Family First just interviewed an expert on the effects of digital media on the mental health of youth - you can view this HERE. Here is our summary - with comment for youth leaders / parents / pastors: "Teen mental illness - an affirmation of the need for Christian youth ministry" We've lived through a significant [...]
The best approach for a bunch of Christian youth in their school is as follows: Unite together Pray Do whatever it is that you think God would have you do. It doesn't get simpler than this - and to make the point, it also doesn't get better. The key is releasing YOURSELF to serve with [...]
(Credits: The below dates are adapted from a webpage at the 'New Generation' website - which is a school groups movement based out of Sweden.) If you're looking for outreach or 'connection' programme ideas - to have fun in a school - what if you were to pick a couple of the below dates, [...]
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 [...]
