Ministry with Adolescents: Tending Boundaries, Telling Truths

This essay explores anxieties, risks, and responsibilities of ministers and other spiritual leaders who seek honest and healing dialogue about sex and sexuality with young people in their care. Building on a delicate scene from Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak, it draws from psychotherapeutic works of Ron Taffel and David Schnarch, and from theological writings of Sebastian Moore and Mark D. Jordan, to press the importance of safe, direct, non-shaming pastoral conversations around sensitive adolescent sexual concerns.