definition was developed in 2013 after a sector-wide consultation by AYAC (Australian Youth Affairs Coalition), the peak body for young people and the youth sector:

Youth work is a practice that places young people and their interests first. Youth work is a relational practice, where the youth worker operates alongside the young person in their context. Youth work is an empowering practice that advocates for and facilitates a young person’s independence, participation in society, connectedness and realisation of their rights. (AYAC, 2013, p. 3)

This formulation serves as the operating definition of youth work for this article. Following on from this, a “Christian youth worker” is a youth worker, who identifies as a Christian, and who works in a secular youth work organization in nonreligious roles. These youth workers are to be distinguished from chaplains who work with young people in government schools, because in Australia, chaplains are explicitly identified as Christian. Christian youth workers are also distinct from a youth worker in a church-based role, whose role and organizational context are both religious. It should also be noted that “Christian youth worker” is taken to refer to the participants in this research, rather than denoting a wider cohort.

The term “secular youth work” also needs definition, not least because “secular” is used in diverse fields, including history, politics, the law, sociology, youth work, theology, and others, and is contested both within and between these fields (Berger et al., 2012; Bruce, 2002; Casanova, 1994; Crockett & Voas, 2006; Singleton et al., 2021; Stark, 1999). I take direction from Charles Taylor’s focus on secularity as “exclusive humanism” (Taylor, 2007, p. 244ff), an ethic in which it is “possible to rely exclusively on intra-human powers” (p. 234), with no reference to transcendent realities. In addition, Mark Chaves’ states that “Secularization is best understood not as the decline of religion, but as the declining scope of religious authority” (Chaves, 1994, p. 750). That is, that secularization turns on more than simply the presence, or lack of, individuals who have an active faith in which they intentionally believe and practice. It also concerns the influence, or authority, of religious traditions within organizations and institutions. Hence, I define “secular youth work” as youth work approaches, and contexts, in which active faith commitments and religious authority are assumed to be absent, irrelevant or harmful.

The youth work sector in Australia

Youth work’s history in Australia is rooted in the philanthropic and missionary impulses of the youth work pioneers of the nineteenth century, and further shaped by government intervention, social change and the exuberant experimentation of the 1960s–1970s (Fagg, 2021). Since then, however, Australian youth work has gradually conformed to increasing government regulation, leading to an outcomes-driven approach to youth work (de St Croix, 2018; Martin, 2003; Rodd & Stewart, 2009; Sercombe, 2015). Contemporary youth workers do not always conform to this approach in their everyday work, but the youth sector has become marketized, professionalized, and secularized. This has effects on Christians who work in the sector.

In the 1980s, the national Labor government introduced liberalizing economic reforms that radically changed Australian youth work through applying the free market paradigm to its work (Bessant & Emslie, 1997; Gallet, 2016). Religious faith was marginalized through this process, as agencies with a Christian heritage were “captured by the new public management agenda and this has compromised their ability to deliver their unique mission and resulted in identity drift” (Gallet, 2016, pp. 245–256). Hence, youth workers with a Christian faith cannot expect to find a spiritual home within these agencies, even though these agencies may remain connected with a Christian denomination (Judd et al., 2012, Location 1672).

Although Australian youth work is not yet an established profession like social work or teaching, it has made significant moves toward professionalization (Bessant, 2004; Broadbent & Corney, 2008; Goodwin, 1991; Sercombe, 2004; YACVIC, 2014, p. 241). The professional youth sector in Australia largely disregards religion or spirituality as a relevant factor in practice or in research (Daughtry, 2010), and this sector-wide culture sits awkwardly with youth workers who hold an active Christian faith. Within an international and cross-sector context, such disregard may seem out of place. For example, much research has been completed in the United Kingdom on the relationship between youth work, and religion and spirituality (Smith et al., 2019; Green, 2010). In addition, in adjacent professions such as social work, the role of religion and practice in both practice and training has a relatively solid basis in research (Crisp & Dinham, 2019; Furness & Gilligan, 2010; Gardner, 2022; Oxhandler et al., 2022). Despite this international and cross-sector movement to explore religion and spirituality, the youth work sector in Australia remains largely inattentive to these concerns (Daughtry, 2010; Noble-Carr et al., 2013). Where these themes do start to emerge (in Australia) they remain in the area of youth wellbeing or measures of youth spirituality, rather than youth work practice (Grieves, 2008; Singleton et al., 2021).

