flashback friday (april 1): this week's links from the youth ministry blogosphere

One of the things we are committed to at ym360 is Networking. Our vision for networking is connecting you to people and organizations doing awesome youth ministry. Flashback Friday is a feature where we give you the run down of all the interesting posts from the past week in the youth ministry blogosphere. Consider it our way of keeping you connected with what is going on.

This week's posts from the ym360 Blog

• Running A "MacGyver" Youth Ministry: Cheap Things That Change Lives
• Helping Students See The Difference In Being "Good" and Being Christ-like
• Are Your Students A Product Of Your Youth Ministry Design?
• Introducing An "Open Question Night" To Your Youth Ministry

Posts From Other Awesome People

We search the Internet to bring you relevant information to help you be a better youth worker. Here are some links from posts we thought were pretty great.

• Doug Franklin--As I say here quite often, Doug Franklin and his team at LeaderTreks are some of the finest people in youth ministry. And I sincerely mean that. So, when Doug talks youth ministry strategy, as he does in this blog post, I listen. I think you should, too.
• Life In The Middle--If you're in middle school ministry, read this post! Adam Reed is a super cool guy and a great youth ministry practitioner. This is an invaluable post on how to effectively communicate with middle schoolers during the week. As the leader of a middle school small group, I struggle with this myself. Adam's insights are great.
• The Mayward Blog--This is one of my fav posts from the week. Be sure to take a second to read this post. Such a solid reminder of what our role is in discipleship, and what it is not.
• Youth Leader's Academy--So, apparently Rachel only recently started the YLA blog, which is super cool because I have found it to be a great source of timely and relevant posts. This post is a nice, short guide to asking the right questions to get your group talking. Definitely worth a read.
• More Than Dodgeball.com--Josh writes a really good two-part series on "The Youth Ministry Volunteer Process." This is the second post, but you can link to the first one from here. If you feel like you don't have a 100% grasp of your process as it pertains to volunteers, then read this post! It's thorough and thoughtful.
• The Overflow--In this post, Brian shares a fun personal story and then makes a GREAT application out of it. (But not as great as the beanies his mom made!)
• Small Town Youth Ministry--A personal and revealing post from Ben speaking to issues that I know virtually all youth workers can relate to, namely, disharmony between youth pastors and their senior ministers.
• Rethinking Youth Ministry--I don't know Brian Kirk, but I really like the things he has to say about youth ministry. He is a great thinker and I am challenged by the Rethink blog regularly. This post is Brian's take on the level of importance we ascribe to cultural issues such as MTV's "Skins" verses, shall we say, more global issues such as poverty and war as it pertains to how we teach students. Brian basically asks "which one should it be?" Thought provoking stuff.
• Doug Fields--Doug writes a really thoughtful post on the power of invitation. He talks about the positives of a personal invitation. Great stuff.
• Marathon Youth Ministry--Chris Wesley is a friend and contributor of ym360. Great guy, great youth minister. This post is actually born out of the dialogue that resulted in Chris' recent post on the ym360 Blog (linked above). It's about taking the time to really flesh out your personal and professional values. After all, as Chris puts it, they point to Christ and the direction He's leading us. Cool stuff.

That's all the links for this week. As always, have an awesome weekend . . . And THANK YOU for the chance to serve you as part of the ym360 community.

Share your thoughts with the youthministry360 community:

• As usual, we want to hear your thoughts. Any particular post catch your eyes? Make you think? Did you disagree with anything? Let us know! Your voice makes the ym360 community stronger.