Category: Youth Ministry

The character that Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie created over a hundred years ago may be what we are creating in a segment of the modern church.  The notion of a boy who would never grow up implies a forever childhood of play.  The way Barrie’s character was able to remain forever a child was to…

Suddenly one student turned to another and asked a question that left me speechless.  It was a rather shocking moment.  I had let students come up with their own mixer questions while we were on a trip. One of the students decided that the question he was most curious about was “do you know any…

Most of my Episcopalian friends and those in North American Anglicanism are likely unaware that there are parts of the Anglican Communion that do not observe Ash Wednesday or even make much of Lent.  Why?  I found a good explanation HERE.  I’m not attempting to advocate any particular position by sharing this, just found it…

The following originally appeared on The Rooted Blog as the first of a series that asked the question “what are youth ministries for?” This part looks at how the question has been answered historically.  The others look at it Biblically and philosophically.______________________________________ Hitting a moving target requires an ever-changing aim.  This is as true in…

Over the years I have become convinced of a simple truth about ministry.  I have watched it played out in the ministries I have led and others that I have observed.  For the visit to X church a few Sundays ago it has dual implications.  That truth is this: What we win people with, we…

I previously set out to describe the experience of a recent visit to a nearby church that had me immediately reflecting on the link between the ultra contemporary church and youth ministry of recent decades.  I tried to simply describe my impressions as they related to how I believe youth ministry has impacted the church. …

It’s been documented already that what we have done in youth ministry has impacted the church.  Pete Ward in his book “Growing Up Evangelical” is all about that reality and he asserts that what we do in church today is what we did in youth groups previously.  So, we set out to visit a church…

The following thoughts are more or less observations from my years and engagement with people who are teaching, training, etc in youth ministry. I was reflecting on this during the conference because so much has changed over the years. When I started out in youth ministry full time, Youth Specialties offered two types of training…

Dr. Gretchen Tanis presented a paper titled “The History and Influence of the Young Life Organization on Youth Ministry in the United States”. Gretchen, like me, is something of a product of Young Life. In fact she served as a volunteer in the same town as I did in college (at a different time). She…