Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors
Sep 13th, 2008 by John
mark riddle
My friend and former colleague in ministry, Mark Riddle, has written a timely and fascinating book about local church youth ministry. Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors: A Church Leaders Guide to Staffing and Leading Youth Pastors (Zondervan/Youth Specialties) is a bluntly honest and extremely helpful guide into the often turbulent waters of student ministry.
The genius of Mark’s book is his ability to go beneath the surface and locate and express the (often deadly) assumptions at work in senior pastors, parents of teens, potential youth pastors and whole congregations–assumptions that swirl around this thing called youth ministry.
Mark presents a vision for healthy youth ministry that seeks the spiritual formation not just of teens, but families; not just of departments in the church, but whole congregations. The rinky-dink view of youth ministry as “Christian” fun-and-games to keep teens from sinning is forever gone.
Mark writes from a wide range of personal experiences both joyful and deporable. He also writes from multitudes of conversations with the principle players in local church youth ministry. From these real life experiences and encounters, Mark writes practically, courageously and exposes the lingering shallowness in so much that passes these days as “youth ministry.”
I applaud Mark for this excellent guide for a very strategic ministry in local churches. I pray that God blesses and helps many people as they read and work through the challenge of student ministry. They will find Mark to be a good, reliable friend.
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John!
Thanks for the nice words. This is the first ever review of my book. It January when it comes out maybe we can add you as a blog tour stop?
Again, thanks so much for saying such nice things! I think this book is going to be helpful for the church.
mark
Your are sure welcome, brother. I will post this again will the book comes out in January.
John
Where do I get one?
The trouble is – will the right people read it?