March 29, 2012 12:00 AM
Are you trying to develop a more hospitable, seeker-friendly atmosphere in your church? Here's the first step: Don't kidnap people at gunpoint. A church in Pennsylvania is under investigation for taking a lesson about persecution too far. Glad Tidings Assembly...
March 27, 2012 12:00 AM
In January, Skye spoke at the Lumen conference at Mariners Church in California about the exodus of young people from our churches. Rather than focusing on the sociological data, he used his time to talk about how the way we...
March 22, 2012 12:00 AM
As I get around the country there is one question I hear from pastors more than any other: How do we reach young people? They don’t need research from Barna, Lifeway, Pew, and Gallup to tell them young people are...
March 5, 2012 12:00 AM
"I have the opportunity to hang out with a number of younger evangelical influencers, and sometimes it's breathtaking how little we think about, talk about, or seem concerned with personal evangelism." -Jonathan Merritt quoted in "Outlooks on Outreach" in the...
January 31, 2012 12:00 AM
Newsflash…Young adults are leaving the church. Ok, it’s not really news to anyone familiar with church attendance trends. For generations we have seen young people raised within the church depart during their later teens and twenties. But most returned once...
January 23, 2012 12:00 AM
Read Part 1 and Part 2. This past semester my students and I have been educating each other. I’ve been introducing them—at warp speed—to the major world religions. They’ve been candidly expressing their perspectives on faith, religious practice, and what...
January 13, 2012 12:00 AM
In a previous post, I described a few trends I noticed in responses of my students in a community college world religions course to prompts about the role of religion in their lives. In that post, I listed the responses...
January 11, 2012 12:00 AM
Let's be honest for a minute. Most churches expend the vast majority of their resources on weekend worship gatherings. It's when facilities are most utilized, when programming is most robust, when volunteers are most required, and what many pastors spend...
January 3, 2012 12:00 AM
Last semester I assigned the students in the community college World Religions course I teach a series of writing exercises that (I hoped) would help them personalize and internalize the subject matter we were reading about and discussing in class....
December 7, 2011 12:00 AM
What I find most interesting about Tony Jones’ thesis is the way it can explain far more than just the Emerging Church Movement. I think contemporary youth ministry may also help us understand the rise of the megachurch movement in...
December 1, 2011 12:00 AM
Did the modern youth ministry movement create the Emerging Church? That’s the question Tony Jones addresses in a recent blog post. While presenting a paper at an academic conference, Jones fielded questions from professors of youth ministry primarily from evangelical...
November 10, 2011 12:00 AM
"Please, sir, may I have some different?" It's not "more" the average young guy wants today, it's different. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo describes drug addiction as "wanting more," but guys today have what he calls arousal addiction, always "wanting something different."...
November 3, 2011 12:00 AM
Read part 1 3. Social action is a partner of evangelism. This, finally, is where Stott lands on the matter. He believes that social justice and evangelism “belong to each other and yet are independent of each other. Each stands...
October 31, 2011 12:00 AM
Is social justice an essential part of the gospel? The question has been raging for decades, and in some circles the matter was settled long ago. But a new generation of evangelicals with a strong inclination toward social engagement is...
October 6, 2011 3:48 PM
I realize I’m surrounded by young Christian leaders, but I have a confession to make: as a general rule, I haven't always fully trusted leaders under 29. I know many who are brilliant, creative, fun, and spiritually deep, but I...
August 31, 2011 12:00 AM
“My parents were very religious when I was young. We went to church (or temple or whatever) every week. My parents never, or seldom, prayed or talked about faith at home. As I got older and things got busier, we...
August 22, 2011 12:00 AM
It seems everyone has an answer for the exodus of young people from the church. We're too homophobic, too irrelevant, too age-segmented, too boring, or too consumerist. But Scot McKnight's explanation goes far deeper. He thinks we have fundamentally misunderstood...
May 16, 2011 12:00 AM
Over the past year I've conducted dozens of interviews with 20-somethings who have walked away from their Christian faith. Among the most surprising findings was this: nearly all of these "leavers" reported having positive experiences in youth group. I recall...
November 10, 2010 12:00 AM
Fundamentalism is characterized by: A.) Insularity. There’s a mentality of insiders over against those who don’t believe. B.) Distrust towards culture as a place where God is at work. C.) An “us against them” mentality. Because of the previous two...
April 14, 2010 12:00 AM
Following this blog, I figured the best way to rack up comments was to write about health care. So I thought I might explore one element of the recently enacted health-reform legislation that grabbed my attention as a prospective...
February 22, 2010 12:00 AM
If you want to rile up the evangelical masses, drag out dubious statistics about how many Christians fall away from the faith after high school. We fear for our youth, that they’ll rebel against what their parents and churches...
November 19, 2009 12:00 AM
There wasn’t much that could have distracted me on the way to the train station on a recent Saturday evening. After two days at an outdoor music festival—in the rain one day and under the blazing sun the next—I wanted...
September 23, 2009 12:00 AM
The statistics are grim. Rainer Research estimates that 70 percent of young people leave the church by age 22. Barna Group argues that the figure increases to 80 percent by age 30. The Southern Baptist Convention recently observed that growth...
August 24, 2009 12:00 AM
This article is from the Summer 2009 issue of Leadership Journal. You can read the entire article at Leadership's website. When the willows sway in South Barrington, the evangelical world notices. So Willow Creek Community Church provoked headlines in 2006...
August 14, 2009 12:00 AM
From "Is the Era of Age Segregation Over?" an interview with Kara Powell in the current issue of Leadership. "[The church] realized in the 1940s that we were not offering teens enough focused attention. So what did we do? We...