The secularization of the youth work sector in Australia began in earnest during the 1960s and 1970s when Australian youth workers turned to feminism and Marxism as they attempted to move on from the youth work of the past, which had been thoroughly shaped by Christian organizations (Bessant, 1997, p. 35; Fagg, 2021). At that time, many of the movements for social change were opposed by the church at the time, or perceived as such by youth workers (Hilliard, 1997). This process was accelerated by the hollowing-out of large religious welfare organizations in which much Australian youth work takes place (Gallet, 2017). When government funding calls for a narrow set of expertise, then an organization’s religious character becomes less significant, and priorities are gradually changed to meet the needs of the market. Hence, welfare agencies linked to denominations often undergo a process of internal secularization, whereby religious influence is gradually removed or marginalized (Chaves, 1993, p. 165; Cleary, 2012; Judd et al., 2012).

Given the marginal place of Christian faith within secular Australian youth work, it is significant that Christians keep choosing this field to practice their sense of calling to youth work. To understand the relationship between youth work and faith in Australia, it is important to investigate this phenomenon more deeply. Given their willingness to enter a secular workforce which is (at least) skeptical of their faith, how do Christian youth workers understand the relationship between their faith and their work? In particular, what are areas of harmony and tension between Christian faith and contemporary youth work, and how do Christians negotiate these?

Harmony: ‘care’ and the imago Dei

An area of harmony care has been explored by numerous between Christian faith and secular youth work is that of “care.” For the Christian youth workers in this study, the theory and practice of care is based on the idea of young people as “created in the image of God,” a phrase frequently used by participants to describe their motivation for their youth work. The “image of God” is a theological idea taken directly from the narratives of creation in the Hebrew Bible. After creating animals and plants of all kinds, God creates human beings: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”⁠¹ This phrase conveys the idea that humans contain something of the divine within them, bestowing an inherent responsibility and dignity. Often expressed in the Latin phrase imago Dei, this idea has been crucial in the formation of Christian conceptions of human rights, dignity and respect, and for consequent declarations of human rights, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, on which many Australian youth work ethical codes are based (Marshall, 2002, p. 47). It is a theological idea that is general enough to be applied in a secular youth work setting, yet remains distinctively Christian in substance. There is much theological discussion about the meaning of this phrase, with some emphasizing the inherent dignity on humans that it bestows, whereas others emphasize the element of humans to care for the creation as God would. Biblical scholar N.T. Wright expresses this double meaning:

The central fact about humans in the Bible is that they bear the image of God (Genesis 1:26–28, etc). I understand this as a vocation as much as an innate character (2004, p. 44)

The connection between imago Dei and care has been explored by numerous authors in the care professions (for example, Cherry, 2017; Hodge & Wolfer, 2008; McCann, 2000; Pooler, 2011). However, the language of “care” has ambiguous and problematic resonances within youth work. For example, institutions set up to deal with neglected, abused, homeless and “delinquent” young people fell under the term “child care” in Australia and elsewhere (Barry et al., 1956; Gaffney, 1998; Merritt, 1957). This connection of the notion of “care” with highly institutionalized systems of protection and control has led some theorists to question care as a suitable value for youth work because, in their view, it disempowers young people (Horton & Pyle, 2019 p. i; Campbell, 1984, p. 105). Despite these criticisms, care remains a key concept in youth work practice (Burt et al., 1998; Hart, 2017; Martin, 2003; Smith & Smith, 2008). Diana Medley Rauner has effectively rehabilitated an ethic of care in youth work:

A habit of care is a habit of action, but also a habit of mind. It can be thought of as an ethic of care, a philosophy of accepting and rejoicing in one’s responsibilities to others. (2000, p. 19)

