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Building Healthy Youth Ministries

Beyond Youth Groups, Beyond ConsBart Frost

Director of Youth and Young Adult MinistriesUUA

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Getting to Know Each Other

• Groups of 3 with two people you don’t know– Introduce yourself (30 seconds each!)

• Name

• Congregation

• What draws you to youth ministry?

– Two Passions– One Loathe

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Youth Ministry > Youth Group

• Adult leadership

• Youth Leadership

• Developmentally Appropriate Ministries

• Whole Church

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Developmentally Appropriate Ministries

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Whole Church

• Multigenerational Spaces

• Families

• Sundays and Everyday

• Mission and Ministry

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What are YOU doing?

• Rejoin your group• Take turns answering three questions:

– How does your congregation minister to youth?

– What programs serve them?

– How are they invited into the life of the church?

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Beyond Congregational Life

• Kenda Creasy Dean “Almost Christian”– Thin places are where God reached through

Heaven’s floorboards and grabbed human attention (disorienting human experiences is how God works)

– Developmentally, teens tend to conflate the symbol with the sacred thing it represents, until the symbol is the sacred.

– Reflexivity is more that just critical reflection, it needs a language and a community to support it

• Discipleship• Covenants• Leadership Development• Clustering

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Hurdles

• Join with your triad again• Silently think of one major challenge for youth

ministry in the work you do. What’s your hurdle• Share your hurdle (30 seconds each)• As a group, choose one• Person with chosen hurdle, explains it (2 min)

– Other two actively listen without speaking

• Listeners as direct, clarifying questions(3 min)• Listeners discuss the problem with the speaker

(3min)• Speaker reflects on new insights or awareness

(1min)

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Resources

• “Almost Christian” Kenda Creasy Dean• “Greenhouses of Hope” Dori Grinenko Baker• “Youth Ministry Advising” UUA Bookstore• “2004 Study of Exemplary Congregations in

Youth Ministry: Assest for Developing Spiritually Mature Youth” www.exemplarym.com