Desert Youth Worker

From Youth Specialties, by Mike Perschon:

Despite a growing interest in the disciplines, thanks largely to the huge and continually growing success of Richard Foster's book, Evangelical Christians are still apprehensive about the subject of meditation and contemplative approaches to Christian living. While serving as staff pastor at a large summer camp in British Columbia, I came face to face with the suspicions that still surround the mystical approaches to Christianity. Each morning I was responsible for staff devotions. My devotional experiences for the past ten years have been largely contemplative, and so I purposed to teach the group the same. The morning after I expressed my intention to the group, a young lady came to me with a concerned expression.
"You're going to teach us to meditate?" she asked.
"That's right," I said.
"Isn't that New Age or Buddhist?" she asked.
"Well, Buddhists do meditate, and there are many New Age meditative practices, but what I'm going to teach is Christian meditation." I silently promised myself to never use the word meditation in a public Christian setting ever again.
"What's the difference?"
"Well, on the surface, nothing. The approach to meditation for a Buddhist looks an awful lot like what I do. The difference is the reason we're doing it. The Buddhist empties the mind for the sake of emptying it. The Christian empties the mind to fill it with Christ."

Pershon shares his insight into Deep Breathing, Lectio Divina, Ignatian Contemplation, Labyrinths, Taizé here at another post on the Youth Specialties website.