by Jason Sansbury In June 2012 I was finishing up a week of summer camp with senior high students in Panama City when I wound up in the Intensive Care Unit of a local hospital. I was in ICU for four days with a bad case of blood sepsis and pneumonia. At the end of […]
by Erin Hicks Suicide is something you will never be prepared for. When I got the phone call last January that one of my youth had taken his life, but was still not legally dead, it wasn’t real to me. He was the youth who was always smiling, a teenager with a big heart. The […]
Randy Knighten is in his third year of the CYMT graduate residency program. He came to CYMT at the age of 35, married with two young sons. Being a more than a decade older than the typical graduate resident, Randy brings unique gifts and life experiences of teaching peacemaking and conflict resolution skills, pastoral care, […]
Your ministry needs a maintenance calendar just like your car does. When you buy a new car, it comes with a handy maintenance calendar with things like: Oil Change every 3000 miles Tune up at 60,000 and 120,000 miles Change wiper blades every two years A maintenance calendar is a great tool for you to […]
Editor’s Note: The following is a conversation with two youth ministers: one who left a position under positive circumstances and one who left under duress. We have elected to not reveal the names of either. The intent of this article is to focus on how to deal with leaving a church and leaving as well […]
by Stephen Ingram I work in a community that has a great running park alongside the road I take to get to the church. I also work in a community where running in this park is something that EVERYONE does. So on my way to and from work I will often stare at the runners […]
by Erin Hicks I want to share two things that led to me write this article: On Twitter recently, I noticed that Harriet Tubman was trending. After clicking on the trend to read some of the tweets, I saw that a young African American identifying himself as a high schooler had asked the question of […]
by Jason Sansbury I was Miley Cyrus’ youth director. Or at least, I used to joke that I was. Several years ago I started to work at a church where, several years before that, Miley Cyrus and her family attended. So when I arrived, thanks to my young cousins, I knew just enough Disney to […]
Miley Cyrus’s life, morals, upbringing, and example have been brought to question all over the internet. I know several youth ministers who are planning to tackle “Miley’s moment” this week at youth group or Bible study. As I have watched the internet chatter on and on about Miley, within each Facebook post or the comments […]
by Julie Richardson Brown It was one of those moments where everything suddenly becomes as if a slow-motion sequence in a particularly intense moment of a Jerry Bruckheimer film (cue dramatic power ballad music). The toe of his sneaker bent double on the edge of the shallow concrete water drain and as it did, all […]
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