Preached at a 'Youth Service' in Twyford. Great fun and I love being part of a worship service that is creative and passionate. The theme was "Jesus: Trick or Treat" which I though was quite a neat tie up with Halloween so I used John 10 and "life to the full" contrasted with the "thief coming to steal and destroy"
Reluctant Souls is a blog collective and community worth calling in at.
EasyRew flagged up this Youth of Today report which has some great quotes.
Kathryn has had a quality rant about St Paul's "House of God!"
The Youth Ministry Forum de-bunks the U.S statistic that Youth Pastors only last 18 months ... I'd struggled to believe the figure anyway but it cropped up a lot.
(btw anyone got any UK stats?)
There's been a few e-mail type discussions recently that will no doubt lead to blog posts soon.
a) Ethics in youth ministry regrading proclamation/conversion.
b) The practice of confirmation & confirmation preparation in the UK.
(If you've got some useful pointers on stuff to read, let me know)
and finally .....
Whenever I've been at the water flumes with a youth group there has been much discussion on how to obtain the maximum speed. Up 'til now I've gone with it being the shoulders and heels technique but this is a whole new level:
A couple of years ago at a seminar run by amaze they also quoted 18 months, this was based on the churches who took on uni/A level leavers who could be employed as “cheap labour” by churches, they didn’t have any relevant training or much experience and suffered burn out and left youth work for good!
I'm sure I'd read 2 years in a youthwork magazine thing sometime.