April 3, 2009 12:00 AM
For years I served on the staff of a megachurch with a very contemporary style of worship. We had a state-of-the-art sound system, large video projection screens, pop-rock music, and a sophisticated lighting system. The worship services were programmed to...
March 6, 2009 10:23 AM
What if your city never recovers from the current economic crisis? What if your entire region enters an irreversible long-term decline? Richard Florida dares to declare the downturn's winners and losers in his March cover story for The Atlantic. In...
April 11, 2008 12:52 PM
If there is one thing that everyone in youth ministry seems to be talking about it's how to keep students following Christ after high school. That's been a hot topic here at Shift, and this morning Kara Powell addressed...
April 11, 2008 11:19 AM
For the third podcast recorded here at Shift, we sat down with Switchfoot band members Drew Shirley and Jerome Fontamillas. In it, Drew and Jerome discuss the ways in which they've seen student culture change over the past 10...
April 11, 2008 11:12 AM
The second day of Shift 2008 ended with the Thursday Night Experiences, aimed at having the conference extend beyond just what happens in main sessions and breakouts. To start the night, everybody began together in the main auditorium for...
April 10, 2008 5:09 PM
We've got our second podcast from the conference. Mark Miller is an author and pastor at Life Church in Wheaton, Illinois. He's speaking at a breakout sesssion at SHIFT on the topic of "Engaging Students in Global Justice." In...
April 10, 2008 5:04 PM
Kara Powell spoke during the final session at Shift this afternoon. Powell is the director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. She began by bursting a pretty big bubble. Many churches have gotten...
April 10, 2008 3:44 PM
Darren Whitehead leads the student ministry of Willow Creek. He compared the church in our changing culture to his own experience as an immigrant (he's from Australia). Most immigrants suffer from "cultural freeze," he says. This is the tendency...
April 10, 2008 10:21 AM
The second day of the conference began with Brian McLaren's breakout session, "Onramp to the Postmodern Conversation." This was designed to help newcomers to the issue understand the shift that is happening in the culture. He compared this change...
April 10, 2008 7:16 AM
Yesterday morning we recapped Mark Yaconelli's talk from the first day of Shift 2008. Thanks to those of you who have left comments on this post, along with the reviews of the sessions with Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne....
April 9, 2008 4:30 PM
Here at Out of Ur we've been hosting a conversation about the themes found in Shane Claiborne's latest book, Jesus for President (part one and part two). As is evident from this conversation, Shane is a guy who provokes...
April 9, 2008 1:00 PM
The second session at Shift began with a plea from Bo Boshers, the Executive Director of Youth Ministries for the Willow Creek Association. He shared that a survey of this conference's attendees showed that 67% of the youth leaders...
April 9, 2008 9:05 AM
I'm sitting in Willow Creek's auditorium as hundreds of youth leaders and students slowly make their way in. In a few minutes Shift 2008, Willow's student ministries 3-day conference, will begin. As previously mentioned, for the next few days...
March 27, 2008 12:00 AM
In two weeks the Willow Creek Association is hosting a different kind of student ministries conference. Shift 2008 will address the cultural changes that are impacting the way we think about reaching the next generation. Out of Ur is excited...
September 14, 2007 12:00 AM
In part one of our interview with Dan Kimball he talked about the intersection of the emerging church with missional theology. Simply changing the church's worship style isn't enough, he says. Becoming truly missional requires "an ecclesiological change." In part...
August 9, 2007 12:00 AM
A new study reported by USAToday finds that a high percentage of young adults who attended church while in high school stop attending by age 23. The poll was conducted by LifeWay Research, an affiliate of the publishing arm of...
May 22, 2007 12:00 AM
In this final installment of Angie Ward's report on the impact of youth ministry on the American church she talks more with Tic Long, Youth Specialties' president of events. Long shares his thoughts on the lasting impact youth ministry has...
May 18, 2007 12:00 AM
In part 2, Angie Ward continues her reflection on the emergence of youth ministry and its impact on the church. The first generation of youth ministers, she points out, grew up to lead the seeker-driven movement that has dominated evangelicalism...
May 14, 2007 12:00 AM
Seeker churches, emerging churches, ancient-future churches, mega-churches, house churches, Boomer churches, Gen-X churches. There is a debate occurring in American evangelicalism about the future of Christianity and what form the church should take within our culture. But is it possible...
April 20, 2007 12:00 AM
Url: You moved from a career in advertising to pastor a Mennonite church. Is that reflective of a generation that's reacting against consumerism? Do you see a trend of younger people preferring smaller, less market driven, ministries? Hipps: We are...
August 30, 2006 12:00 AM
One of the reoccurring debates on this blog has been whether cultural forms used in ministry are neutral, or do forms possess inherent value that may or may not be compatible with God's kingdom. For example, Andy Stanley shared his...
August 24, 2006 12:00 AM
Many churches are struggling to reach young adults. The conversation on Out of Ur for the last two weeks has wrestled with this problem. Brian McLaren believes we need to be asking different questions of those who've grown up in...
August 21, 2006 12:00 AM
Recently, Brian McLaren challenged us to ask new questions about the absence of young adults in most churches. Mike Sares, pastor of Scum of the Earth Church in Denver, continues the topic by discussing the divergent values he has encountered...
August 16, 2006 12:00 AM
Many churches struggle to reach the ever-elusive young adult demographic. Are 20-somethings simply disinterested in church? Not according to Brian McLaren. He believes we are failing to listen to the questions young adults are asking. This post is a preview...
October 7, 2005 11:34 AM
Leadership editor Marshall Shelley reports from Catalyst, a conference for young leaders. After two days at the 2005 Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, I've picked up the mixed feelings that the emerging generation has about leadership. Even though Catalyst is billed...
