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Like an erratic rash that seems to clear up to only return, an old debate has resurfaced once again in discussions of Protestant youth ministry.  This debate surrounds the very nature of adolescence.  What is it?  And where did it come from?  The tension is between those that assert that adolescence is a social construction…

Sometimes our jobs in youth ministry seem close to impossible. Most of us assume we’re given these young people with fragile faith. Someone, somehow, has communicated to us in some indirect way that it is our job to project these delicate balloons. The good youth worker is the person who is able to get young…

A few months ago a very nice person approached me and thanked me for writing my book The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry. I was moved by their kind words. The person then said, keeping the conversation going, “I was thankful for the book because I’ve been saying for years that we just need to get…

We are certainly concerned about millennials. It began about the time this age cohort reached adulthood, with the 1999 publication of Saving the Millennial Generation: New Ways to Reach the Kids You Care About in These Uncertain Times. It accelerated when some polls in the mid-2000s began to suggest millennials’ waning interest in church. Enter “millennials…