After just writing a post on the need for youth ministers to embrace their roles as theologians (as well as writing one a few months ago), I received the most recent edition (January/February) of The Journal of Student Ministries. On the cover I noticed an article on “Theological Rigor” by (Dr.) Andrew Root. I have […]
Neo-Youth Ministry Part 4: The Youth Minister as Theologian
I have to admit, I may be a little biased with this first attribute of a youth minister able to transition towards a Neo-Youth Ministry. During my junior year of college, I gave consideration to going into the world of academics and heading straight for seminary (and a subsequent Ph.D.) after undergrad. But my wife […]
Neo-Youth Ministry Part 3: The Youth Minister
Having given some attention to the actual term youth ministry, we now turn to the role of the youth minister (or pastor or director, whatever the exact title may be). Before diving into what might be the role of the youth minister within a Neo-Youth Ministry, some things need to be said in regard to […]
Book Review: Choosing Church
In Choosing Church Carol Lytch, a Presbyterian minister, sociologist, and theological educator, seeks to discover what factors keep students attending church through their senior year of high school. In a time when other research shows the steep decline in church attendance among teens as they age such a project is all the more appropriate. Lytch […]
Neo-Youth Ministry Part 2: “Ministry”
Continuing to examine the term youth ministry, we now turn to the word ministry. This will probably be a fairly brief post, since I don’t have any real training in Greek. My interest in the term ministry is that it appears that in popular usage it is taken to mean a specific Christian program or […]
Neo-Youth Ministry Part 1: “Youth”
In order to begin to re-think what it might mean to do youth ministry, to formulate a Neo-Youth Ministry, we should probably start out by coming to grips with the term “youth ministry”. To begin, I’ll be examining the word “youth”. “Youth”, as it is defined in most church ministry contexts refers to students in […]
Neo-Youth Ministry Series Introduction
As most of you very well know, the prefix neo simply means new. In order to affix this label to a word, the “new” understanding of the word must be so different than the previous understanding to warrant the neo prefix, rather than just slightly adjusting the meaning of the old word. However, at the […]
The State of the (Youth Ministry) Union
I wrote this article for our January church newsletter. Throughout this year, I am trying to get our church to reimagine what it means and looks like to “do” youth ministry. This article is the first step in that process. Matt’s Musings: The State of the (Youth Ministry) Union Sometime near the end of this […]
All Books Read in 2007
I started doing this last year, and thought it would be a good idea to continue this year. Maybe this year, I can keep up with the list as I go and not forget books. Anyways, this post is mostly for my own personal record-keeping. As I read books and put them in my sidebar, […]
Spontaneous Blog-Fast Now Over
I decided to take a one month blog-fast beginning December 9. After I wrote my post that day, I thought it would be good to just forget about the blog for a little while. Ok, yeah, I’m just kidding. In reality I’ve just been really lazy and busy and haven’t posted anything. But “blog-fast” sounds […]