Rauner further defines the practice of care as a skilled process of both emotion and discernment:

It is commonplace to think of care as synonymous with comfort, concern or kindness … In practice, care is more discriminating, a product of skill and judgment as well as emotion. Care can be described as an endlessly cycling process comprised of three interrelated components: attentiveness, responsiveness, and competence, all of which are necessary and none alone sufficient for caring. (2000, p. 20)

Care is an element of Christian youth workers’ practice that proceeds directly from their theological belief in God’s love for people, and from the idea that young people are created in the image of God. This article will examine how a cohort of Australian Christian youth workers practice “care,” and explore the connection to their faith.

Tension: evangelism – ethical breach or legitimate dialogue?

If care is an area of harmony between Christian faith and youth work, then an area of significant tension is the practice of “evangelism.” Howard Sercombe provides a useful starting point and definition for the discussion of this issue:

The history of youth work in most Western countries began with evangelism, with the imperative to introduce young people to the Christian faith … Many people whose motivations began with evangelism began to notice more and more the difficulty of these young people’s lives, and the often routine injustice that filled them … So the analysis tended to move on to understand the conditions of injustice and deprivation that shape the lives of young people like this. (2010, p. 31, emphasis added)

Evangelism was once commonplace in youth work, yet now is seen as ethically fraught (Burton, 1965 ff; Pugh, 1999). However, it is rarely given direct treatment in the Australian youth work literature. As in Sercombe’s quote above, there is now an assumption that evangelistic motivations wane as concern for social justice increases. This assumption fits with the “subtraction story” identified by philosopher Charles Taylor. The subtraction story assumes that religion and religious motivations decrease as supposedly more sophisticated and modern concerns rise to prominence (Taylor, 2007, p. 26ff).

However, the cohort of Christian youth workers in this study combine both motivations. They are concerned both with the conditions of young people’s lives, and “with the imperative to introduce young people to the Christian faith” (Sercombe, 2010, p. 31). In this combination of priorities, they stand firmly in the middle of the Christian tradition of keeping social justice and evangelism connected (Bosch, 2011, pp. 194–420; Langmead, 2004, pp. 194–197). However, such a combination of priorities is not straightforward, either in theory or practice.

Evangelism in youth work is problematic because youth work “places young people and their interests first,” as this article’s definition of youth work asserts (AYAC, 2013, p. 3). Despite no specific ban on evangelism in Australia’s various youth work codes of ethics, communicating the religious motivations of the youth worker is seen as a probable imposition in a situation of power imbalance, and thus ethically risky:

Where there is an aim to convert or evangelise there is tremendous pressure not to take the ‘risk’ of exploring a divergent range of choices with the young person but to present a single viewpoint or solution. (Green, 2010, p. 130)

Yet, Green argues that to dismiss evangelism in youth work is problematic, because it paints “youth work as having an ideologically neutral value base and [sees] a faith value base as at best additional to this and at worst contrary to youth work values” (Green, 2010, p. 131). As Pete Harris contends, this assumption of a neutral youth work value base “quickly evaporates on even a cursory analysis” (Harris, 2015, p. 89). Harris argues that the true argument is not whether the religious or political views of the youth worker should be shared, but the way they are shared (2015, p. 95). He recognizes the risk of indoctrination of young people by youth workers, and yet refuses to allow this risk to suppress dialogue about religious or political topics:

Young people need opportunities to make choices about their values and they cannot do this without engaging in dialogue … Dialogue is only possible, however, if we state what we value and believe to be true at that time and then seek to understand what the other values and sees as true, likewise, at that time.

