Volume 3, Issue 5
September 1, 2007
“I saw lights in my students’ eyes that I hadn’t seen before.”
This statement in an e.mail from one of our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate students made my day. As someone who spent time every day loving and serving high risk kids in urban settings, she had lost sight of all that urban kids have to offer to the world. Thanks to the training in our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate, she started involving the kids in her inner city ministry in service and justice work. And a new spark was lit—one unlike anything she had seen before.
We hear stories like this all the time from the youth workers enrolled in our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate. The November 15 application deadline for our March 2008 cohort is fast approaching, and since we offer significant scholarship support to all the students in our cohort, space is limited. If you’re an urban youth worker who wants deeper training in topics like indigenous leadership development, networking in your city, helping traumatized kids, and community development, then check out our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate page now.
Whether you minister in an urban, suburban, small town, or rural context, we hope the articles in this issue of the FYI E-Journal give you some ideas to try out that eventually light a flame in the kids in your ministry also. Three of our articles focus specifically on issues related to our ministry among families. Youth workers often ask us what kinds of models of family ministry are out there and who is really “doing family ministry” effectively. Recently we gathered a focus group of youth workers to help us think harder about the research and resources we develop related to those questions. Their feedback was incredibly helpful, and we’d like to invite you to contribute to that conversation as well as to help guide our research.
So this issue’s “Tell FYI” question is: What kinds of resources would help you better equip and encourage parents in your youth ministry? Email your thoughts to fyi@fuller.edu today!
By the way, last month the article you and other readers forwarded the most was New Twists on Not-so-new Issues for Girls. Forward your favorite article this month to cast your vote for the most helpful resource from this E-Journal!
Kara Powell
Kara E. Powell, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute and an Assistant Professor of Youth, Family, and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. She has been in youth ministry for 20 years and is the author of many articles and books including the forthcoming Deep Justice in a Broken World (co-authored with Chap Clark, Zondervan, January 2008) Deep Ministry in a Shallow World (co-authored with Chap Clark, Zondervan, 2006) Help! I’m a Woman in Youth Ministry (Zondervan, 2004) Mirror! Mirror! (Zondervan, 2003), and the Good Sex Curriculum Guide (co-authored with Jim Hancock, Zondervan, 2001).
Ministry Conversations: An Interview with Shane Claiborne on Going Deeper with Justice
In this month’s free audio download, Kara Powell interviews Shane Claiborne—author, speaker, and founder of The Simple Way justice-seeking community in Philadelphia. Shane’s interview appears in the upcoming book from Kara Powell and Chap Clark, Deep Justice in a Broken World: Helping Your Kids Serve Others and Right the Wrongs Around Them.
In this month’s free audio download, Kara Powell interviews Shane Claiborne—author, speaker, and founder of The Simple Way justice-seeking community in Philadelphia. Shane’s interview appears in the upcoming book from Kara Powell and Chap Clark, Deep Justice in a Broken World: Helping Your Kids Serve Others and Right the Wrongs Around Them.
Disconnected High School Students: Parenting Midadolescents
by Chap Clark and Dee Clark
by Chap Clark and Dee Clark
Chap and Dee Clark recently combined their years of experience as parents with their respective expertise in youth ministry and family therapy to co-author Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World. This brief excerpt from Disconnected highlights the emerging reality of midadolescence, along with offering faith-building strategies that can help parents move kids toward a growing faith in the midst of the midadolescent reality.
Why Ecclesiology? Imagining a New Theology of Youth Ministry for the Church
by Kara Powell and Brad Griffin
by Kara Powell and Brad Griffin
What do we really think about the church, and does it make a difference in the way we do youth ministry? Kara Powell and Brad Griffin argue here that our ecclesiology matters immensely for youth workers, and make practical suggestions for working out a new theology of youth ministry for your church.
Family Ministry: Good Things Come in Threes
by Meredith Burns
by Meredith Burns
When faced with the question, “How do you minister to families?” many of us balk, stutter, or change the subject. While we care deeply about the families of our youth ministries, we cannot always articulate or strategically plan for the ways we care for, equip, and encourage them. This article will help put some language around three of the most common approaches to family ministry, in addition to giving you some tools you can use right now to assess your approach to families.
A Tale of Two Poverties: Engaging Students Across the Resource Divide
by David Russell
by David Russell
Whether you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about poverty or only barely entertained its implications for you and your students, this article offers deep insights for rethinking both the ways we view and teach about poverty.
©2007 Fuller Youth Institute
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