Sex & Youth Ministry

Sex and youth ministry. Not necessarily words that normally go together, right? I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that as a whole, we’ve really let our youth down when it comes to talking about sex at church. Before seminary, I served as the Director of Youth Ministries at a small church, and I can pretty safely say that we talked about sex once. One time. In two years.

I’m currently on year two in my current position as Minister for Youth & Young Adults, and while we talked about sex for one month during Sunday School, that’s still only four times in over a year and a half. Four times. I wonder if they are getting information about sex from other sources throughout their weeks? I’d guess that they hear TONS of wrong/bad/unhelpful/unsafe information about sex at school – a lot more than four times a day…

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Virtual Community IS Community – RIP @gideony

Twitter

As I finished lunch this past Wednesday, I was checking tweets and saw the above tweet from Bruce Reyes-Chow. Then I started doing some searching through hashtags and people’s tweets, and realized that the news was in fact true: fellow emergent church blogger Gideon Addington had taken his own life.« Continue »

A Theological Statement for Your Critique

I recently ran across the following theological statement that belongs to a denomination in the United States. I simply offer it to you for your critique, feedback and thoughts. What do you like about it? What does it offer? What is it lacking? Is this something you could stand behind?

“The [insert Denomination Name] acknowledges as its sole head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. It acknowledges as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession. It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world. It claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformers. It affirms the responsibility of the Church in each generation to make this faith its own in reality of worship, in honesty of thought and expression, and in purity of heart before God. In accordance with the teaching of our Lord and the practice prevailing among evangelical Christians, it recognizes two sacraments: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.”

While I know you could just google a phrase of this and find out what denomination it is – I’d rather you simply critique it and offer your thoughts without knowing what denomination is behind this statement.

Brian Kershisnik’s “Nativity”

nativity-art

Last year around Christmas, I ran across this piece of artwork on Don Miller’s blog. The piece of art is called “Nativity” and the artist is Brian Kershisnik (click on the above image for a more detailed version). I think it is a simply brilliant piece – there is so much I love about it. If you want to get two extremely detailed close-ups of this piece, check out this shot and this one.

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