Youth Specialties
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Seven Year Teaching Plan
In the most recent episode of my podcast, “Kinda Interesting: Thoughts on Youth Ministry,” I talk about our seven year teaching plan. Essentially, I wanted to tackle three things with our Sunday morning teaching time over the seven years we have a student in our youth ministry (6th-12th grade); core truths that we really want…
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Youth Ministry Longevity
I’m going to try this again; yesterday I wrote a blog post, used some undependable stats, and ultimately, distracted readers from the point I was actually trying to make, which is that longevity brings deeper perspective and awareness of the long term impact of student ministry programs. There are tremendous benefits to longevity in youth…
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Unintentional Arrogance
I was listening to Mark Matlock’s “Transforming Conversations: Using Research from Barna’s State of Youth Ministry Report” session from the National Youth Worker’s Convention the other day and wanted to respond to part of it. Essentially, Barna and Youth Specialties did a massive survey on youth ministry in America, producing a lot of valuable data…
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5 Reasons the Church Needs Youth Ministry
I love this video from Mark Matlock and the crew over at Youth Specialties! Some thought provoking observations on his part!
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Planet Wisdom recap
This past weekend a couple van loads of us went down to Washington DC to the Planet Wisdom conference … and it was amazing. If I’m honest, I went into it with a lot of high expectations; a lot of my personal philosophy of youth ministry has been heavily influenced by the team behind the…
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I wrote a (FREE) Halloween Devo
I love the music video for King & Country created for their song, ‘Proof of Your Love.’ It’s a lot of fun, great story, had my group completely enthralled, and packs a powerful message that can go several different ways. Plus, it has Zombies. And with Halloween around the corner, and everyone freaking out over…
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Student Leadership Conference 2012 thoughts
I spent the last couple days checking out and leading a workshop at the Student Leadership Conference that Doug Fields (I stole the photos from his blog recap) and his team have been doing for years and brought to the east coast for the first time. I loved it. It was incredibly well put together…
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Joe Castillo on America’s Got Talent
http://www.hulu.com/embed/oiUHN3sj5-ZtkIxRlH_OYg Joe Castillo is an amazing artist with a unique talent – telling stories with sand. I’ve seen him perform live several times at the National Youth Workers Convention over the years and have been blown away every time. It was fun to see another Christian artist/performer making the stage of America’s Got Talent. Hopefully…
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Free Kindle youth ministry books!
Stumbled across a couple cool free books for Kindle today; not sure how long the special will last so grab ’em quick. Living with Questions, by Dale Fincher. It’s actually part of Youth Specialties Invert line of books, written for Christian teens on apologetics. It’s a great book and helps equip teens with answers and how…
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Never too old for youth ministry
One of the many highlights at the National Youth Workers Convention this past November in Atlanta was when they brough Verna Kline up on to the stage. She is an 81 year old lady who has been volunteering in student ministry for 68 years. It was so much fun to listen to her share and…