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Planning For The Year Ahead
I realize some of us plan according to the school year, and others may lay out plans from the beginning of each New Year. However you do it, now is a great time to look at the year ahead and determine...
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Tipping Points In Spiritual Formation
Take a jar of water, cool it and cool it, and it remains water down to 35 degrees, then 34, then 33, then suddenly the water turns to ice. The temperature was consistently reduced, but at one point...
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Transference In Youth Ministry
To many parents in the pew, the youth pastor represents the “authority and will of God. Wherever you have an authority role, a very specific kind of transference happens. The “role” of pastor, not the...
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10 Strategies For Working With Teenage Boys
Research from Nancy Bayley’s at UCLA showed that for boys more than girls there is indeed a direct link to learning difficulties when early childhood touch and attachment doesn’t occur or occurs...
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Suicide Grief: Living In The Aftermath Of Suicide
A student’s suicide can be emotionally devastating. Using and modeling healthy coping strategies — such as seeking support — will help you and others on the journey to healing and acceptance. When a...
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The Spiritual Practice Of Humor
“I’m a lesbian.” she said. She chose to self-disclose right in the middle of a youth group gathering. She just dropped a big elephant right in the center of the group. We were rocked. Moments...
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Basic Brain Function And Emotional Hijacking
Understanding a few basics of what is happening in the brain of an adolescent prior to an impulsive and destructive behavior (i.e., self-injury, fighting, etc.) will help you walk through the lies,...
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PTSD And The Youth Worker
Suicide, sexual abuse, drive by shootings, car accidents, date rape. These events and many other traumatic events occur on a seemingly regular basis and can impact the surviving student(s), families,...
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Guidelines For Frontline Workers
If you have worked with youth for any period of time you have encountered a student who discloses, for the first time, that they are the victim of abuse, that they engage in some form of at-risk...
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5 Ways to Protect your Day Off
My first year in full-time pastoral ministry was exciting. We had so much planned and I didn’t slow down until a staff member came into my office, but not to tell me that I had a phone call, to...
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10 Questions to Ask Your Teens
It’s spring time, which means that another school year of youth ministry is about to wrap up. For some of us that just means a shift to summer program, and we’re already starting to think about things...
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5 Things to Avoid When a Student Comes to You With a Crisis
During my first year in full-time youth ministry, a student approached me with a major crisis. When I was in Bible college, I never imagined that I would be counseling a student through this kind of...
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A New Future For Youth Specialties
Orange & Download Youth Ministry Partner to Assume Leadership of Ministry April 19, 2018- The leaders of Orange and Download Youth Ministry (DYM) are excited to announce their partnership in...
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Weekend Vibes
There’s so much joy in youth ministry. We have the opportunity to invest in teenagers, be God’s hands and feet in their lives, shaping their future, unleashing them into leadership and watching them...
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What To Do When No One Shows
Here’s the scene: You’ve spent the past few hours (maybe several hours) getting ready for students to show up at youth group. The sermons pretty much good to go, volunteers are showing up, pre-service...
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Dealing with Biblical (il)literacy
I recently had a conversation with another youth pastor about biblical literacy, or rather, the lack thereof. He was quite proud of the fact that his students were able to use bible dictionaries and...
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Pregame Checklist
Meeting nights are tough, right? So. Many. Details. Here’s a simple checklist that may help you prep for your next youth group. Am I prayed up? Have you prayed for your lesson? Have you prayed for your...
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Climbing Out of the Glory Days Pit
It’s a tough road to walk as a youth worker when the church you’re serving is dragging you backwards into the days gone by. “We used to have #100 kids every Sunday!” “We took two buses on every choir...
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Thriving as an Introvert in Youth Ministry
The youth pastors of the 90’s and early 2000’s were Wild West gunslinger types, shooting from the hip, often seen as the stereotypical wild card in every staff meeting and pastoral gathering. They wore...
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Becoming Agents of Transformation
The slogan of a fast food restaurant has become the slogan of many ministries: “Have it your way.” We would rarely ever come right out and admit it, but entertainment has become king in many places in...
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