cow tipping: wrestling with youth ministry

Soul Searching Screening

Soul Searching: A Movie About Teenagers and God
Wednesday, April 18, 2007, at 7:00 pm
Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN This is a FREE, but ticketed event. Call the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center Ticket Office at 574.631.2800 to reserve tickets.

SOUL SEARCHING, a movie about Teenagers and God, is a compelling documentary about the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers based on research by the National Study of Youth and Religion, which began in 2000 under the direction of Dr. Christian Smith and continues today with generous grants from Lilly Endowment. Michael Eaton and Timothy Eaton of Revelation Studios have worked with Dr. Smith to bring you this documentary journey into the lives of teenagers from all over the country. Find out what mostly Christian teenagers think about God and religion, what their hopes and aspirations are, and what the research says about the effect of religion in their lives.

Early Adolescent Bibliography

I was reading one of Marko's old blog posts where he recommended Not Much Just Chillin’ as one of the most significant books about young teens written in the past decade. Then he added, "...and I read them all." While I don't dispute his claim (the guy reads more in a day than I read in all of grad school), I wonder what books I might have missed in the last decade. Wouldn't it be such a great gift to the field of early adolescence ministry if a bunch of us came up with an exhaustive bibliography on early adolescence. There really isn't much out there, so it shouldn't take long. I found a syllabus or two for college courses on early adolescence and their course readings are books that I own (however, the articles are endless). Here are a few of the challenges I came up with in regards to writing a bibliography.

CHALLENGES:
1. Discerning what books from the field of education we include in our conversation (we don't need books on how to teach middle school math). What are those books that crossover from other disciplines (psychology, sociology, education)?
2. Discerning what books are junk. Just because Focus on the Family publishes a book on early adolescence doesn't mean it adds anything credible to our library of knowledge. What are those books that maybe popular, but don't add any substance.
3. Discerning what's horribly out of date. Not to be a chronological snob, but some of the great books on ministry need to be put out to pasture, and others need to be re-discovered. What are those books that are timeless or tell the history of early adolescence?

EARLY ADOLESCENCE
Not Much Just Chillin’: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers, by Linda Perlstein (Ballantine, 2003)

The Rollercoaster Years: Raising Your Child Through the Maddening Yet Magical Middle School Years, by Charlene C. Giannetti, Margaret Sagarese (Broadway, 1997)

Boxed in and bored: How middle schools continue to fail young adolescents--and what good middle schools do right, by Peter Scales (Search Institute, 1996)

Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children Through Early Adolescence, by Laura Sessions Stepp (Riverhead, 2000)

The Quicksilver Years: The Hopes and Fears of Early Adolescence, by Peter L. Benson, Dorothy L. Williams, Arthur L. Johnson (Winston Press, 1987)

EARLY ADOLESENCE MINISTRY

Junior High Ministry, by Wayne Rice (Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 1998)

Controlled Chaos: Making Sense of Junior High Ministry, by Kurt Johnston (Standard Publishing Company, 2001)

Help! I'm a Junior High Youth Worker!, by Mark Oestreicher (Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 1997)

Faith-Forming Junior High Ministry: Beyond Pizza 101, by Drew Dyson (Abingdon Press, 2003)

Reaching Kids Before High School: A Guide to Junior High Ministry, by David R. Veerman (Victor Books, 1990)

Time: The Overscheduled Child Myth

This week's Time magazine reports that despite the dire warnings, children whose schedules are packed with activities actually flourish. They look at the 25th anniversary of David Elkind's book, The Hurried Child, as an opportunity to revisit his concerns about the loss of childhood. Elkind believed that kids were being forced to grow up too soon and that the results would be an increase in drug use, suicide, early sex, and bad grades. However, studies now show that busy kids don't suffer from these social ills, but avoid them even more because of their hectic schedules.

I wonder if they studied whether kids had time for their daily devotions.