Other Websites - some even have free email subscriptions with helpful information!
Fuller Youth Institute
Read some of my thoughts about Fuller Youth Institute here.
Sticky Faith
Institute for Youth Minsitry at Princeton Theological Seminay
National Study of Youth and Religion- Christian Smith
People Whose Thoughts I Pay Attention To
Kenda Creasy Dean. She is basically at the top of all of my lists at the moment. This is her page and a great source for accessible, acadmiecally based thoughts on youth minsitry.
Andrew Root - website and live blog. Author of Revisitng Relational Youth Ministry. I find this book deeply challenging, and he studied at Princeton Thelogical Seminary, I have a hunch that it was with Kenda Creasy Dean.
Mark Oestreicher. To be fair, I don't know a ton about Mark himself, but I find his blog immensely useful as a source for others who are thinking about youth minsitry.
Recommended Books
Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
This is THE book. Buy it, read it. It will change the way you practice youth minsitry.
Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation by Andrew Root. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.
I have been reading this book recently and it is challenging the way I think about incarnational ministry. He pushes the idea of relational youth ministry to a new level. And I think that his ideas about what changes young people are worth considering.
Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kenda worked with Christian Smith on the reasearch for Souls in Transtion and Soul Searching. This book contains her thoughts about the state of adolescent Christianity in America being direct fruit if the state of adult Christianity in America. Every time I read it, I am challenged to live my Christian life with courage and to do so in a way that is intentionally transparent to the adoelsecents in my life.
Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
