by Joanna Bellis When spring rolls around, I renew my love/hate relationship with a tradition that was passed to me in the church in which I serve: Youth Sunday. What’s to dislike about Youth Sunday? There’s always a possibility that anything a youth (and especially a child) does in front of a congregation can turn […]
by Jayna Leitze Youth Sunday (yooth suhn-day) noun: Traditionally, a day during which the youth group of a church is in charge of the church service(s) on a particular Sunday of the year. adjective: A crazy idea, meant to drive a youth minister insane, though it can be completely awesome. Or, it can crash and […]
by Jenn Parrish Every time Youth Sunday rolls around my stomach ties itself up in knots. My hands start to shake and I swear I drink at least drink one pot of coffee throughout the morning to calm myself down and breathe. I’m always so worried that I won’t be able to find a student […]
by Jason Sansbury Want to do an interesting experiment? Create a Google news alert that will send you a message every time the words “youth pastor arrested” show up in a news story. I did this experiment for a few months before I had to turn the alert off. It is disheartening and saddening, and […]
by Mike Adkins I hope you’re better than I when it comes to this, but I am majorly guilty of critiquing speakers when I listen as a part of their audience. Conference emcees, my senior pastor, the President . . . no one is safe! I’ll elbow my neighbors and share snide comments about the […]
L to R: Teresa Johnson (Dwight’s mom), Dwight Johnson, Arisie Marshall (Dwight’s cousin), Regina Marshall (Dwight’s aunt) My name is Dwight Johnson and I am a second year graduate resident here at CYMT. I am originally from Amory, Miss., but call Jackson, Miss. home since I graduated from Millsaps College and I received my bachelor […]
Above, from left: Overton Colton, Vice Chairman of CYMT’s Board of Directors; Katie Edwards, Jim’s lovely wife; Lesleigh Carmichael, Director of Coaching; Jim Edwards, Director of Finance. When CYMT was founded in 2006, we hired Lesleigh Carmichael to be our administrator. We didn’t hire her because she had experience as an administrative assistant. We hired […]
One of the great characteristics of a leader is to be a learner. At CYMT, we are always learning. We celebrated our eighth birthday as a ministry on April 1, which caused me to reflect on how far we have come and what we have learned. Here are a few things that come to mind: […]
by Lisa Long I grew up in a traditionally conservative denomination, one that does not allow women to be leaders or pastors or even teach men who are not younger than they are. Sometime after my parents’ divorce when I was in grade school, my faith, studying the Word, and my relationship with God became […]
by Mary Beth Bernheisel I never intended to go into youth ministry. I mean, I did at one time. During my third year of seminary I served a church in a dual capacity, both as the pastoral intern and as the youth pastor. One year squelched any desire to do youth ministry ever again. It […]
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