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May 23, 2008

The List: Youth Ministry Watch

The favorite youth-ministry websites of Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties, author of many books, and chronic blogger.

Mark Oestreicher

Youth Ministry Exchange
By youth workers and for youth workers, YMX is the place to discuss all things youth ministry, with thousands of threads on every imaginable subject. Some sections are free, but a $5 annual pass gets you access to the whole thing - and it's totally worth it.

The Source for Youth Ministry
Jonathan McKee started this site (formerly Jonathan's Resources) as a labor of love for youth workers. Chock full of free resources and ideas (the game section alone is amazing).

The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding
This website, from CPYU founder Walt Mueller, is really for parents, but youth workers find it extremely helpful. It's loaded with blogs, articles, links to relevant stories, and more resources than you can imagine to help you learn about youth culture. And the free, weekly e-mail updates are a must.

YouthMinistry.Com
When Group Publishing partnered with Doug Fields's Simply Youth Ministry, they resurrected this long-dormant domain to create a new site, distinct from their two other sites. They're just beginning to move from a commerce-only site to a content-and-commerce site.

Especialidades Juveniles
Youth Specialties' Spanish division has its own website, completely separate in location, content, and maintenance from the English-language YS site. Based on traffic stats, it's the most popular youth-ministry site in the world. Of course, it's all in Spanish.

Youth Specialties
Okay, it's a bit self-promotional, but it truly is my favorite for all things concerning youth ministry, with thousands of pages of articles, ideas, and free stuff - plus the most comprehensive youth-ministry job bank anywhere (with over 700 listings at any time).

posted by Susan Wunderink | Comments (2)

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When it comes to youth ministries, my sole concern or reservation is the typical malpractice by evangelists in appealing to the novelty of decision- making powers of the young in "receiving Jesus Christ", as Savior, which invariably wears off sooner than later. No basis for real and lasting security is established for testing and validating the "deeds" of Jesus through which alone one can 1. know who He really is and 2. believe in Him once and for all (John 10: 37-38)! The absence of these terms of reference, especially at Jesus' crucifixion and death, is a tragic error of evangelism today. For details, please see www.the2keys.com.

Posted By: Ephrem Hagos | May 25, 2008 7:45 AM

every day I look around and just wish others could have the compassion that Christ had for us. I keep looking for a community that really cherishes those innermost feelings I hold dear. I've looked long and hard and with close scrutiny I found that holystrokes.com is the true path to the kingdom of heaven.

Posted By: Peter Schmidt | February 12, 2009 2:01 AM