A blog post by Timothy Siburg
Image Credit: Lent by Stephen Cuyos on Flickr
Every day is a good day to think about and create opportunities for members of your congregation to lead. This is true for youth too, who are also members of your congregation and community.
The season of Lent provides a time for intention. Congregations approach this differently but with great ideas and meaningful opportunities. To consider some possibilities, I am going to reference three congregations by A, B, and C. …
This post was originally published on 11/1/2012
By Julie Hagen
This past Sunday we celebrated the 3rd grade Bible milestone. Children processed into worship and stood in front of the whole congregation before receiving their New Adventure Bible! I was honored to read the names of each child as Bibles were handed to their parents. Remembering the Promises made at Baptism, parents placed Bibles in their child’s hand. We encouraged them to read their Bibles and learn the stories of God’s …
See this video of Mike King discussing the power of immersion learning at our First Third Dialogue: Why Can't My Church Be More Like Camp? (This post was originally published on 12/19/2012)
This post was originally published on 7/12/2012
By Paul Cannon, MDIV CYF graduate of Luther Seminary
The LDS (Latter-Day Saints) church is often referred to as the quintessential American religion, and despite misgivings about the faith on the part of many mainline Protestant Christians (MP), the description is apt. Regardless of how you feel about the beliefs, structure and mission of the Latter-Day Saints, their success is quite undeniable. Though the LDS church is perhaps known …
This post was originally published on 9/17/2012
By Tim Coltvet, Coordinator of Contextual Learning and Coaching for Children, Youth, and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary
It’s a great picture that I nabbed off of google images for one of my powerpoint presentations on faith formation. I love the picture because it captures the whimsical nature of child simply doing their thing…playing with dandelions. The longer you look at it, however, the more it draws you …
A blog post by Terri Elton
Image Credit: Social Media Apps by Jason Howie on Flickr
It doesn’t take much to make me feel incompetent when it comes to technology. For example, while my college daughter was home during break, I asked for help fixing something in iTunes. After a sigh, she let me know iTunes was “out” and Spotify was better. Now, I knew about Spotify, but didn’t know how it worked. Forty-five minutes later I was up to speed with a few playlists and friends.
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This article was originally posted on 10/20/2011. If you didn't catch it then, we hope you enjoy its message anew!
Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra once unpacked the meaning of Christian practices. They write: "By Christian practices we mean things Christian people do together over time to address fundamental human needs in response to and in the light of God's active presence for the life of the world. Thinking of a way of life as made up of a constitutive set of practices breaks a way of life …
A blog post by Terri Elton
We’ve spent the month wandering through ideas, insights, resources, and research on younger adults, their understanding of faith, and implications for ministry. Each post offered a picture, a snap shot, of what’s important and meaningful for younger adults today.
We were reminded that Martin Luther was a younger adult when he reformed the church; we got a picture of the breadth and depth with which younger adults engage in ministry, among their peers and with …
This article was originally posted on 8/7/2012 on FirstThird.org. We hope if you didn't catch it then, that you would find it useful presently!
As you live into the Messy Reality of Young People and Faith, here's a resource for meeting your youth where they are at.
John Roberto's book, Faith Formation 2020: Designing the Future of Faith Formation, includes this chart of four scenarios. See the strategies for engaing in faith development for each person, no matter where they are coming from.
Further …
A blog post by Kate Reuer Welton
"I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without …