My flight to Kansas City was fogged in on Sunday so I had some extra time to finish reading The God-Hungry Imagination: The Art of Storytelling for Postmodern Youth Ministry by Sarah Arthur.

Here is the bottom line with this book… I think it would be super helpful for you to read. Like most books, not every page is going to leave you with something to underline, highlight or immediately implement. However, I think that there is enough good stuff in this book for your thinking to be stretched and enough for you to think and talk about with your peers and volunteers.

I feel like Arthur has hit on a really important and a largely missing element to the spiritual formation of adolescents — the use of the imagination. Not only does Arthur make a proposal for the employment of the imagination she leaves the reader with a solid understanding of what it is, what it isn’t and how to help our students engage it more.

I really like how Arthur ties the imagination and the use of story together. She does a very good job of helping the reader understand what story is and why story works and give some (not enough) examples of how to use it.

Arthur says that clichés are “dead metaphors”. I really like that thought… I also really like this quote:

“If we embrace the classical definition of the imagination as a faculty of the intellect, it would certainly seem plausible to suggest that someone could have imaginative intelligence, here defined as the intuitive ability to discover and express meaningful relationships and patterns between otherwise unconnected ideas, images and experiences — or the ability to put things together.”

To me, this is the central idea of Arthur’s book — to learn to help students connect through the imagination what would otherwise be left unconnected through the typical methods and techniques. In other words, the imagination helps students connect all of life to the story of God therefore helping to shape a new and transforming life.
Here are some things that I didn’t particularly care for or wished for…

• I didn’t care for Arthur’s definition of “missional”. I felt like it was very weak. I also felt like she connected her definition of missional (”the evangelism of the postmodern culture”, page 145) strictly to a very misunderstood concept. That concept being that the church needs to “reinvent itself if it is going to be culturally relevant.” Being “missional” is a whole lot more than being culturally relevant. That might be a by-product of it, but it isn’t solely that.
• I wish that Arthur would have taken more time to dive deeper into the “meta-narrative” allowing readers to get a better and bigger picture of God’s story.
• I wish Arthur would have included the importance of observation (watching peers and adults live out the story) along with the importance of using the imagination.

At the end of the day, The God-Hungry Imagination: The Art of Storytelling for a Postmodern Youth Ministry is a book you should read. I also recommend that you encourage your volunteers to read it and allow the ideas in the book to birth deep, rich and lasting conversations about the importance of the imagination in the formation of adolescents.