MattCleaver.com

Reimagining Youth Ministry

  • Home
  • Youth Ministry has Failed
  • Best Youth Ministry Books
  • Church Websites
  • Contact Me

Sojourners has Lost All Credibility

Last Updated September 18, 2009 by Matt 10 Comments

A few years ago I was searching for an alternative to the Religious Right style of Christian politics and came across Jim Wallis as he was doing a media tour promoting his new book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. It seemed like every website I went […]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: health care, healthcare, obamacare, Politics, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, sojourners, Bill O'Reilly

Health Care and a Theology of Death

Last Updated September 4, 2009 by Matt 1 Comment

Perhaps it is healthier to be prepared for death and die younger than it is to be afraid of death and constantly try to delay the inevitable. I’ve been trying to keep up with the health care debate since it is a pretty big issue, and there’s been one tactic that has me a bit […]

Filed Under: News, Theology Tagged With: death, death panels, democrats, healthcare, obama, republicans

Dallas Independent School District is a Joke

Last Updated April 18, 2009 by Matt 2 Comments

I don’t live in the boundaries of DISD, but it is by far the largest school district in our metroplex area, so it gets all of the media coverage. And for good reason. They are clueless. I have lived in the area for less than three years, and in that amount of time, these stories […]

Filed Under: News, Random Tagged With: education, DISD

Celebrating Easter with a Cage Match

Last Updated April 8, 2009 by Matt 5 Comments

From the “Why I think Relevance is a Myth” file, a church seeking to be relevant this Easter. Per the church website: For years the church has taught us to be “the nice guy” when we have really been called to be Ultimate Fighters. But what do we fight for? Join us on Easter and […]

Filed Under: News, Random Tagged With: cage match, easter, relevance, ultimate fighting

Our Government at Work, Again: AIG

Last Updated March 18, 2009 by Matt Leave a Comment

I’ve been really busy the past couple of days. The next post in the building a church website series will get posted tomorrow or Friday. Now, on to AIG. I’m quite disturbed by what I’m hearing. On of the reasons I didn’t like either of the bailouts (the one last fall by Paulson and the […]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: bailout, bonuses, AIG

Our Government at Work

Last Updated February 13, 2009 by Matt Leave a Comment

I’m a little perplexed about the $787,000,000,000 bill that was passed in both houses of Congresss today. The full text was not posted until around 11:00 PM last night. It was over 1,000 pages long. Debate in the house started this morning at 11:43 AM. By 11:00 PM tonight, it had passed votes in both […]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Politics

Why Politics is More Exciting than Christianity

Last Updated November 5, 2008 by Matt 3 Comments

Watching people’s passionate involvement in the intense politics of the past month or so has been an interesting phenomenon.  We literally had millions of people working in one way or another to get their candidates elected, and last night we watched as euphoria erupted over an election of historic proportions. It left me wondering: Why […]

Filed Under: Ecclesiology, News, Theology Tagged With: 2008 election, eschatology, Politics

How Christians Can Avoid a Tax Increase Under Obama

Last Updated November 4, 2008 by Matt 4 Comments

To the 74% of white evangelicals (and other Christians) who voted for John McCain and are worried that Obama will raise your taxes: If his tax plan goes as he plans, only families making $250,000 or more will have an increase in taxes.  If that doesn’t sit well with you, you have an alternative.  Give […]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: 2008 election, obama, taxes

These are Historic Times

Last Updated October 14, 2008 by Matt 2 Comments

Last night I watched Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos in amazement as I saw republicans, democrats, former Treasury Secretaries, stock traders, and political commentators all agree that government ownership of financial institutions was the only option to get us out of the current financial crisis.  This would usually go against conservative principle, but they […]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: economy

Is the Financial Crisis the Church’s Fault?

Last Updated October 13, 2008 by Matt Leave a Comment

Tony Jones makes the comment that without a wide swath of our culture subscribing to Calvinism and the “protestant work ethic” free market economies are a thing of the past. Are free markets incompatible with secularism?  Is the only hope for the free markets a Third Great Awakening?  Or maybe the first Global Great Awakening? […]

Filed Under: Christianity, Ecclesiology, News Tagged With: economy

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Best Youth Ministry Books

These are the books that will completely change the way you think about youth ministry, for the better. Links are to my reviews of each book.

Teen 2.0 by Robert Epstein

A psychologist makes you question every assumption you have about adolescence.

Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry by Andrew Root

Why build relationships? Root’s answer will surprise you.

Best Youth Ministry Books: Youth Ministry 3.0 by Mark Ostreicher

Yesterday I finally read Youth Ministry 3.0 by Mark Ostreicher, and since I’m one of the latecomers to the conversation I won’t summarize the book too much. Marko has linked to tons of reviews on his blog if you are interested in more in-depth summaries. If you are fairly in-tune with a lot of the […]

Best Youth Ministry Books: Postmodern Youth Ministry

Postmodern Youth Ministry by Tony Jones is the book I would recommend to youth ministers if they could just read one youth ministry book. I first read the book in my Foundations and Practices of Youth Ministry class at John Brown University. After the preface to the book there is a page titled, “The Day […]

You can find my new blog on philosophy and teaching at MattCleaver.com

Search

Archives

Categories

  • Best Youth Ministry Books (4)
  • Blogging (42)
  • Blogroll (1)
  • Book Reviews (17)
  • Books (32)
  • Christianity (50)
  • Ecclesiology (52)
  • emerging church (13)
  • Featured (8)
  • Links (27)
  • Ministry (4)
  • Neo-Youth Ministry (8)
  • News (25)
  • Personal (69)
  • Podcast (4)
  • Quotes (14)
  • Random (43)
  • Seminary (16)
  • Theology (48)
  • Uncategorized (50)
  • Websites (15)
  • WordPress (1)
  • Youth Ministry (149)

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in