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: Bill O'Reilly, health care, healthcare, obamacare, Politics, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, sojourners

We Need More Politicians Like This

Last Updated March 30, 2009 by Matt 1 Comment

Check out this YouTube video on this mayor from Canada. She’s been mayor for 31 years, is 81 88 years old, plays hockey, and runs her city debt-free with $700 million in reserves. I haven’t done any fact-checking, so I’m not sure what the “other side” of the story is, but I’m not sure I […]

Filed Under: Random Tagged With: Politics

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

Why are Politics and Theology Directly Related?

Last Updated October 13, 2008 by Matt 1 Comment

I find it interesting as I read blogs of people of certain theological persuasions during election season because you tend to learn their political leanings as well.  In reading through the various blogs this year I’ve noticed that most people on the more liberal end of the theological spectrum are liberal politically, and conservatives are […]

Filed Under: Ecclesiology, Theology Tagged With: 2008 election, elca, Politics

Democratic and Republican National Convention Analysis

Last Updated September 8, 2008 by Matt Leave a Comment

The best I have read thus far (and I have read quite a bit) comes from Inhabitatio Dei.  A quote: As far as I can see there is little, if any possibility of a truly non-messianic politics in America, at least on the macro-scale. Our work in our wider communities must, I think take some […]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: DNC, Politics, RNC

My Most Random Post Ever

Last Updated February 23, 2008 by Matt Leave a Comment

I haven’t been happy with myself lately. I feel like I’m not managing my time very well. I’ve got all these things going on and I feel like I’m doing all (well, maybe most) of them very crappily. I’ve gotten a bit behind in my GTD system, which could be part of the problem. I […]

Filed Under: Personal, Random Tagged With: basketball, Books, Getting Things Done, GTD, NCAA, Politics, time management

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 © 2022 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in