Harris continues:

Dialogue does not mean that we should not share what we value with young people or engage in some kind of descent into moral relativism. The process of declaring your values, convictions and beliefs does not become indoctrination as long as it is accommodated by a commitment to listen and learn from the values, convictions and beliefs of others. (Harris, 2015, p. 93)

Following Harris’ focus on dialogue, I would make a distinction between “dialogical evangelism” on the one hand, and “non-dialogical evangelism” on the other. I suggest that “dialogical evangelism” can be a legitimate practice within secular youth work. Dialogical evangelism can be defined as a shared discussion about beliefs and values, which seeks clarity and understanding of the other’s views. It places the freedom and agency of the young person at the center of the dialogue. There is a need to ensure Christians in youth work do not impose their beliefs on young people, but there is also a need to explore whether there is a place for discussion religious ideas and values within secular youth work (Audi and Conti, 1998; Hill, 2012). However, for the reasons outlined by Green above (2010, p. 130), such “dialogical evangelism” must be carried out with care. Do Christian youth workers in this research project practice dialogical evangelism, or do they engage in ethically indefensible impositions of their beliefs on young people?

The youth work sector in Australia is skeptical of religious faith, and is similarly marginalized as a theme within academic discussions of youth work in Australia. However, the preceding discussion shows that religious faith is relevant to youth work practice, even within secular contexts and institutions. Hence, this study is a valuable contribution to the field of youth work, and its relationship to religious faith, particularly in Australia and other post-Christian contexts.

Method

Twenty-nine youth workers were interviewed for this study, aged between 23 and 62 years old, and were recruited through several methods, such as contacts known to the researcher, word-of-mouth “snowball” sampling, and online networks. Sixteen participants were male, and 13 female, and they came from Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist, Anglican, Uniting Church, and other non-denominational Christian traditions, recognizing that the Christian “world” consists of many different perspectives. Their level of experience in secular contexts ranged from  one year to 32 years, with 15 participants having had over ten years in the sector. Twelve had specific youth work qualifications, while the remainder had related qualifications such as education or welfare studies. They worked in various settings, such as government secondary schools, mental health agencies, municipal councils, large welfare agencies, and small nonprofit organizations. The research was approved by Deakin University’s Human Research Ethics Committee (HAE-17-234), and all participants have been given pseudonyms in order protect their identities.

This research used extended semi-structured interviews with the participants. This allowed a wide-ranging exploration of the participants’ personal background, motivations for entering youth work, their perceptions of how they expressed faith in and through their professional role, and their reflections on their church community, if they attended one.

All interviews were electronically recorded and professionally transcribed. After each interview was completed and transcribed, the transcript was imported into the qualitative data software, NVivo. Transcripts were coded within NVivo using the thematic process recommended by Braun and Clarke (2006): familiarization with the data; generating initial codes; searching for themes; reviewing themes; and defining and naming themes. Codes and sub-codes were built up initially using the literature review and interview schedule, and then added to, deleted, and adapted as repeated reading of the interview transcripts revealed new emphases.

The expression of faith with young people

The intertwining of Christianity and youth work is problematic because of Australia’s secular youth work sector, yet Christians keep signing up for youth work because of their faith, not despite it. How do they understand their work with young people in relation to their faith, and what does this faith look like when practically expressed in a secular youth work role?

How do Christian youth workers in the secular Australian youth sector understand their work?

This group of Christians in secular youth work have a reasonably coherent conception of the aims of their work. In particular, they are deeply committed to treat young people in a way consistent with their status as creatures made in God’s image. In addition, they see mainstream youth work norms as congruent with this commitment. For these youth workers, being “created in the image of God” means that a person is deserving dignity and respect regardless of their behavior. Cameron, a mental health youth worker in his mid-30s, who attends an evangelical Anglican congregation, comments:

So yes, people suck, we do stupid stuff, we abuse people, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we do the gambit of things. But if we’re made in the image of God that means even the ‘worst case’ young people that we’re going to work with are fully deserving of 100% of my attention.

In addition to this inherent dignity of the young person, imago Dei suggests potential waiting to be tapped, and the youth worker can play a role in calling this potential into being. Phil, a youth services manager in his late 40s in Western Australia, and a former church pastor, expresses this double sense of the imago Dei when speaking about his motivations:

You know, that belief that humans are created in God’s image and that the potential that exists in everyone is real. And I like to think that as many people as possible get an opportunity to find that potential.

