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Category Archives: Discipling

What Youth Ministry Can Be Part 4: Re-imagining Ministry with Youth

I was thinking as I got started on this final installment of the Youth Ministry series that perhaps this last piece should have in fact been the first.  I’m guessing there’s a good number of you who are reading this, or skipping over them, and thinking that they don’t pertain to you because they’re talking [...]

What Youth Ministry Can Be: Part 3 Coming Alongside

After laying the groundwork for ministry to youth by understanding that God calls people of all ages, we looked last month about what it means to step into what often feels like a completely foreign culture: the world our teenagers inhabit. And so building on the concept that for youth ministry to be effective it [...]

What Youth Ministry Can Be: Part 2 Stepping into the Context

Last post we looked at how the basic groundwork of youth ministry calls us to understand the truth that God gifts young people, calls young people and uses young people and therefore we must take seriously ministry to young people just as we take ministry to adults seriously. But as adults, ministry to other adults [...]

What Youth Ministry Can Be: Part 1 Laying the Groundwork

What basic understanding must be in place in order to provide good groundwork for the youth in that ministry? Throughout scripture we see examples of God calling young people to do his work. If God can use, and in fact, wants to use people of all ages, then we as the adult member of the [...]

What Youth Ministry Can Be: Anna’s Convention Presentation

When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, Jeremiah thought he was far too young to do what God had asked him to do. God’s response to him was this: “…do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ …Now I have put my words in your mouth.’” (Jeremiah 1:9 NIV). Several hundred years later, we [...]

What Youth Ministry Can Be

Part One: Laying the groundwork

What basic understanding must be in place in order to provide good groundwork for the youth in that ministry? Throughout scripture we see examples of God calling young people to do his work. If God can use, and in fact, wants to use people of all ages, then we as the [...]

Graduating from church

 “Slipping through the cracks” is a cliché used for many things, but unfortunately it’s all too familiar in our churches. Mostly it’s come to define what happens to many kids as they transition out of high school youth ministry.
From The Journal of Student Ministries Read it all

What Story is your Church Telling?

Take a look at some of the upcoming or newly released movies next time you’re in a theatre. Fantasy books-turned-movie such as Eragon, Stardust, The Golden Compass and The Seeker have popped out in rapid succession, making me wonder if there’s something going on here that we should be paying attention to.  While these movies [...]

An immature post for an immature blog

If you are signed into wordpress while looking at a wordpress blog, then you’ll see a blue tool bar at the top of your page with a series of drop-down menus that allow you to access your dashboards among other things. The far right tool bar, as I just accidentally discovered, is labeled “blog [...]

Avoiding “Junk Hours” in Youth Ministry

Here’s great article sent to me by Suzanne Cate about how to better be intentional about meetings with volunteers and leaders so that the time spent will be more fruitful.  Same amount of time as you’re probably already doing, but a different focus. Check it out here.