Flashback Friday (Jul. 30): 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

• Teenagers, Evangelism, and Youth Ministry
• The Importance of Adult Involvement in Your Youth Ministry
• Youth Ministry Essentials: Tips for Preparing Great Lessons
• Youth Ministry Planning: Easy as ABC

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.

• Adventures in Missions--Our buddy Mike Nagel with Adventures in Mission asks in interesting question: "What would happen if you answered teenagers' tough questions with . . . questions?" (Hint: Jesus did this a lot. And it worked for Him.)
• Youth Specialties Blog--Post on the youth specialties blog. More fun stories than application, but raises a great point: are you in the habit of honoring your interns?
• Volunteer Youth Ministry--A great post from a great blog. Dennis blogs from the perspective of a volunteer youth worker (a perspective close to my heart). This is a GREAT post about what to "own" when communicating with parents.
• What I Have Learned Backstage--A very transparent look at when being a youth worker is no fun. Kind of long, but you will relate immediately to the scenarios described.
• Youthministry.com--Killer post by Doug and Matt. "35 Conversation Starters for Your Small Group." This originally ran in the "Youthministry.com Daily." If you're a youth worker and aren't signed up for this daily newsletter from Simply Youth, you're missing out.
• Rethinking Youth Ministry--Great post from the guys at Rethinking Youth Ministry on the right way to approach missions/service projects.
• More Than Dodgeball--Great guest post on More Than Dodgeball. Pretty powerful story of a parent opening up to a youth worker.
• Orange Leaders--A creative post from the Orange Leaders blog about one way to connect with your students' parents.
• Not A Mega-Church--Great series of posts on the benefits of having your teenagers involved in VBS.
• Just Pudge--A fun look at creative encouragement. An interesting take on how to celebrate "wins" within your ministry team.

Doug Franklin is quickly becoming one of my favorite voices in youth ministry. And I am late to the game. Doug has been doing this for a long, long time. His blog is AWESOME, in part because his posts are short, yet packed with insight. If you don't read any other link on this page, read these two:

• One Student's Power To Destroy
• Confrontation

And that will do it, folks. As always, have a great weekend . . . And THANK YOU for the chance to serve you as part of the ym360 Community.

Share your thoughts with the youthministry360 community:

• As always, 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.