Tag: youth ministry
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The Big Bang of Youth Specialties
It was the summer of 1968 when Mike Yaconelli and I resigned from our jobs with San Diego Youth For Christ and became youth directors at two local churches. I won’t go into the reasons we left YFC, but we both needed a little more normalcy in our lives at that time. Earlier in the…
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Speed Mentoring
This past weekend, our church held its third annual all-church retreat at a conference center in the mountains near San Diego. CABC@PineValley, as the retreat is known, is designed to bring all ages of the church together for a weekend immersion experience in community-building. About half of our church attended this year and by all…
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MexiGO! 2014
I have been busy organizing another intergenerational mission trip to Ensenada BC Mexico for College Avenue Baptist Church this summer. We’re calling it MexiGO! 2014 and once again, we’ll be working with YUGO Ministries out of their Ensenada Outreach Center. We’ll build homes for families who live in poverty and we’ll give neighborhood children a…
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Fifty Years Ago This Month
With so many graduations going on this month, it occurred to me recently that I graduated from high school FIFTY years ago. Yep, a half-century ago, I marched with the Camarillo High School class of ’63. More significantly, it also occurred to me that it was fifty years ago that I started doing youth ministry.…
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YS Lifetime Achievement Award
After being assured that receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award doesn’t necessarily mean your lifetime is over, I was pleased to accept a LAW from Youth Specialties at their recent San Diego National Youth Workers Convention. From what I hear, this was the first of many that will be given to individuals who have contributed in…
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D6 conference this week in Dallas
I’ll be heading off this week for a conference in Dallas which is called D6, named after the oft-quoted passage in Deuteronomy 6 which commands parents to know the commandments of God and to “impress” them on their children in the normal routines of daily life (6:6-9). Several of us from College Avenue Baptist are…
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Reweirdifying Christianity
I am an avid reader and admirer of author and Princeton professor Kenda Creasy Dean. In response to a question “What’s the biggest challenge facing youth workers today?” on the Youth Specialties blog, she says: The biggest challenge might also be the best thing to happen to the church since the apostles and that is…
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New Leadership for Youth Specialties
Youth Specialties is the ministry that Mike Yaconelli and I started back in 1968 to provide resources and training for people who do youth ministry in the church. I don’t think the mission of YS has changed much since I left in 1994 or since Mike died in 2003 but the leadership continues to change.…
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New Study, Same Results on Role Models
Who or what is the most powerful influence on teenagers? Who do teenagers look up to most as role models? These questions (or questions similar to them) have formed the basis for dozens of studies on teenagers that have been conducted over the years. The issue of teen influence is heavily researched because marketers are…
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Reviews of Reinventing Youth Ministry [Again]
Since my book Reinventing Youth Ministry [Again] came out last month it has received a few very positive reviews that have been very encouraging to me. To tell you the truth, I was worried about how this book would be received. As I was writing it, a little voice kept whispering in my ear: “Nobody’s…