The launch of a new season in your youth ministry is almost always exciting and full of momentum. But fast-forward a few months, and your “best-laid plans” have not come together the way you’d hoped. The people who promised to help set things in motion are now distancing themselves.…
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders. We are prophets of a future not our own. (Cardinal Dearden, 1979) We had pulled together a handful of youth workers from our city for a little mutual encouragement (and pizza). …
I’m just imagining the first followers of Jesus taking a “discipleship assessment” just after his death and resurrection. Would a single one of them make the grade as a “fully formed disciple” by today’s youth ministry standards? If the model Jesus himself used produced the kind of results that would get most of us a poor performance review, maybe there’s a problem with the way we think about discipleship.…
I’m just imagining the first followers of Jesus taking a “discipleship assessment” just after his death and resurrection. Would a single one of them make the grade as a “fully formed disciple” by today’s youth ministry standards? If the model Jesus himself used produced the kind of results that would get most of us a poor performance review, maybe there’s a problem with the way we think about discipleship.…
