Nurturing Different Dreams

Increasingly, adolescents and young adults in the United States are racially and socioeconomically diverse, while the teaching population remains predominantly white and middle class. Many youth ministry programs that utilize volunteer mentors recruit adults who are ill-equipped to bridge cultural differences and effectively build sustainable relationships with adolescents who come from different backgrounds than their own. College and university campus ministries that are historically white struggle to provide adequate support and mentoring for students who have traditionally not been represented in the college population. Often, mentoring relationships break down over cultural misunderstandings.

As educators who come from backgrounds marked by privilege, Katherine Turpin and Anne Carter Walker draw from their experiences in an intentionally culturally diverse youth ministry program to name the challenges and inadequacies of ministry with young people from marginalized communities. Through engaging case studies and vignettes, the authors re-examine the assumptions about youth agency, vocational development, educational practice, and mentoring.

Offering concrete guidelines and practices for working effectively across lines of difference, Nurturing Different Dreams invites readers to consider their own cultural assumptions and practices for mentoring adolescents, and assists readers in analyzing and transforming their practices of mentoring young people who come from different communities than their own.


""The dominant ministerial and educational networks of American religion are just beginning to come to terms with the ways 'whiteness' structures what is thinkable and doable. This frank and readable book marks a robustly creative and theologically important turn in the conversation and should be read by white pastoral workers in and beyond the mainline denominations.""
--Tom Beaudoin, Fordham University, Bronx, NY

""In this insightful book, Katherine Turpin and Anne Carter Walker focus on some of the most critical topics for those interested in youth today. The impact of social location, power, and privilege on the development of youth agency--the capacity to dream--is integral to a critical understanding of what is needed to mentor young people today. I would recommend this book for use in both religious and community contexts. It is also an outstanding resource for schools, churches, and organizations interested in planning intensive programs.""
--Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA

""There are very few youth ministry books that offer leaders honest, authentic, and practical discourse on ministry with racially and socioeconomically marginalized teenagers. Nurturing Different Dreams is just that kind of book. . . . Through the conversion of FaithTrek leaders, this book invites us to a new form of youth ministry that disrupts the power and privilege of white/middle-class society and liberates those on the margins, as well as those in the center, to live boldly and bravely into our God-given vocations. This is brilliant stuff for youth ministry.""
--Evelyn L. Parker, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX

""In Nurturing Different Dreams, Anne Carter Walker and Katherine Turpin address a significant gap in the literature on youth ministry and education--i.e., how to respectfully teach youth across the range of differences. Moreover, their research does not rely merely on theory, but is grounded in years of practical work with teens of different social locations. This work grows from a deep love of young people, the church, and the broken world. I trust this book and you should too!""
--David F. White, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, TX