First-Century Youth Ministry: Exploring Our Jewish Roots to Reclaim Discipleship
I’ve been excited about this book for a few reasons. One is purely selfish as its author, Heather Quiroz, completed the masters program in Youth Ministry Leadership at Huntington. I was once part of the same program, though Heather is better than me in that she completed it.
But the bigger reason is the subject matter itself. I often feel like we, as pastors, look towards the business world for advice on how to pastor… and I feel this is a major mistake. Instead of looking towards capitalism I think we need to continually look back at our roots. And I think Heather does that well here. We’re hearing murmurs from early readers that this might be the most influential youth ministry book in a long, long time. As part of the publishing team, I’m biased, but I can see why folks are saying that.
5 Views on Youth Ministry Short-Term Missions: Are your trips helping or hurting?
As I wrote a few weeks back, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to best do short-term missions with youth groups.
That’s why I love this little book from our “Views” line at the Cartel. There are some youth workers and other church leaders who had bad experiences with missions decades ago and have since tried to toss the baby out with the bathwater. What I like here is that the authors [rightly] assume that the reader isn’t going to do that. I think everyone agrees that there’s something great, and I’d dare say necessary, about getting teenagers outside of their culture to do something– and for most churches that means a mission trip. So we agree on that but leads us to our next question, “How to best go about that?”
For any church looking to answers that question for their context, this little book helps. It’s aimed at youth ministry missions, but it’s really great for every church.
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