For Alex, an alcohol and other drugs (AOD) outreach worker in Melbourne, the imago Dei leads to a focus on helping young people to love themselves – to see themselves, because of the image of God in them, as loved and worthy of love:

I think that if you can help someone to love themselves then they’re going to break down walls in their lives … If you can enable someone to have some self-confidence, and love for themselves, then nothing can stop them … One of the most common things in these young people that are engaged in those sort of youth services … is the inability to really love themselves.

The language of the “image of God,” and of “love,” is widespread amongst Christians in youth work, yet rare in secular youth work contexts (though, see de St Croix, 2016 ff; Smith & Smith, 2008). Given the theological foundation of imago Dei that Christians in secular youth work rely on for inspiration, it would be tempting to assume that they would see secular youth work norms as substandard or inadequate. However, they generally affirm these norms. For example, Ange is a youth work manager who converted to Christianity as a teenager, and attends a large independent charismatic church. Ange describes her youth work in very mainstream terms:

It’s about making sure that the young people we work with, regardless of their family situation or where they were born, or the circumstances that surround them, that they get every opportunity to actually go on to do well in life.

Likewise, Michael, a youth worker in New South Wales, connects loving young people to helping them fulfil their potential as creatures of God:

But I think for the youth worker, I think first and foremost is … for a Christian youth worker is to love God and love people. And then yeah, out of that comes empowering young people to make … to be all that God created them to be, is what I would say.

These quotes illustrate how Christian merge Christian beliefs with youth work norms and aims. For this cohort of Christian youth workers, mainstream Australian youth work norms are amenable to their theology and worldview. Yet in practice, this is not always straightforward, with areas of both harmony and tension.

Harmony: youth work and the practice of care

A key area of harmony is that of “care.” Christian youth workers consistently and frequently identified the practice of “care” as an expression of their faith. Heather, a youth services manager in her early 30s, explained her approach in this way:

HEATHER: I just probably think about care for people - you can talk about love … So, loving people and being patient with people and showing God’s grace when people are going through hard times and being non-judgemental. Just genuinely caring for people, I guess that’s what Jesus did and so that’s what I try and do.

INTERVIEWER: Can you give me an example of a young person that you’ve worked with where you’ve felt like you’ve needed to do those things?

HEATHER: Yes, I just had a young person recently who lost their job and study. In the care system, so lots of family issues … So [I was] just being there as like an ear for them to talk about that stuff because he had obviously been in the care system and he doesn’t have any family or any friends as well … So, just like being there and listening, not judging based on what he’s done in the past and trying to give him advice and hope for the future. A lot of it is patience with young people.

Similarly, Helen, a former youth pastor in a Pentecostal church and current local government youth worker, emphasized non-judgmental and practical responses to young people who access her service:

I think maybe going that extra mile² and not being judgmental and being kind. Unconditional love, I think. So often I think to myself if I don’t help this person, who’s going to help this person? If we are God’s hands and feet in whatever we do, if we’re being kind to someone in a shop or someone at work that’s in absolute crisis, what can we do to support people to live? … I guess it’s that. How can I support the people that are coming in?

Listening to young people was a common theme, as Joletta articulates:

I think I have an opportunity to listen to people and hear them out. I know I’ve found that really helpful when people have genuinely listened to me and I think it’s something that doesn’t happen very much, actually valuing someone’s thoughts and feelings and opinions.

It’s possible to view this focus on “care” as indistinct from any youth workers’ practice. In other words, not a distinctive of Christian youth workers. There is truth in this, as they share with their colleagues an attentiveness to the needs of young people. However, the participants communicated that from their point of view, their faith directly motivated a particularly caring way of working with people. Their faith shaped their character, which then in turn directed how they worked, as Ange articulates:

I feel like the example of Jesus and what I believe has very much shaped who I am, which obviously shapes what I do. And so, I think the fact that I have empathy but also am very determined and can persevere to, kind of, get the best outcome for young people, I think is a reflection of my faith in what God can do.

