All tagged youth
One idea to reach the community is through outreach events, or “bridge events.” These events are designed to invite neighbors, colleagues, and community members, giving them a chance to come through our doors. The fall and winter seasons are great times to plan some of these events.
How is my own practice of Christian faith shaping my values, attitudes, and behaviors? Decline certainly calls for renewal. Yet renewal begins with me.
Reflecting on years of teaching young students, I am reminded of exercises captioned “Listen and do.” Might this be a simple, yet awfully mature, set of ancient instructions?
As Christians, we strive to be more Christlike: to see marginalized people in their pain and vulnerability. To listen to them and their stories. To give them the kind of love that Jesus showed the outcasts.
We must give ourselves over to letting what’s burning on the inside show on the outside. Otherwise, we miss an opportunity to warm someone else and may wind up consumed by our own flames.
Your congregations’ efforts to teach your teens and students how to study the Bible makes a difference. As a Bible professor, I can tell who has been taught to read the text for understanding.
Friday is National Lemonade Day, so buy an extra cup and share it in Jesus’s name, confident that it makes a difference for eternity.
This week one of my colleagues suggested taking care of ourselves might be our most important job, then went on to wonder if we could actually consent to a less-anxious model for those in our midst.
Talking about the pain and difficulty of this past year is going to be very important to all ages within our churches. But, how do we guide people to mention their pain?
The mission of God is not something we have to do; we receive it. We share it and spread it around like maple butter on Holy Saturday French toast, savoring the Savior.
Let’s bravely take one another in and notice the reflection of Christ in the eyes we mirror each gift of a day, our motivation pure joy rather than any benefit bestowed.
Looking bidirectionally within history, to what people, ideas, and entities can we allow our questions to be vulnerable so they may be changed?
What are these barriers these families face, and how can the church accommodate?
What would it mean if parents, youth leaders, children’s ministers, and whoever else wants to, took seriously the idea of blessing?
Christian teenagers have a message from the Lord for the church, and they have truth bursting from their souls about morality that it would behoove the church to hear.
It is a tragedy if certain children are more invited into this beautiful ritual than others are.
With young people, church can feel like a boat full of small holes and slow leaks. When bailing isn’t working, and you are taking on water, it’s tempting to give up.
I’ve always been slightly jealous of congregations with “real” youth groups. You know the ones I’m talking about: the ones with well-painted and decorated class rooms.
As a minister of a small congregation, one of the greatest blessings for me is witnessing intergenerational ministry continue to take root in the church in organic ways.
Perhaps we are warding off an unspoken fear that our traditions and cultures in the church might be outmoded, passé, and irrelevant.
