A friend recently counted how many High School students there are in our local Tauranga / Western Bay of Plenty Colleges. I was surprised! Katikati College – 789 Te Puke College – 829 Aquinas College – 746 Bethlehem College – 1878 Mount College – 1721 Papamoa College – 1623 Tauranga Boys College – 2059 Tauranga Girls College [...]
NEW: 'Why Christians believe Christianity to be true' About two-thirds of all young adults in our churches leave in the 18- 22-year-old age bracket. This has been true for 30 years too - and this tragic reality is one of the things that catalysed this new resource from the Shining Lights Trust - made free [...]
A 45min podcast that you'll hopefully find INSPIRATIONAL! How could we lose less young adults? Why are we losing them? How could we lose less 'tweens' at ages 12 to 13 - which is the second largest area of loss from our churches?? How could we build healthier discipleship structures for our youth and young [...]
This generation (Gen Z) are open to faith in a way that is different to those who are 20, 40 and 60 years older than them McCrindle Research in Australia did a study that included the below. Here are some simple - brief - points. 1. Younger generations in our culture are lot more [...]
I'm privileged in this season to be facilitating regular discussion groups about outreach with both a group of senior pastors, and also a group of youth leaders. I'm taking to both groups about youth ministry, and here is why. A point that many senior church leaders might not like I think senior church leaders (meaning [...]
The following is extracted from a survey of 488 teenagers in church youth groups (a longer summary is here) ------ How confident to outreach are youth - really? A third (34%) of young Christians told us they share their faith regularly In terms of what this 34% did to share their faith with non-Christian peers, 71% [...]
Western media and culture has created a 'narrative' against the Christian faith. They like to pull our faith down. As a result they tell bad stories about the church - but not the good. What this overlooks is the fact that: ...there are tens of thousands of good stories for every bad ...the bad stories [...]
(From Godtalk October 2021 update) Morag Paton has specialised in online outreach for the past half dozen years. 'YesHeIs' was one of her projects. - The info on the left reflects data taken from 5,078 online conversations she and team had in 2018 to 2020. - What stands out is how low the 'intellectual' objections [...]
So, it's exam time, and people are stressed. Check out the ideas in the image! Bake muffins with a Bible verse - to show care and lift people up Put a positive Bible verse on a notice board - but with permission Set up a 'chocolate fountain' in a room, and let people come and [...]
(Shared with permission from a 'Evangelism Network' update in Christchurch, as written by Nic) Jesus Club at Cashmere High School Jesus Club was a group that was started in 2019 by my friends and I at Cashmere High School. We started it as a place where people can come to and hear a short message [...]
