All About the Heart and Soul of YouthWorkers
OK I know that sounds a little dramatic. Let me start Micro and move towards Meta. I also really want your input, so this is a conversation starter. Here it goes: Well for about two weeks now I have become the acting Children’s Ministry Director at the Church where I am doing Interim Youth Ministry.…
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Spiritual formation begins in the home. Well, that’s at least according to the way Susannah Wesley raised her children. I believe that many of our U.M. Churches have relinquished this responsibility in equipping, encouraging and preparing parents to intentionally pass on spirituality and the language of the Christian faith to their children. That’s not to…
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Your phone rings right after the youth event is over. It’s a mom. She reads to you from the same script again, “My son/daughter is making everything so hard. We’ve been arguing non-stop, and today I found out that he/she has been smoking/drinking/sneaking out/insert rebellious action here.” You console; you offer reassurances, but the bottom…
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I’ve been told by well-intentioned youth and parents, “I will be at UMY if there is nothing on my schedule.” Really? Is that supposed to make me feel better? You’ll be at UMY if you have absolutely nothing better to do? Thanks…I think. We all experience it. Every week thousands of members of youth groups…
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I’m not sure how it happened. One day while sitting in worship, I looked up and as the choir stood to sing the offertory special, I noticed my ten year old sister with her conductor’s wand – a present given to my musically inclined sister years earlier – directing our church’s small choir. At best,…
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As Youthworkers, have we really thought about the implications of Conversion? Have we considered Conversion God’s work? Have we tried to take God’s place to manipulate young people? Do we even have a plan for what comes next the day after Conversion? “To have a conversion experience is nothing much. The real thing is to…
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“You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” Psalm 91:1-2 Once upon a time the church’s responsibility was to raise moral beacons in communities throughout the world. In…
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I’m having a hellish month of scheduling, which means I’m not able to process life events in real time. For example, last Monday I got to spend breakfast explaining to my 4 & 6 year old boys how mommy was going to go to the doctor because some stuff was broken inside. They needed to…
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I am a little bit reluctant to say this out loud, but, I kind of like Christmas these days. Our tree is up, I played my three “A Very Special Christmas” CDs the other day while the family was around, and I even put white lights on the outside of the house this year signifying…
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This article was originally published November 15, 2011. It goes without saying that youth ministry is always changing. (Oops. Well, it would have.) I grew up in the land of the forgotten nightmares of Unsafe Sanctuaries. “Chubby Bunny” was the least of our worries. Our adults were encouraged to take kids off alone; we’d go…
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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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