Getting young people to independently open the Bible and read it for themselves is half the battle. That’s HALF the battle – not the whole battle! For many Bible-loving youth leaders, this is their ‘standard of satisfaction’. Just knowing the young people are reading their Bible’s is the point where the youth leader is happy. … Continue reading
The following is written by my good friend Ben Slee. Find more out about Ben & his music projects here. Tim asked me if I could write a brief note on the thrills and spills of growing from a youth group member into a youth group leader, based on my own experience, mistakes, God’s grace, … Continue reading
It’s been some emotional roller-coaster this whole youth ministry thing. I’ve been in the deep end and the shallow kiddy pool of my heart-spine. I’ve struggled with mild discouragement, bouts of depression, and prolonged stress at different stages of my career so far; and it can be very difficult sometimes to distinguish which set of … Continue reading
www.timothygough.blogspot.com This is a blog that I worked on in Bible College. With over 16,500 visits total, 500+ a month, & 100+ comments, it’s still proving to be quite popular. My writing style is a wee bit rudimentary and labored
Folmsbee, Chris. A New Kind of Youth Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007. Hmm… I’ve got a problem now haven’t I? Y’see, I love challenging the status quo, I love new ways of doing things, and I’m totally behind challenging classical methods of Christian Youth Ministry for a 21st Century culture! So in principle I’m … Continue reading
Doug Fields in his book Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry makes four undeniable points on p.31, namely: ‘You’ll be busy! You’ll have only 86,400 seconds to live each day. You’ll struggle in your youth ministry if you can’t manage your time. Plan your time or people will plan it for you.’ In whatever … Continue reading
Gods rather clever. In fact He’s really clever – He’s like ‘the dude’ of cleverness. God can take things like a lunchbox and multiply it like cells separating to feed 1000s of people. He can take giant balls of gas millions of miles away and make them look cool God can see a box of jumbled … Continue reading
It’s hard to find common ground and consistent connections between Old Testament Prophets. However a good place to start is this: A Prophet in the Old Testament always did three things: – They reminded of and reinterpreted the past – They spoke into and clarified the pressent – They predicited and proclaimed the future This … Continue reading
I’m bringing this up as I recently attended a youth minister training seminar where the gift of prophecy was discussed. It was suggested by the leader that when you bring a word of prophecy to someone you should bring it ‘as if it were the very words of Christ himself.’ The scriptural evidence for this … Continue reading
If you’ve had even the smallest experience with medium-to-large church-based youth ministry, you have probably come across ‘The Funnel Method’ in some form or another. The funnel method (for want of a better name) is a strategy that has well established roots in product marketing, education, public sector business, and charity campaigning. It has been … Continue reading
Book recommendations to give clear Biblical foundations on the theology of worship I’m bugged that so much of the modern day ‘worship’ and ‘worship leading’ as little to do with what the Bible loves and expounds about worship itself. We sing ‘break my heart with what breaks yours’ but don’t actually dig deep into the … Continue reading
So in my supreme arrogance, I tend to think there are three types of church leader response to the relativity new, music-based office of worship leader. There’s the accepter, the rejector, and the integrator.
Hi folks. I feel like such a killjoy sometimes. I straddle a lot of fences which pleases no-one. I’m genuinely a Charismatic and love modern and emerging expressions of Church. I’m also genuinely a nutcase and love off the wall, creative ideas. I’m also genuinely Reformed, and believe in the infallibility of the Bible and … Continue reading
This is the second of two articles that I’ll be posting on Halloween. These are actually printed up (with lots of pictures!) to be given out to teenagers at Halloween. Maybe they’ll be useful? (Feel free to reproduce / or email me for the trifold, fully edited pdf. Please don’t alter content or rebrand them … Continue reading
This is the first of two articles that I’ll be posting on Halloween. These are actually printed up (with lots of pictures!) to be given out to teenagers at Halloween. Maybe they’ll be useful? (Feel free to reproduce / or email me for the trifold, fully edited pdf. Please don’t alter content or rebrand them … Continue reading
