5 Keys to a Healthy Youth Group
From the perspective of the early church, we need to ask 5 hard-hitting questions in order to properly evaluate our youth group.
Join the conversation! Whether you're a youth pastor, church staff or volunteer here's the place to share ideas, hopes, dreams and resources for youth ministry.
Write your own blog post to share your ministry experience with others.
From the perspective of the early church, we need to ask 5 hard-hitting questions in order to properly evaluate our youth group.
Each church within the CRC denomination has a different approach on how a Youth Worker/Pastor/Director reports to his or her superior. Take a look at this insightful article by Dr. Syd Hielema as he shares his experience when he was a Youth Pastor at Newmarket CRC.
Upon moving to Ontario, Canada to begin my ministry with Youth Unlimited I was asked to join a book reading/discussion on J. Oswald Sanders' book Spiritual Leadership. I was a little hesitant at first since I find myself often critical of self help books but this one surprised me in many ways.
Over the past number of weeks as I was considering what to add to this webpage that would be beneficial to you, the youth worker, I came across a list of 8 fun filled games that revolved around food.
My van looks better on the outside than it did on the inside. This got me thinking about some of the youth that I worked with. They said the right things and some even did Profession of Faith. But in all reality, their faith in Jesus Christ was not as good as what the outside made it appear.
How do you get volunteers to serve in ministry along side you? Brian Bierenga, Youth Pastor at Brookside CRC, shares his approach by using the internet. He suggests three things: Use email, Use template, Track Smarter.This is a fantastic blog to equip you as a Youth Ministry Leader in recruiting volunteers.
Have you wondered if you’re in youth ministry for the ‘right’ reasons? How do you know if you really care for the youth you are ministering to? These are tough questions. These are questions that every youth worker, either paid or volunteer, should consider a few times a year. It’s not redundant but rather a reality check.
Youth Unlimited is offering its quarterly magazine to you, friends of the NETWORK, for FREE! Equip Magazine is intentional about equipping today's volunteer youth worker for ministry to today's youth.
I find myself asking the hard questions as I open the door to each room in my life — what needs to go into the garbage bag? What needs to be moved into another room and what room needs to be locked for good?
Goodbye Generation is a book that captures the voice of today's young adults and their unbiased view of the church, God, spirituality, and more.
But this is our reality right now and the thought is ‘God, when is enough, enough?' Has that thought ever run through your mind when it comes to youth ministry? You have a group of kids that show up at school drunk and they get expelled. A mother tells you, just before you walk into church on a Sunday morning, that her daughter tried to commit suicide...
Our friends, family and others who are close – deserve to be known by their names. Our youth deserve to be known by their names because it is simply who they are. It lets them know that we are truly interested in them. It lets them know that we wanting to know who they really are.
I think that we Christians sometimes forget this, and we take actions for ourselves and we make our choices with only ourselves in mind — we’re trying to control our own destiny. We can — but that would be just plain dumb.
Mission is not just about going to the slums in India where this young adult went or to the tribes in Africa that don’t have Bibles in their own language. Join me in asking and answering a few questions.
It was a simple piece of paper, could have been a newspaper, or some sort of brochure – all the ink had been washed away, the paper fibres were barely hanging on to each other. And in the middle of the paper, a little purple flower had grown through.
I came out of the meeting with a strong sense that God is a God of Action, not a God of inaction. The Lord desires you to be moving forward in your life, and especially in your faith. He wants you to be doing something, to be bettering yourself for His purposes, so that your righteousness will surpass that of the Pharisees.
The skies were grey, and the weatherman was calling for more of the liquid sunshine. There was a single puddle left over from the previous nights rain fall in the middle of the church parking lot. For some reason I stared at this puddle, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Then a single drop fell, and hit the puddle.
I am frequent user of caffeine. My caffeine flavour of choice is Tim Horton’s coffee, a large with two sugars. Because of this, I am in Tim Horton’s restaurants (if you can call them that …) a fair bit. The other day, I was buying some Tim Cards for some special people, and was working with the manager to get it all sorted out.
Technology is wonderful. We have phones that enable long distance communication. We have automated call service centers. But actually, God wants us to have personal relationships and face to face conversations with one another.
Paul writes in Ephesians about putting on the armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-18), and about how we need to ‘take up’ the protective defensive and offensive gear that God has already made and provided for us – so that we might be able to stand true in the ‘evil day’ when it arises.
All I can think about is if you sniff in a little bit of pepper - you sneeze. Pepper is used in conjunction with salt - well, most often. When I order a sub from Subway - I only get pepper on it - no salt. I just find that they put on too much salt and it ruins the sub. So I stick with the pepper.
Its 9:58 pm on Saturday night, the church is quiet – although filled with 17 youth and 4 adults, a little contrary to the level of noise the previous night delivered. This quietness is not because of the amount of work we did today, but because of one woman who listened to the voice of God. Her name is Mother Hasting.
Often times we are so afraid of failure. I guess what I’ve found out over time is that failure is almost a necessary step to success. When I worked in framing, I always said, “If you don’t bleed at least once during the day, you’re not working hard enough.” When I am skiing, I have said, “If you’re not falling, you’re not pushing yourself enough...
You and I are pixels. Together with others all around us, we paint this glorious picture known as shared lives.
My daughter has a cold. My wife has a cold. I have a cold. In our house, we are all learning the valuable lesson of the importance of breathing. Through out the night, my daughter (almost 6 months old) coughs and coughs as she struggles to get the mucous out of her system so she can breathe as she needs. The bug is going around, I hope that you escape it.