All About the Heart and Soul of YouthWorkers
We spend an awful amount of time focusing on how to avoid conflict and job-related stress and in doing so we’re ignoring a percentage of our audience that clearly wants to get fired. If you’re floundering around getting close to termination but not quite pulling it off, this one is for you. Don’t be too…
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Gracing the cover of this month’s National Geographic magazine is “The New Science of the Teenage Brain,” a headline the result of years of research on teenage brain development. It attempts to answer the age-old question about teenage risky behavior, “What on Earth was he doing?” As a person who works with and loves teenagers, what…
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On average, youthworkers can probably be most easily summed up as “the person that drove the van to Six Flags.” It’s an average; there’s a lot of good, smart work being done on one side of that median description and a lot of inept efforts that lost the church credit card and forgot to buy…
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Last night our youth did another night of 3 Questions, a conversational family program I started this year. (If you’re unfamiliar with the format for 3 Questions, you can read about it [HERE].) One of the questions asked by the dads in the room was, “What about life is too hard for teens and what…
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I Blew It. (sky-punch.) Owning your mistakes is a hard, hard business. Depending upon your ministry context, your large and small failures probably have a variation of immediate impact, eventual consequences, or, most mysteriously, the occasional ability to dissolve and vanish completely. “We never did find that 9th grader at Six Flags, but oddly enough…
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ARTICULATING FAITH: Thoughts on “What do you believe? American Teenagers, Spirituality, and Freedom of Religion,” a video by Sarah Feinbloom Written by Amy Valdez Barker “A compelling educational peacemaking film without being didactic, sectarian, or doctrinaire. Every public school, congregation and youth program in the country should have a copy of it.” Rev.…
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Having done a dumb thing or three in Youth Ministry over the years has led me to consider 3 Simple Ways NOT to start Youth Group in the fall. Maybe you’ve been there, maybe you just did this, or maybe you are about to do this and I can save you a future confessional moment.…
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This article was originally published September 12, 2011. I had a conversation recently with a middle school principal. He was talking about the difficulty of the transition from elementary school for the students as well as the parents. For the students, the challenge is the switch from an almost embryonic environment where they’re surrounded all…
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**This originally posted at Youthworker Circuit Blog. Kevin headed up the Wild Goose Festival Youth Community tent where he was able to get folks like Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren came to share with the teenagers at the event. When you get right down to it, there are more goose jokes than you might think.…
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Since the fall is coming up and many of a youth ministry is going to be starting that new academic year of ministry you might be in need for updating your youth ministry medical release & permission forms. I did one of my top-secret search engine tricks and found a plethora of youth ministry release…
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In our conference call this Monday morning (you were asleep; we didn’t want to bother you) we were hashing through some of the unique challenges in planning ministry and mission and arrived at a great truism: the one constant in youth ministry is that everything is always changing. The way we used to do it…
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Sundays in a large church with an average worship attendance of about 1100-1400 people begins at approximately 7:30 AM. The preaching pastor prepares for the first service and spends some quiet time in reflection with God. A group comes in and prays for him/her and then begins the marathon of three worship services; 8:30 –…
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After several appointments with parents over the last few weeks concerning their daughters, I thought I’d share a collection of advice about young women. I am not a counselor but try to offer direction to parents of girls through a developmental and sociological lens. 1) Parents discuss with your daughter that there has always been…
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In the past two weeks we passed along a program idea called “3 Questions,” promoting an evening of unscripted family discussion. If you missed it on our Facebook page or in our email, you can check out the details out here: 3 Questions : Parent & Teen Program February 1, 2011 As a follow up to…
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In a recent New York Times article, Frazzled Moms and Volunteerism, care for volunteers are raised. The landscape for families has changed dramatically since I have been in ministry. For over twelve years, I have seen families take on more and more. One family in a previous church was heavily involved in junior league hockey…
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The Life Of A Disciple In The World The Virtues & Fruits of the … [Read More...]
Last night our youth did another night of 3 Questions, a … [Read More...]
The Life Of A Disciple In The World The Virtues & Fruits of the … [Read More...]
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