Ange’s focus on the outcome at the end of an empathetic process, reflects another of Rauner’s aspects of care, that of competence (Rauner, 2000). In other words, there is an imperative that the Christian youth worker be a diligent worker within the system, in order that young people receive the best possible care. Rachel is a diversion coordinator within the youth justice system. She says:

Hopefully in working hard, in applying Christian principles to work, especially with offenders, in showing grace and love to people who can be really unlovable and providing advocacy and restorative justice … In making plans that help them restore the situation, I think has great Christian principles in it, in that they’re seeking forgiveness and hopefully aiming for the community to bring them back.

Care is an aspect of expression of faith that is highly complementary with youth work norms, and youth workers consistently affirmed their belief that their faith made the difference in being enabled to care.

Tension: youth work and the practice of evangelism

As discussed earlier, evangelism in youth work is a contested issue, though directly addressed in very little Australian youth work literature. However, Christian youth workers often express a desire to talk about their faith with young people. Consequently, there is a need to examine if this is being done in ways that are consistent with youth work ethics – that is, as “dialogical evangelism” rather than non-dialogical.

Christian youth workers have a generalized desire for young people to become Christians. Participants were asked whether they wanted their work to influence young people to become Christians, and the majority affirmed this as an outcome. However, the translation of this desire into practical youth work is not straightforward. For example, Rachel describes her work as multi-leveled, including her ultimate desire that young people become Christians:

As a Christian, and as a wider perspective, you’d hope you were helping people get off drugs or avoid re-offending or those broader goals, and as a Christian you hope you’d have some sort of impact perhaps spiritually, though it’s obviously not a direct involvement or an obvious involvement, but you want people to ultimately come to see God and to become dependent on Him.

From Rachel’s description of her work, we can see that she desires that young people become Christians, but that it is not a proximate (direct) focus of her work, but rather an ultimate aim. This conceptualization is common. Simon, a youth worker in rural Australia, summarizes his view as, “I suppose that I’m hoping that [conversion] may happen but not actively working at that being the main goal of what I do.” For many in the study, this desire related to a hope that their character and work would be seen as distinctive, and thereby persuasive, by young people. Paul’s response is typical of this viewpoint:

I would love it [if my work influenced a young person to become a Christian]. If I was that good of a Christian that young people would think - ‘oh there’s something different about him. What is it?’ I could say, well, I have this faith and it turned me from this environment and this sort of person into where I am today. I’d really like that.

Despite this widespread desire for Christian conversion, there is a variety of attitudes toward talking about faith with young people. There was a smaller segment of participants who were reluctant to see conversations about faith as a priority, rather choosing to focus on discussions about meaning, conceived more broadly. Arthur, an experienced youth worker and lecturer, said:

I have conversations with people that are broad ranging about the things that are important to me, and that would include my values system, what motivates me, why I do what I do, you know, et cetera. Of which, you know, faith is a part of that but I wouldn’t be, you know, sitting down and saying to a young person ‘Can I have a discussion with you about my faith?’ … The context is important, I think, for these things.

Similarly, Ange is reluctant to bring conversations about faith up, because of the possibility of vulnerable young people being manipulated, yet is happy to answer questions about her faith from young people:

I don’t think it would be appropriate. I think the young people we work with are in vulnerable settings and for me to put any of my faith views or political views or any other kind of views, I don’t think it’s appropriate. I mean, if they bring it up, then I’m more than happy to talk about. It’s not something I would open a conversation about.

A small number of participants were unsure how to respond to this interview question because “becoming a Christian” was tied up in their mind with doubts about whether churches were always inclusive and welcoming places for young people. Bec says:

I don’t know—I probably—I don’t know. I think my hesitation is that churches and having like some kind of relationship or faith in God gets sort of merged together in my head and I just don’t feel like a lot of churches are particularly safe for everybody. So, I guess that’s probably a hesitation.

