Research into Resources
Are we more comfortable with singing about God’s love or God’s justice; with raising our hands in church or reaching our hands out to the poor and oppressed? Whether we’re uncomfortable or not, the Old Testament prophets and the example of Christ point us to a radical both/and type of worship justice. This article challenges us to think carefully about how we teach and model worship to students.
You’ve been wondering whether to pick up the phone and check in with last year’s grads now that they’re a few months into college, but you aren’t sure you can make the time. Recent research through FYI’s College Transition Project might help you realize how important that call really is.
While it may seem to some that adolescence hasn’t changed much for girls in recent years, research and media trends indicate at least three areas we’ve identified as needing our renewed attention as youth workers. In this article we share ideas for responding to three “mores” that bring new twists to some perhaps-familiar issues: more sexy, more pressure, and more violence.
How do the kids in your church know when they have become adolescents? How do they know when they have become adults? As we re-think the value and necessity of rites of passage in our ministries, we may help bring clarity to these life stages and help students through the zones of identity confusion.
Backwoods or central city, your students identify with some kind of community as “their” space. Have you ever considered the levels of meaning attached to those identifications? This article takes a look into the roles of “place & space,” specifically in urban contexts.
Why is it that so many white suburban youth are so into hip hop culture? Dan Hodge explores author Bakari Kitwana’s insights into Black popular culture and its powerful influence on non-Black adolescents in his new book, Why White Kids Love Hip Hop.
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.
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?
Girls aren’t the only ones who face body image pressures. Recent research shows that guys face similar pressures – from different sources – to have perfect bodies.
