Adam McLane

Category: youth ministry

  • Anxiety in Youth Ministry

    Over the past several days I’ve started to put words to what I’ve been observing: The tribe of youth ministry is anxious. 2009 has been a ridiculously hard year. Last October when Tony Campolo spoke in Sacramento he said something like… “Church, as we know it today, will collapse with the economy. And we will…

  • New TJOSM Article Coming Soon

    I have an article in the upcoming Winter 2009 edition of The Journal of Student Ministries. As you can tell by the title, the article discusses the convergence of social media and theology. I’m stoked about how the article turned out. It’s such an important topic! I’m also excited to publish my first article in…

  • The Youth Ministry Gap

    After 18 months of working at Youth Specialties and interacting with youth workers around the United States (and everywhere else) it’s finally sunken in: There are two different things called “youth ministry” with a major gap in the middle. Professional vocational youth ministry: When I talk about youth ministry this is often my default. These…

  • Support Holistic Youth Ministry in San Diego

    I’m a part of a team at my church trying to figure out how to create a holistic youth ministry right here in San Diego. What exactly is a holistic youth ministry? Well, we don’t know just yet! But our vision is to architect a ministry that is good news to the urban working poor…

  • My 3 Caddy Rules for Ministry

    I’m a golfer. I’ve played the game off and on most of my life. More importantly, I love being around golfers. There is a joke among golfers that there are just three rules to a caddy’s job. “Just show up, keep up, and shut up.” That’s really how I feel about our burgeoning youth ministry.…

  • Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?

    Here’s my notes from the youth group talk tonight. Feel free to use them however you’d like. Title: Why Did Jesus Come to Earth? Passage: John 1 [download id=”3″]

  • The Hook-Up for Youth Group

    I was so distracted by convention last week that I failed to really process/understand/comprehend an e-mail I got about our brand new youth ministry. It’s really cool to see people get on board with what we are trying to do. Background: About 6 weeks ago I had lunch with two pastors at Harbor Mid-City. Basically,…

  • Inward, Outward, and Beyond

    So you’ve noticed I’ve not blogged much this weekend. As you know, I’m running social media at NYWC this weekend and have literally not stopped moving. In a couple hours I’m co-leading a lab with Ian Robertson on social media and video. Pray for me during that time. I’m fried– and yet I am so…

  • Back in the Saddle Again

    This video expresses a lot of how it felt last night to get back in the youth ministry saddle again. Last night was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to figuring out a whole new way of doing ministry. My biggest observation from last night: These students have a particularly sexualized lexicon. I wasn’t…

  • Teaching from a position of exploration

    Tonight starts our youth ministry [in a formal sense] at Mid-city. There are a lot of things our team is excited about. I wanted to share one that has captivated me. Traditionally, the teaching in youth ministry is from an authoritative perspective. Whether as a stated or implied goal we teach God’s Word with an…