Spirituality Youth

This book is an overview of popular culture for youth workers, parents and educators. Explores the dynamics of why kids are drawn into the culture and how it shapes their development.

My image of God the Father, enthroned in heaven in flowing white robes and Birkenstock sandals, was overshadowed by my certainty that he didn't want me to have any fun. God was all about rules—from Chapter Five.

The pressure of being a teenager can be overwhelming. School, sports, jobs, and relationships all press in at the same time. But the hardest thing can be feeling alone, that you have no one to share your most difficult problems with. In The Jesus I Wish I Knew in High School, thirty authors from many different backgrounds come together to say, “We get it―and Jesus gets it too. Here’s who Jesus is and how he wants to meet you in this intense time.”

Do you want your children to be actively serving in the local church when they turn 30 and beyond? Why They Stay can help! Much has been written about younger adults and their departure from church involvement. Concerned parents and church leaders want to know what has caused them to depart. Instead of asking why young adults are leaving the church, Parr and Crites conducted a national research project of those who grew up in church and are still serving faithfully.

It's ok for you to have questions about your faith. You aren't the only one that has those questions, and you shouldn't be embarrassed by them. In Discover: Questioning Your Way to Faith, Mike McGarry explores the twenty most common questions teenagers ask.

Si hubiera más jóvenes con mentores que modelen la madurez cristiana, el mundo sería mejor y la iglesia más fuerte.

Whether you're a youth ministry rookie or a seasoned veteran, walking into a new church or a new role can be a big challenge. You need to set the tone for your ministry and establish yourself as a leader, but you don't have very long to do it.

People Skills for Youth Pastors is filled with practical tips and techniques that will help you take your ministry and relationships to the next level.

Parenting isn’t for wimps. It's not just the routines, schedules, discipline, and heartaches - it's the hard conversations. One of the greatest challenges of parenting is navigating the crucial conversations that we must have with our kids. Using the Three Circles gospel tool (God’s design; brokenness; gospel), Jimmy and Kristin will give you a “conversation map” to work through any tough conversations you have with your children.

Many teens are active in church youth programs, yet drop out of church later in life and never return. Other young adults rest on the merits of their parents' faith without ever experiencing their own relationship with Jesus Christ. In this book, the authors seek to help teenagers who have grown up in Christian homes by reminding them of the blessings of growing up in a Christian home, warning them of some of the dangers they face, providing practical suggestions for avoiding these dangers, and urging them to think and live in a way that pleases God.

Christians are called to bear a cross. These crosses sometimes involve the general burdens that affect everyone. At other times, Christians bear specific burdens. The Lord promises us that our crosses and burdens can be transformed into small splinters if we focus on what really matters. How can this happen? You will find the answer in Splinters of the Cross...the same answer that was found by Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Peter, Paul, and many more: God's grace is sufficient for you.

In Helping Teens with Stress, Anxiety, and Depression, Roy Petitfils gives parents, pastors, and youth leaders the knowledge, courage, and tools they need to step in, make a difference, and be the presence of Christ for teens in crisis. Roy Petitfils knows what it's like to be an addicted, depressed teenager, filled with self-loathing and desperate for help. He describes himself at high school graduation as by far the largest person in his hometown and yet feeling as though he were "stuck in Harry Potter's invisibility cloak".

Drawing on 30 years of ministry experience in four churches across three countries and two continents, my aim is to help you consider how you can better mentor an increasingly isolated generation of older teenagers and young adults - those aged between 18 and 30 years of age.

Maybe it was baseball season, with its many Sunday practices, which caused a normally committed family to miss church...only they didn't return when the season ended. For another family, it was the dance recital with its accelerated rehearsal schedule, which was "only temporary" but their return attendance was sporadic before it became non-existent.

Christian women want to mentor and to be mentored, though they may not fully understand what that means, the significance of this desire, or how to get there. The church must rise to answer these questions, meet life’s challenges, and develop creative ways of equipping modern women to mentor well. In Mentor for Life, Natasha Sistrunk Robinson lays a solid foundation for mentoring that is based on God’s kingdom vision, challenges women to consider the cost of discipleship, and the high calling they have received in Christ.

A New Generation Church is a church with attendees whose average age is at least as young as the average age of the community in which the church exists. Any church can become a New Generation Church that reaches and continues to reach the next generation. Written for both church leaders and members, For a New Generation presents practical strategies that lay a foundation for a church to thrive for generations to come. It is based on the assumption that accepting the status quo is the greatest threat to your church’s core mission and, perhaps, to the survival of your church.

As ministry leaders continue to look at the research, one thing is clear: What happens at home is more impactful than what happens at church. Not that the church doesn’t matter, it just means we need to look at what we do at church differently. Spiritual convictions, for better or worse, will most always pass from parent to child and not pastor to child. Yet, many churches are still following a model of ministry that places the spiritual growth of kids and teens primarily on the shoulders of the ministry leaders and not on the parents.

Facet by facet this internationally acclaimed Christian thinker examines life and the universal search for its meaning. What is "the call"? Far bigger than our jobs, deeper than our personal accomplishments, higher than our wildest ideas of self-fulfillment, our "calling" addresses the very essence of our existence. Discovering it in times past has changed whole nations and cultures. It could do the same to ours. A classic reflective work in the tradition of C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers, now ready to challenge the latest generation of high school and college graduates.

Decades is a book of poems written from 1972 to 2008 representing the author's changing views over the years. The poems reflect a Catholic upbringing, hippie years with drug experimentation, the Viet Nam War, social commentary, growing old, being in love, and more.

The Church today does not expect what it ought to from children and their parents, and this can be attributed in large part to a flawed concept of youth ministry. This need not and should not be so. This essay discusses the reasons behind the problem and proposes some biblical solutions.