Word Teasers
By: Michelle Thomas-Bush Year after year, young people entered Confirmation without a vocabulary to talk about faith. It is not unusual. At the first meeting, I would empower the parents to have deeper faith conversations. Like most good educators, I would give them...
I Love to Tell the Story
By: Krista Lovell “I love to tell the story, ‘twill be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.” Raised by Christian parents who were Baptist-Presbyterians, I was offered many opportunities to share God’s story with others in a variety of...
Mission and Christian Education: True Partners
By: Joyce MacKichan Walker Over my forty years of serving churches as a volunteer, Ruling Elder, Certified Christian Educator, and now as a Teaching Elder, I have always known and claimed the importance of educational ministry and mission working hand-in-hand....
New Discoveries about Young Children’s Faith Formation
By: Karen-Marie Yust For decades, we have operated with certain developmental beliefs about preschool faith formation. Now, with the advantages of new research methods, it is time to reexamine our assumptions. Yale University’s Paul Bloom and Harvard University’s Paul...
Why We Should Pay Attention to Brain Research
By: Holly Inglis Why should the church pay attention to brain research? With everything else happening in and around us, why should we attempt to understand and apply scientific research about the brain? What difference would it, could it make? Consider these...
Connecting Worship and Learning: Faith Development on Two Fronts
By: Carol Wehrheim The Kim family arrived in the sanctuary just as the Call to Worship began. The girls in first and fourth grades sat with their parents until the storyteller called children forward for the Bible story that would be the focus of their Sunday school...
The Rite of Way in Faith: Rites of Passage and Youth Ministry
Adolescence, at least US/North American adolescence, can be seen as a seven-year span of age (12–18 years) or grades (6th–12th grades). Over these seven years, numerous adolescent status changes occur: puberty, educational structure, licensing, sexual attraction, dating, working, future forecasting (post high school plans, such as college, vo-tech, travel), and voting.
As youth ministry has taken the great step to shrink the distance between the young person and their faith formation (meaning faith isn’t just about a Sunday schedule), there is significant meaning and impact in connecting youth ministry to to the rites of adolescence or the Rites of Passage.
Why We Need A Village
By: Timothy Son “It takes a village to raise a child.” This proverb originates from the Igbo and Yoruba regions of Nigeria, from villages where people come together to take mutual responsibility for ensuring the safety, education, and well-being of a child. It’s a...