R-E-S-T The Four-letter Word of Youth Workers?
When you think of the Sabbath, what comes to mind? If the answer is, “A work day,” then you may want to consider these thoughts about rest and its critical role in your ministry.
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Why Don’t Good Ideas Fly? What Youth Ministry Can Learn from Innovation Research
Ever had a great idea completely bomb? Ever scratch your head and wonder why it happened? The field of innovation theory reveals several insights for youth workers that just might make a difference in your next idea’s take-off rate.
Evaluation Part I Giving the Gift of Evaluation to Your Ministry
Do you evaluate your ministry practices? Should you? How do you go about it? What kind of difference might these discoveries make to the way you’re doing ministry, or the way you will do ministry in the coming year? Mark Maines walks us through an analysis of ministry Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and teaches us how to use this model in our own church or organization
In the Aftermath Processing Trauma through the Lens of Lament
Wondering what the long-term needs of adolescents are following traumatic events? Youth workers have the opportunity to integrate insights from both psychology and theology to address what may be happening in students’ lives.
Youth Ministry in an Age of Delayed Adulthood
You’ve probably commented before that adolescence isn’t the same it used to be. Chap Clark helps identify the cultural changes, and reframes youth ministry in terms of thinking through a three-tiered adolescent journey.
Singing Ourselves Nowhere The Like-it-or-not Impact of Worship on Identity Formation
Whether we notice it or not (and most of us don’t), what we sing, pray, read from Scripture, and enact together in corporate worship will, over time, contribute to the formation of the identity of individuals and a community of worshipers. So when it comes to the worship in our youth groups, are we cheating our kids?