NORTHEASTERN
SEMINARY BLOG

Recently, I took our church’s teens on our annual amusement park trip—a cornerstone event in all of my youth ministries. I have to admit it though, I do not like amusement parks. Now, I do like aspects of the park, but the reason most people are there is what I do not like. Nothing about roller coasters excites me. I do not like rides that offer a slow incline only to drop participants almost straight down with the encouragement to lift hands in the air while screaming. I do not enjoy corkscrew turns, riding upside down, or rides that take a person to the highest heights just to drop them from those heights in a matter of seconds. How was this ever dubbed as amusement?

When coaches develop a team, they want to create chemistry—by finding the naïve genius (talent and intelligence) of the players and by knowing each player well so that each one can function optimally in the execution of the play book. 

A guest post by Doug Milne (M.Div. '10, Northeastern Seminary)

A guest post by Larry Petry, M.Div. student, youth pastor, Gerry Free Methodist Church, Gerry, NY

Part III of a series on sex, God, and Scripture by guest blogger Dr. Nijay Gupta. Read part I here and part II here.

Part II of a series on sex, God, and Scripture by guest blogger Dr. Nijay Gupta. Read part I here and part III here.

Part I of a series on sex, God, and Scripture by guest blogger Dr. Nijay Gupta. Read part II here and part III here.

There’s a thought among some church leaders that a majority of teens leave the church after they go off to college. Some believe this decline in attendance stems from a desire to go deeper and be real about life and faith, a desire that is not being met in church. Rachel Held Evans recently addressed this topic, expressing that “what millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance” (CNN Belief Blog). Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at different ways youth leaders can go deeper in their youth ministry.