Due to some of the outcomes of my recent travels, my expected plans for 2010 have been put on hold, that was to try and move into a youth pastor role at a church somewhere. However this hasn’t and doesn’t stop my mind ticking over, thinking about and dreaming about what youth ministry is all about. As such I have decided to undertake a project in 2010…to write a semi-autobiographical book on youth ministry.
My plans for this book are not really to look at publishing it. It is more a structure to hopefully pull together the different strands of thought I have on ‘why’ I want to be involved in youth ministry and ‘why’ I think it is such an important and pivotal ministry. There is plenty of discussion and debate on the merits of target specific ministries and I will hopefully tackle some of these. I hope that in writing this book I can grapple with some of the philosophies, idea’s and concerns in youth ministry and help piece together in my mind why on earth I’d want to be involved in such a topsy-turvy area of ministry!
I have come up with a skeleton outline, some basic topics that I want to cover and have an exhaustive booklist that I either need to read for the first time or re-read. The books that I plan to read are as follows.
- The Trouble with Paris – Mark Sayers
- Fruit that will Last – Tim Hawkins
- Messy Spirituality – Mike Yaconelli (re-reading)
- Velvet Elvis -Rob Bell (re-reading)
- Blue Like Jazz – Donald Miller (re-reading)
- The Church and the American Teenager – Tony Campolo
- UnChristian – George Barna
- Postmodern youth Ministry – Tony Jones
- Youth Builder: Today’s Resource for Relational Youth Ministry – Jim Burns
- The Be-With Factor – Bo Boshers & Judson Poling
- Deep Ministry in a Shallow World – Chap Clark, Kara Powell
In most cases I know roughly what the above books talk about and know they cover some or a lot of what I want to clarify in my own mind, though some of them just sound like good reads! I hope that by focusing my train of thought for a while I may be able to go a bit deeper than the surface reading books normally get, at least from me!
My biggest fear is this will end up like many of the other projects I start myself and fall in a heap. However, I started this project way back in June while travelling (and before my plans changed!) and am still going. Today I infact sent an order off for most of those books (www.betterworldbooks.com – good prices and also helps world literacy etc!). We’ll see! Hopefully I’ll talk a bit about how the project is going as 2010 unfolds and progresses!
No Guts No Glory (edited by Alan Stewart) is meant to be good too.