Editor’s Note: This is the tenth in a 12-part series on spiritual disciplines for youth workers, based on Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. by Kelly Soifer Whenever I am interviewing potential volunteers for youth ministry, I tell them a story from my early years as a way to illustrate how their decision-making processes affect their […]
Making change in youth ministry is easy, but making effective change that’s theologically grounded and practically effective is difficult. In the course Advanced Studies in Youth, Church and Culture, the Center for Youth Ministry Training’s (CYMT) graduate residents use cultural analysis and theological reflection to imagine revisions and changes to their youth ministries. As they […]
by Andrew Zirschky Editor’s Note: Read Teens and Social Technology: Searching for Intimacy – Part 2 and Part 3 here. It should be no surprise that many youth workers believe that social media hold the key to better connections and more effective ministry with young people. After all, the average American teenager owns 3.5 digital […]
by Andrew Zirschky Editor’s Note: Read Teens and Social Technology: Searching for Intimacy – Part 1 and Part 3 here. Teenagers don’t want technology, they want what technology promises: Meaningful access to real people and relationships. This was our conclusion in Part 1 of this series as we surveyed the findings of recent ethnographic research […]
by Stephen Ingram Most youth ministers struggle for a number of reasons. We struggle because we are over committed, we work unorthodox hours, and we have difficulty finding consistent rhythm. We struggle because of lack of training, lack of time, and lack of support. We struggle because we care too much and often feel that […]
Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh in a 12-part series on spiritual disciplines for youth workers, based on Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. by Kelly Soifer I came to Christ at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school. That first year of faith was a whirlwind…I was blown away by the New Testament […]
by Andrew Zirschky Editor’s Note: Read Teens and Social Technology: Searching for Intimacy – Part 1 and Part 2 here. In a faceless face-to-face world, young people are turning to technology to search for relationships that are meaningful and intimate. This was among our conclusions from part 1 of our look at teens and social […]
“We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that it is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition… It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather, more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating […]
Most religious teens in the United States appear to engage in few religious practices. But even basic practices like regular Bible reading and personal prayer seem clearly associated with stronger and deeper faith commitment among youth.[1] —Christian Smith with Melinda Denton Setting the Stage In this lesson we will explore how we pass on the […]
by Stephen Ingram Youth retreats have been and are one of the foundational building blocks of any successful student ministry. They not only provide a time away for students to bond and achieve cohesion on a communal level, they are also exceptional vehicles through which many deeply developmental crisis points happen in a student’s spiritual […]
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