Adolescent Faith Formation
26 Issues That Will Affect Youth Ministry in the Next Decade
|
In January 2012, the Center for Youth Ministry Training held their fourth annual Lilly Laboratory Think Tank. Youth ministry practitioners and academics for across the country came together to discuss the future of youth ministry: cultural and/or theological trends, issues or changes that youth ministry will face over the next decade which will require further research, thought. After much debate and discussion, the group landed on 26 issues that will affect youth ministry in the next decade.
|
A “Community of Communities” Approach to Youth Ministry
|
In a community of communities approach, the paid or designated volunteer youth ministry leader chairs a core team that consists of adult coordinators and key youth leaders who oversee each of the youth ministries or small communities. This approach is very helpful in linguistically diverse youth communities, as it affords the opportunity for young people to gather in a peer group in which they share a common language and socio-cultural experience. It lowers the social barriers to entry into the parish youth ministry for young people who may feel different, isolated, or marginalized for any reason. At the same time, it provides multiple opportunities for teens to get involved in the church throughout the week—which is great for families and young people with busy schedules.
|
Adolescent Spiritual Formation: Creating Space for God to Speak
|
Adolescents are in need of a soteriology that properly addresses the doctrine of regeneration and a means to engender a pattern of living empowered by the Holy Spirit that encourages true self discovery, integration, and growth in Christ-likeness. The Christian spiritual disciplines offer a way of responding to both these challenges. Silence and solitude are used as examples of practices essential for adolescent spiritual formation.
|
Best Practices in Youth Ministry & Adolescent Faith Formation
|
This article presents seven practices, drawn from research and field experience, that congregations can use to develop more holistic and comprehensive faith formation with adolescents today. The article offers practical suggestions for utilizing each practice in youth ministry and faith formation.
|
Beyond Camp as Usual: Sticky Faith Approaches to More Intentional Camps and Retreats
|
Some camps are making intentional and dramatic shifts in programming choices to create unique spiritual experiences. One interesting example is the way YouthFront in Kansas City has reimagined camp to incorporate contemplative spiritual practices as part of the day-to-day camp experience. Micah Thomas, resident of the YouthFront LaCygne community shared his perspective on how YouthFront is doing camp differently and why it’s making a difference.
|
Characteristics of a Healthy Youth Ministry
|
Congregations that succeed in nurturing the faith of young people tend to demonstrate certain key characteristics. Kenda Creasy Dean identifies 11 top characteristics of a healthy youth ministry. (Leading Edges, March 14, 2012, Lewis Center for Church Leadership)
|
Community Baccalaureate Service
|
Step-by-step advice for instituting a baccalaureate service, a faith-based, ecumenical community program to mark the transition from high school to college. Article is based on years of experience running such a program in a small Iowa town: “We have celebrated with them, given thanks to God for them, and have sent them on with blessings and encouragement. We are planting seeds and now each of the students who have passed through our doors knows that not only do we care about them, but God does too.” (Ministry Matters, February 28, 2013)
|
Creating a Space for God: Toward a Spirituality of Youth Ministry
|
This article begins by examining the context through a critical analysis of two other predominant emphases in current approaches to youth ministry: entertainment and catechesis. It then explores the theological rationale for integrating contemplative practices into youth ministry. Finally, it outlines the seven elements of a spirituality of youth ministry.
|
Emerging Scholarship on Youth and Religion: Resources for a New Generation of Youth Ministry
|
In the mid-twentieth century as the idea solidified of adolescence as a separate life stage with its own unique characteristics and needs, scholars and church leaders began to utilize studies from psychology, sociology, or education to better understand and work with youth. This emerging body of research makes theology, spirituality and faith formation central to such inquiries about youth. Joyce Ann Mercer considers this material particularly where it has significant implications for the practice of youth ministry.
|
Engaging a New Generation
|
This article offers new insights into how to engage a new generation of adolescents in a world that is experiencing an epistemological transition - moving from a modern to a postmodern understanding of truth. and generational change - transitioning from youth ministry and faith formation practices founded on Baby Boomers and Gen X teenage sensitivities to ones rooted in a Millennial Generation. Making sense of these foundational cultural changes can help clear the haze around the disconnect many of today’s young people are experiencing with the church; and paves the way for an effective pastoral response to a new generation.
|
Faith Journey on a Ropes Course
Paul Hill
Feet to Faith
|
The Feet to Faith gathering helped young people gain a better understanding of how they can respond to poverty and other hardships faced by their neighbors and those around the world.
|
Faith Formation in Christian Practices with Youth & Young Adults
|
Don Richter offers thoughtful commentary and practical ideas for developing Christian practices faith formation with young people based on his experience with the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith and his work on the book, Way to Live.
|
Forming Young Disciples
|
Tom East brings together research and practice in adolescent faith formation and explores this through a variety of themes: 1) aims of adolescent faith formation, 2) the world of the adolescent faith learner, 3) settings and models for adolescent faith formation, and 4) curriculum and methods.
|
Fuller Youth Institute "Posts" |
The team at the Fuller Youth Institute regular posts articles and resources on youth ministry and their Sticky Faith project. Connect with them online and sign-up for their newsletter.
|
Goldilocks in Our Midst: Ministry with Young Adolescents - Mary Lee Becker |
This article provides a contemporary understanding of today’s young adolescents and offers lots of practical suggestions for ministry and faith formation. It offers three keys to working with young adolescents: understand them, engage them, and empower them - elements that are critical to success in what we provide (content and format) and how we interact (process and relationship) with young adolescents.
