If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!We are not designed to go it alone so I suggest that we build a team of youth workers. This post is looking at a vital support team that
I would recommend you begin recruiting straight away [or
encouraging if you [...]
The dictionary definition of accountable is: Adjective: liable to account, responsible, explicable.
My first experience of youth group leadership (in the late 1980’s) did not give me a good example.experience of accountability in action. The theory was good in that I was accountable to the senior pastor of the church. The weakness was in the practical [...]
These would be four books to get you thinking:
1. Postmodern Youth Ministry - Tony Jones - Zondervan
“This book might make you mad. It might run completely against your ministry philosophy - and even some of your long held beliefs about the church and your faith. But in the end, it will prove an indispensable reference [...]
Accountability is essential
Balance spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social
Challenge them to change their world
Disciple your young people
Everything flows out of your relationship with God
Freedom within boundaries
Games are fun and can be learning experiences
Help them to discover their gifting
Individuals need treating individually
Joint ventures with other youth groups
Keep short accounts
Love can never be in excess
Memory building experiences
New people need [...]
In their book ‘Reaching out to Troubled Youth’ Dwight Spotts and David Veerman state that you should be able to answer the following questions with a firm ‘YES’ before you decide to work with a troubled young person. I personally think they are good questions to ask prior to (and in the middle of) working [...]
A couple of quick questions to set the scene: What is community? and Why bother building it?
What is Community?
Often it is easier to define what something is by considering what it isn’t. So community in your youth group would not include:
Cliques and small ‘in-groups’.
Teasing others because they are different.
Kids that won’t sit with other kids [...]
Relational Youth Ministry is all about, you guessed it, relationships and they grow and develop based on the following criteria:
Commonality
Communication
Care and
Commitment
Effectively a relationship starts at the point where you have something in common with the other person; it develops through communication; grows through demonstrating that you care and continues by giving the relationship your commitment. [...]
Earlier I stated how I first fell into Relational Youth Ministry on a bus trip in Wales but I later encountered 2 quotations that helped me clarify what ‘mattered’.
The first is by George Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, he said:
Many young people are searching for a sense of identity and personhood. It is relationship, [...]
I don’t intend to make this a habit (posting a link without much extra commentary from myself) - but this article says it all!
Looking at how churches are using Halo3 to bring youth to church and the dilemma that creates using quotes from a New York Times article as a basis for the discussion.
I suggest [...]
In a recent post Undernews reports on a recent Barna study with some very interesting results. Of course the commentary varies slightly from one website to the other so for the purpose of this post I will stick with the Undernews site as it is more provocatively written (well from a Christian stand point).
Some [...]
