One of the keys to successful youth ministry – well relational ministry – is the ability to ask good questions (there are other skills which we will come to in due course) – but I have a couple of questions that work for me and I thought I would share them with you.
Early in the [...]
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 [...]
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 was walking round prison one day (If you are new to this blog then I was working as a youth worker with Youth for Christ and spent some time working in a local youth prison) and was asked a couple of questions – one was quite disturbing (well, kind of).
This young guy, he was [...]
Relational Youth Ministry allows you to meet some amazing people. For a 5 year period of my life I spent my time working in a local high school and a youth prison. Whenever I did church talks I explained that there were some similarities between the two groups of people that I used to meet:
They [...]
There was a specific time, a specific place, a specific young person that caused me to change to become a relational youth worker. It was summer (the kind that North Wales gets) and I was the Bible speaker at a youth camp for 15-17 year olds (about 30 of them). It was in a town [...]
Young people [and those not so young] have various needs that should be met by a well rounded youth ministry:
Social
Intellectual
Emotional
Physical
Spiritual
Each youth group will have it’s own particular blend of flavour – mainly depending on it’s leadership. If the youth leader is big into praying then so will the group; if they love games then the [...]
Let’s start off by saying that I am not referring to linking computers together in your home office – in fact I am not talking about computers at all. I am referring to building relationships with other youthworkers and networking with them.
The theory is often looked at positively, being in a network can open opportunities [...]
I suppose I shouldn’t be amazed – but it takes so much effort to put on a training day [even when it is in-house for just our denomination]. So much that tomorrow I am sending out notification that we are changing the date as it just won’t come together in time.
As I dwell on some [...]