|
Kitchen Table Youth Ministry
|
This article introduces a family-based approach to Christian formation of youth, centered around a metaphor of kitchen table. It argues that a kitchen table is a space for family’s togetherness. In this space families demonstrate care and nurture to their young in a tangible way; and youth are initiated into family, church, or community membership and faith tradition. (Practical Matters, 2009)
|
Leaders' Perspectives on Youth and Youth Ministry
|
Based on the results of a 2006 Lilly Endowment Conference, Anne Wimberly captures highlights of some key parts of the conversations among leader: their views of youth, social location and issues of youth, youths’ connectedness to faith communities and engagement in religion and liturgical practices, youth and vocational direction, youth and a culture of relationships, and blessing and hope as a theological or generative purpose for being and relating with youth. (Resources for American Christianity)
|
Less Talk, More Action
|
So much of religious education is abstract—stories, beliefs, ideas about how life works. Meanwhile youth long for experience. They long to do something. What my children want from religious communities are opportunities for the direct exploration of real living. They don’t want to talk about God, they want to live God. They don’t want to hear about great deeds, they want to be asked to do great deeds. For religious communities to aid the spiritual growth of young people in the future, they need to find ways to encourage, bless, train, and support young people in the active pursuit of real life. It is in that pursuit that God is discovered.
|
Microcommunities of Prayer and Action
|
Rapid change in the church offers an opportunity to try out prototypes of ministry with young people.
|
Mission Trip Disconnect
|
As summer approaches and many youth groups are looking at doing a mission trip, it is important to look at more than just the trip. This is an article about rethinking mission trips and what it means for our theology of how we engage and serve in the world. (www.YouthWorker.com)
|
Service that Transforms
|
A summer mission trip draws young people to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and transforms the whole parish.
|
Some Principles for the Evangelization of Younger Catholics in Secular Cultures
|
This paper proceeds on the assumption that many Catholic youth and young adults in secular cultures reach, relatively early in life, a plateau of religious involvement and commitment. This plateau is characterized by, among other things, a loose religious affiliation but not an overt hostility to the tradition. A number of guiding factors and principles are suggested such as the difficulty of the task and the need to focus more on proactive proclamation. (Australian eJournal of Theology 18.2, August 2011)
|
Revitalizing Ministry with Young and Young Adults
|
During the last fifteen years, the Lilly Endowment has awarded a series of strategic grants to help pastors and church leaders assess, re-imagine and enhance their ministries for young people. This article provides a broad overview of the findings from these projects that address new discoveries about the religious lives of young people and suggested approaches to ministry with youth and emerging adults. In addition, it offers an extensive bibliography of works on youth and religion broadly and youth ministry in particular.
|
Sustainable Practices: Leading Students into Rhythms that Last
|
There are the rhythms that have shaped the lives of Christians for centuries. How can we make these practices part of young people’s lives, both while they are a part of our youth ministry and for the decades afterward.
|
Sustainable Youth Ministry
|
Mark DeVries describes how to create sustainable youth ministries that are led by systems leaders. Sustainable youth ministries make the leap from a short-term, patchwork ministry to ones based on established systems that last long after the current leadership team has moved on. Every church can build a sustainable youth ministry by attending first to the two key foundational systems for youth ministry: 1) architecture: the structures of sustainability, and 2) atmosphere: the culture, climate and ethos that sustain the health of an organization.
|
The Tools You Need to Help Struggling Teens 1
|
When a teen is hurting, we as leaders want to know how to respond, and yet at times feels so inadequate. This 2-part series on helping struggling teens that has some great practical tips that will be useful for pastors, youth ministers, and parents. (Fuller Youth Institute)
|
Transforming Practice: Emerging Literature on Children, Youth and Christian Formation
|
Karen-Marie Yust reviews the books and edited volumes of 24 scholars or scholarly collaborations, highlighting shared themes and commitments in the major literature on children, youth and Christian formation that has emerged since 2000. (Resources for American Christianity)
|
When the Church Prays
|
A prayer ministry partners youth and adults.
|
Worship and Youth
|
The Duke University Youth Academy provides a formation ecology grounded in worship.
|
Youth Ministry Doesn't Exist (Which Is Why We Need It All the More)
|
Andrew Root offers a thought-provoking article of the future of youth ministry. He writes that "Youth ministry itself has started to wonder in the last handful of years why all of our best efforts haven’t necessarily worked; why, even with our best efforts, young people see little importance for the church other than to be nice and happy. But is our problem that we simply haven’t found the right program, teaching method or talented youth worker? Or could it be that our problem is adolescence itself?" (Immerse Journal)
|
Youth Ministry is Everyone’s Ministry
|
Fellow youth ministers and I often joke that we can do anything. . . drive a bus, administer first aid, run a conference, lead a group at the drop of a hat, counsel people, fix toilets, create a meal out of nothing, and more. We are administrators, spiritual guides, fellow explorers, worship leaders, adventurers, boundary setters, retreat leaders, empowerers, listeners, cultural translators, and mentors. To sum it up, using the words of Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster, we are “Godbearers.” We are people who juggle all these hats and have learned how to do all these things so that we can be truly present bearers of God’s presence in people’s lives. It is not about being able to “do” all these things, but about being in ministry with youth.
|
Youth Ministry That's More Than Fun and Games
|
In South Carolina, Clemson UMC has changed its approach to youth ministry, adopting a richer, deeper model aimed at forming young people into devoted disciples. (www.FaithandLeadership.com)
|
