In modernity, we have an anthropology problem. We’ve reduced the meaning of human life to growth and improvement—to becoming more or better . We’ve succumbed to what I call a developmentalist anthropology, the belief that to be human is to grow and mature. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Everything exists on a scale of improvement. Within that frame, the “fully developed” adult becomes the standard of human life, the vantage point for understanding and interpretation. Youth, then, are defined not by their being, but by their becoming —their  not-yet-being . According to this anthropology , youth and children are “human becomings,” not human beings. This is not only a sociological problem—it’s a theological one. In youth ministry, this developmentalist vision distorts our imagination of what constitutes ministry itself. It makes youth ministry about getting kids from childhood to adulthood, from immaturity to maturity. We begin to measure our success by growth—spiritual, em...