archives
Archive for May, 2010
Generation Justice
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
A few years ago I was sitting across my dining room table talking to a teenage girl who was visiting for a few days. Let’s call her Rania. We chatted about her friends, boys, school, the cute things the little kids do at her daycare center—pretty typical stuff. Except when she started talking about the day she learned she has AIDS.
Rania was visiting us from a large city in South Asia where she’d been forced to sell her body for sex. She was tricked into becoming a prostitute, and by no fault of her own she was facing a life….
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Open Hands
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
I’ve learned a lot about holiness in my years in youth ministry. Some lessons
I’ve learned have come from the typical places. Other lessons have come
from the unexpected places, catching me off guard and teaching me all at
the same time. Two good examples of lessons I’ve learned have come from…
A Student I Know…
…who grew up in a Christian home with his pastor father and in a Christian
school with his teacher mother. All of his friends were Christians and so was
almost everyone he knew. The few people he knew who weren’t Christians,
he avoided. And he also avoided those he believed could go….
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Tossing Aside The Tract
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
We were at a student conference getting “trained” on how to witness to
people. I sat and listened with my youth group. There were more than 600
students in the room. The guy up front was walking through a pamphlet I’d
read at least a thousand times.
“Do you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”
I hated that question. It sounded eerily familiar to a former friend of mine
who tried to sell me Amway.
My students were bored. I looked down the row and three of my small
group leaders were nodding off. One of my adult volunteers nudged me
while….
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10 Ways To Connect Youth To Adults
Monday, May 17th, 2010
1. Create a mentoring program where you ask older adults to sign up to spend a segment of time with a student once a month. Interview the adults and then assign them to the best fit. Create a sheet of ideas for the adults that gives some ideas for things to do with students and some conversation-starting topics….
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Professional Youth Ministry: A Changing Landscape
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
In 1994 I was 20 years old, studying electrical engineering, trying to play basketball, and working 10 hours a week as an intern at a Methodist church in Memphis. That summer I attended a youth ministry event in the North Carolina Mountains.
All week long as I sat through worship services, led a small group, and participated in the event’s activities, I heard God whispering to me that I was called to a life ministering to teenagers. I did my best to put off the voice; I was nervous as it was working with the teenagers under my care at the….
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Tags: Consulting
Posted in Archive
Parents Who Fight, Kids Who Hurt
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
How many of us say—or communicate without actually speaking—something like that to students about our youth ministries? Sometimes as youth workers we carry a false sense that we can create a youth ministry environment in which all of the stuff that happens “out there” doesn’t matter; instead, it’s “all about Jesus” in the youth room.
The Myth of the Sterile Youth Room
The reality, of course, is that all of that “stuff” matters immensely to the kids who cram into your ministry’s gathering space week after week. It’s their primary reality, which begs the question: Will the Jesus we teach and encourage….
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Tags: Parents Ministry
Posted in Archive