-Rediscovering the Occasional Papers-
I am so grateful for the staff that have curated a historical archive of Young Life’s resources and documents over the past 80 years! Recently, I stumbled upon some documents that are not only insightful to the history of the mission and pertinent to our current cultural challenges today.
Jim Rayburn’s first ever leadership manual
Decades old camp video’s and ‘Say Gang’ pamphlets
The original YL song books and training resources.
…are just a few of the timeless gems worth rediscovering.
The ‘Occasional Papers’ written by John ‘Jack’ Fortin are a series of essays whose relevance are just starting to be rediscovered. In recent conversations with some Senior Staff in the mission, I learned that Jack was a graduate of Luther Seminary and was on Young Life staff for most of the 1970’s and 80’s. He served as an Area Director, Regional Director, and Divisional Director over part of the Midwest. He hired Nancy Warden, the first female Regional Director in the mission and his wife Sara Fortin was on the Centurion Leadership team for over 10 years.
Jack wrote more than five sets of Occasional Papers over the course of his staff tenure on various theological topics that are foundational to Young Life. This specific set of papers summarize a gathering held March 1978 in Stuttgart, Germany and recounts a dialogue about Incarnational witness. Because of the age of the documents, photocopying or scanning them was not a viable option so I decided to retype the seven pages in preparation for a team discussion. Over the course of several days, I was given the chance to ‘soak’ in truth of its wording and celebrate the biblical centrality of Young Life’s methods. The ideas, thoughts, and themes that Jack articulated left a mark on me and I was reminded of some of the very foundations of our mission vision, values and methods.
INCARNATIONAL WITNESS: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT HAPPENS.
Jack unpacks the concept of ‘Incarnational Witness’ in four parts:
1. What it is.
2. How it started.
3. How it works.
4. What our attitude should be in the process
What stands out to me most is the emphasis that Jack places on the role of Christian Community in Incarnational witness and writes: ‘The act of loving through a personal relationship will usually precede the verbalization of faith in order to ‘flesh-out’ the reality of Christ’s love which the witness then shares.’ He then looks through that lens at the mission of Young Life and speaks about ‘contact work’ and describes it as, ‘physically going to the places in which adolescents are found, whether it be a street corner, a pool hall, a back-alley, the school yard, or a McDonald’s hamburger stand.’
Although back-alleys and pool halls might not be the places where we meet kids today, the heart of what he’s saying is true. Young Life leaders go to where kids are to invite them into relationship and community in order to witness in both ‘word and deed.’ As I’ve been reminded about the foundational values of our mission through reading these pages, I hope they are an encouragement to you as we get back to the basics of what makes Young Life ‘still work’ after all these years. I’m grateful to Jack and the mark he left on me and the mission.
We are currently searching the archives for more of Jack’s Occasional Papers.
If you are interested in facilitating your own discussion on Incarnational Witness, you can download the Occasional Papers HERE
-written by Kimberly Silvernale