Great Youth Ministry Resource

I want to let my readers know about a new Youth Ministry resource that could change the way youth are formed as disciples of Jesus Christ in the church.

Holy Things for Youth Ministry: 13 Practical Sessions is a new book just out from Pilgrim Press that is edited by my friend, Brian Hardesty-Crouch. It is a collection of thirteen lessons that can be implemented in your church's youth ministry, designed to ground youth in the basics of the Christian faith and grouped into four areas: "Book" (meaning the Bible), "Bath" (meaning baptism and the baptismal life), "Table" (meaning Holy Communion and the eucharistic life), and "Time" (meaning life patterned by the rhythms of liturgy and the Christian calendar).

BACKGROUND ON THE BOOK: Holy Things for Youth Ministry is the practical companion to a book written by Fred Edie a few years ago, called Book, Bath, Table, and Time: Christian Worship as Source and Resource for Youth Ministry. Dr. Edie is a professor at Duke Divinity School and the faculty director of the Duke Youth Academy. His work frames youth ministry within the worshiping life of the Christian church, and the sessions contained in Holy Things for Youth Ministry offer practical sessions on how to take that theological commitment and begin to form youth by it.

The way the chapters of the book are organized really provides the reader with what I would call a "holistic approach" to teaching in a youth ministry setting. The chapters provide biblical and theological background on each topic, and the reader is invited into an attitude of preparation through prayer, reflection, and practical organizing. There is plenty of guidance offered for how to take the material of each chapter and present it as a practical session in a youth ministry setting. There are also suggestions for further reading and further practical exploration for any topics that grab the interest of either the the youth leader or the youth themselves.

In sum, I recommend this book highly. We live in a time when there is a great need for strong curriculum but a significant lack of good available resources. Holy Things for Youth Ministry helps to fill that need.

BACKGROUND ON THE EDITOR: Brian Hardesty-Crouch is a youth minister and spiritual director who heads a ministry in Texas called Holy Moments. I've gotten to know him over the past few years on the staff of the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation. In fact, the different lessons in Holy Things for Youth Ministry were all written by folks who have served on the staff of DYA over the past few years. (I wrote a chapter for the book that looks at reading the Old Testament theologically; the chapter is titled "Echoes of Jesus: Old Testament Anticipations of the Coming Messiah" and can be found on pages 47-64.) Brian's involvement in DYA at Duke goes way back, and he was instrumental in developing the curriculum that the Youth Academy uses each summer. That also means he was a particularly good person to lead the project that resulted in Holy Things for Youth Ministry.

LINKS FOR RESOURCES: If you are a pastor or youth minister or lay youth worker in need of a good resource for your youth ministry, I hope you'll check this book out. To obtain a copy of Holy Things for Youth Ministry online, click here for the Amazon link and here for the Cokesbury link.

If you'd like to know a little more about the Duke Youth Academy, you can check out any number of posts I've done on it through this website. I've archived them by label, so you can access them easily by clicking on this link.