Almost Christian Study Guide...Ch 2

The study guide questions for chapter two are posted on Kenda Dean's blog!!!
CHAPTER 2 STUDY GUIDE 
Click the book to go to a link to buy the book.

Almost Christian...Study Guide

So with all the questions about Kenda Dean's Book Almost Christian she has started to develop a study guide both for adults and/or youth to help work through the ideas in the book!!!  I am really excited about this!

Here is a link to her blog and the Chapter 1 study guide!   Once again Click the Book Cover to go to a place to buy the book!

Organizing Meals...The Easy Way

If you are like me, I have parents help cook meals for our youth group time.  Each week, we have different parents provide the meal.  The problem is that I am not very gifted in organization and would forget to remind parents or even have them sign up at all.

Then I found out about this free resource.  www.TakeThemAMeal.com This is a free website originally designed to help people organize meals when a family has surgery or something, but I have taken it to help organize our Youth Group meals.

All you do is go to the site, create a user and then add the information you parents or whoever need to know and the dates you need people.  Then all they have to do is know the login and password and they can sign up for whatever is available.  It will even send them and you a reminder email the day before!!!

If you want to look at how we use it let me know and I will send you our login so you can see how it can work.

Just wanted to share good resources!

Roundtable: Impacting Kids to Impact the World | YouthWorker.com

Great article, Paul Bonner sent me from Youth Worker.com

Roundtable: Impacting Kids to Impact the World | YouthWorker.com

It really makes you think about teens and how ready are they to change the world?
(Please try to ignore the really out of date picture, the article brings up some great stuff to think about)

Almost Christian...and the Big Stir

So it was hard to miss the stir the Kenda Dean's new book "Almost Christian" caused on CNN, Tennessean, and so much more. I do have to say, if you work in a church or a heavily involved in one, you must read this book! All this to say, I have added her blog to the other links bar on the right, and you should definitely check it out!



Here is the link to her blog! Click the book for a link to buy it.

For me, this book was a call to the church to realize that the faith we have been sharing with our kids and teens was not a passionate Christianity, but rather "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism": a feel good, make good choices, and be a nice person faith.

Her point is that it is not that the teens they interviewed were presented with a passionate faith and they rejected it, but rather they are embracing what we are teaching them, and it is something far off from what we see in scripture.

If there was one thing that kept standing out to me it was this idea (which is somewhere in the book almost verbatim, but I can't find it at the moment):

Do our ministries with young people teach them to be good people, who are nice, socially acceptable, and overall God is not really involved that much, other than to keep them in a moral check; or does our ministry with young people teach and demonstrate a faith that seeks justice, loves mercy, and walks humbly with our God (Micah 6:8)?

How would you answer this about the church you are working with?