However, for most in the study, they desired to speak about faith with young people where ethically appropriate. Yet this was not an easy issue to navigate. There was a clear view that although youth work organizations rarely had explicit policy prohibitions against religious conversations with young people, such conversations were not regarded positively. Christian youth workers in this study recognized that engaging in these conversations could negatively affect their professional credibility. Harry says:

I guess I feel like if ever a child was to start speaking openly about the fact that I was talking to them about their faith and asking them about theirs or saying things like, ‘I’ll pray for you’ or things like that, I always fear that work would look quite negatively on that if it was to ever come up in a situation. I guess with the managers or even higher up, that I was trying to push my views on a young person.

Related to this, there was a significant level of frustration about professional boundaries that mean conversations about faith cannot occur openly. Ralph expressed the difficulty of this tension between personal conviction and professional obligation:

I guess in some way I want [young people] to know that they’re loved. That’s the hardest bit. Just recently, just the other day, yesterday, I was talking to this fifteen-year-old girl on the phone. She doesn’t live with her family; she’s not engaged with child safety … And you want them to know [that God loves them] … I think that’s the biggest thing when you become a Christian is knowing that you’re loved wholeheartedly … So, to not say that [to a young person] is the hardest bit.

Yet, it is important to note that, in general, participants did not feel inner or external pressure to speak about faith. Rather, as Helen articulates, they are motivated by their belief that Christian transformation was a “good” that they hoped their clients would experience:

I don’t particularly feel pressure to talk about faith with young people. Sometimes I feel like it’s a lost opportunity. That’s a double-edged thing of saying I don’t feel like I need to [talk about faith], but then sometimes I’ll reflect and go, man, what bloody hope has that kid got? That they’re stuffed without God in their life. There is nothing that that psychologist or whatever is going to be able to do. Something supernatural has to happen.

There was also an effort to integrate their desire for conversations about faith, with emerging research regarding holistic approaches to youth development and spirituality. Cameron commented:

[T]here’s been a fair amount of work done, particularly over the last decade or so, that talks about the spirituality side of our lives and … How we often look at the bio-psycho-social but we forget that spiritual space. In my mind if we are to be holistic we need to add that into the space. As I said, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to whip out my Bible and lead you to conversion. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to shy away from a discussion about faith … I think good youth work practice must embrace the spiritual.

Putting aside these different attitudes to the place of evangelism with young people, how do they occur in practice? Consistently, they happen within the ongoing relationship between the youth worker and young person. For example, Cameron recounts a conversation with a young woman in his mental health service:

Last year working with one of the young girls here at [agency name] who just in our conversation recognized that I was a Christian and she said, ‘I’ve been thinking a bit about that for a little while.’ And we had some wider conversations over a couple of weeks … I knew that she was moving on from our service in the not too distant future so I knew roughly what area she was moving into and I said, ‘Alright, here’s a few [churches] out that way that I know of that I’d recommend for people to go and check out … Who knows if she did go to that church or not, I have no idea but we at least had that conversation.

Similarly, Harry feels that evangelism happens in response to young people’s lives and questions, and sometimes are prompted by young people’s connections with church groups:

Actually it would have been just two or three weeks ago one of the young people that I work with asked what my faith journey was. I think they had just recently started going to a youth group and people shared their testimony³ with them and they didn’t know how to tell theirs. So they asked me what mine was and we kind of helped trying to find out what theirs was too.

In a similar vein, Talia recounts an example where young people’s experiences of religious events leads to conversations about faith with them:

And most of the time because maybe it might been something from the conversation that’s triggered off a faith conversation. Like something that a young person would’ve said. Maybe about being a part of a youth group or attending an event with a whole lot of other young people that’s faith-based or at a church. But most of the times it’s been the young person who initiated it or I picked up some keywords and then I’d continue with the conversation. It’s something that the young person is interested to talk about. You know, I just ride that wave.

By letting young people initiate and lead the conversation, Christian youth workers are attempting to integrate evangelism with the youth work norm of “keeping the young person central” to the youth work relationship. Ryan describes his approach:

Well, I’d always be letting them lead any kind of conversation about such things, and responding with similar levels of personal conviction. For me, that would mean if I am spending time with a Muslim young person, I’d start talking about their faith, and they’d ask me about what I believe, and I am happy to respond to any of that.

