As a bit of a “teaser,” check out this excerpt from my upcoming book, entitled Where’s the “Why” in youth ministry?

This is taken from Chapter 1 – “I was not called to be a babysitter.”

When you start to look at your ministry from an outside perspective, you can sometimes end up looking like nothing more than a child care provider – an outlet for parents to use as a drop-off point for their children. I don’t believe God calls youth ministers to be babysitters. We don’t assemble kids together and try to bestow this fount of knowledge (and humility) upon them with the purpose of pleasing their parents. Now don’t get me wrong – I am a huge proponent of a family-based youth ministry. Without writing another book on that topic (yet), I could simply say that without family support, your ministry is lacking something. However, in the grand scheme of things, we are not directors of “parent ministry.” We exist as student ministers in order to minister to students.

One of the first things I did when I started in full-time ministry, both out of a genuine desire and my inquisitive nature, was to schedule a time to meet each student’s family, on a one-on-one basis. I simply went through my free time (if there were such a thing) and took an hour or two every week to meet with one or two students and their family. When I called parents or students to schedule these meetings, the initial response was “Did I do something wrong?” This uncovered a striking, yet often overlooked detail of the relationship between youth directors and parents – it often doesn’t exist.

For more information on Where’s the “Why” in Youth Ministry?, click the link at the top of the main page.

I’ve decided that I’m reading too many books at the same time. I have a bad habit of getting about two or three chapters into something and then switching to another book, while at the same time continuing the first book. Then I’ll do the same with the second, and so on, until I have a ton of books that I’m reading simultaneously. Right now I’m in the midst of:

Raising a Modern-Day Joseph by Larry Fowler
It Came From Within! by Andy Stanley
Glory Revealed by David Nasser
You Are Not Alone by Shirley Perich
The Best Question Ever by Andy Stanley
Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Seriously – I’m reading all of those. It’s getting complicated to keep everything in context – that is I keep forgetting which book said what. So I’m resolving right now to not start anything else until I finish these books. Seems like that would be common sense. Looks like I’m going to have a lot of reviews to write.

One of the constant struggles of bloggers is how to effectively cross-promote your blog over various social networking and blogging venues. My favorite of these sites, Facebook, has now added the ability to import your current blog to your “notes” section on your Facebook page. This is a GREAT tool, as now I’ll never again have to post the same thing in two places.

So if you’d do me a favor, please post a comment to this on Facebook so I can see if it shows up on my blog. Thanks!