For youth workers in culturally diverse contexts, conversations about faith were much more common. Young people in those contexts tended to come from cultures where religion was a core dimension of life, so Tanya takes the opportunity to invite young people to discuss faith:

Yeah, so we talk about in our group work stuff that culture can be visible or it could be not seen, and how you would determine the difference. So I was giving some examples of visible stuff from other … other faiths, like a hijab or what they eat. But at the same time, if a young person was wearing a cross or maybe a band or something that represented a different religion … even Christianity, I would just try and draw that out as well.

Some youth workers were even specifically employed to provide religious content, though this was rare. For example, Talia works in residential care with young people from a Pacific Island background, who are Christians:

I think it’s only an accepted thing is because [of the environment] that they actually want to create for this house. For these two young women. And so before I had joined the house, a couple of other workers had got like a devotional-type of daily devotion book, which the girls in the house had selected themselves. And so they made us start using that, for maybe like twice a week. They even took the girls to church on a Sunday.

The majority of Christian youth workers in this study hope for young people to apprehend the “good news” of Christianity. However, they do not see their role as directly leading to conversion, though they do take opportunities to talk to young people about faith when the opportunity arises. They still retain the long-term aim of Christian transformation, but the timing of this aim is located “over the horizon” of their interaction with the young person. In their consistent efforts to allow young people to initiate and lead conversation, I have found that they are engaging in “dialogical evangelism.”

In addition, there was a consensus amongst participants that conversations about faith, meaning, and spirituality were undervalued in the Australian youth work sphere, and that youth workers in general were ill-equipped and anxious about how to carry out such conversations. This is borne out by Australian research:

If workers are overtly or covertly ignoring spiritual or religious aspects of young people’s lives, they may be missing unique opportunities to connect with and support these young people … Therefore, it is imperative that vulnerable young people are provided with opportunities to address, express and explore these important aspects of their inner lives. (Noble-Carr et al., 2013, p. 54)

Consequently, there is a need for a critical but genuine dialogue about the role of sharing faith in secular youth work. As Maxine Green proposes in her discussion of the issue, youth workers and thinkers need to “leave the moral high ground and seek the interesting middle ground where particular issues can be explored and discussed” (2010, p. 123).

Conclusion

This article is a significant contribution to the area of religious practice within secular institutions, and to the particular field of youth work. Although conducted within Australia, its findings have international relevance for youth work practice in secularized contexts.

First, Christian youth workers in this study conceptualize the place of their faith within their work through the theological idea of imago Dei. That young people are “created in the image of God” lends theological significance to the professional norms of their secular context. Second, the practice of “care” is an area of complementarity between the youth workers’ faith and their professional role. Christian youth workers consistently identified that their faith enabled them to care deeply and diligently for young people. Third, the practice of “evangelism” in secular youth work contexts creates tension for Christian youth workers. They desire to talk about faith with young people, yet recognize the ethical risks in doing so. They navigate these risks by placing young people’s agency at the center of conversations about faith – a practice called “dialogical evangelism.”

There are several implications for educators and academics. First, the existence of religious people within secular youth work settings needs to be recognized and catered for. They have strong motivations for their work, and this needs to be discussed rather than ignored or suppressed. Second, the area of religious speech within secular Australian organizations and institutions is under-researched. Rather than assume a “subtraction story” (Taylor, 2007, p. 26ff) should hold sway, this is an important area for Australian youth work academics to engage in nuanced philosophical and empirical research engaging with other disciplines and contexts (for e.g., Gebert et al., 2014; Woodcock et al., 2019). Third, youth work educators should take these findings as encouragement to engage with religious themes in their curriculum. Religious people commonly work in secular youth work, and they need guidance in how to ethically integrate their deepest values with their professional role.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the financial support of Gospel Resource Ltd and the Bishop Perry Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Bishop Perry Institute Gospel Resource Ltd .

Notes

1. Genesis 1:27, NRSV version.

2. Matthew 5:41, NRSV version.

3. A “testimony,” in Christian parlance, is a narrative about an example of God’s influence or intervention. In this setting, it refers to a person’s path to becoming a Christian.