Friday Review (12/1/23)
Each week we compile a list of helpful articles from other sites, in a variety of categories, for youth workers to read, reflect on, and/or discuss with parents and volunteers. If you have any articles you’d like to suggest, we’d love for you to share those in the Youth Pastor Theologian Facebook group. That’s a great way to bring them to our attention and to discuss them with like-minded youth workers! (Inclusion in this list does not imply complete agreement with the publishing source, but we have found these articles to be beneficial.)
Youth Ministry
Gen Z Is Looking for Friends, by Kirsten Franze (The Gospel Coalition)
Many Gen Zers are suffering from disconnection and isolation, living according to blatant lies that color their reality. Self-hatred and self-obsession simultaneously reign in their beings, and they’re clouded by confusion. How do we evangelize to a generation living in this dichotomy? How do we participate in painting life and beauty into the picture of their lives?
Guiding Kids in Their Search for Identity, by Walt Mueller (CPYU)
If our calling as parents and youth workers is ultimately about pointing kids to Christ and praying that He would embrace them so hard that they would find their identity solely in their embrace of Him, then what can we do to help our kids find their way through youth culture’s current muddled and confusing identity mess? Here are some suggestions to get you started.
Lord, Save My Great-Great-Grandchildren, by Trevin Wax (TGC)
Like Spurgeon, we can pray not only for those alive today but for those who will run the race in the decades and centuries after us. We pray for those yet unborn to one day be born again. O Lord, save our children and our children’s children!
Biblical & Theological Studies
Five Barren Women in the Old Testament, by Mitch Chase (Biblical Theology)
Whenever the biblical authors describe a woman as barren, you can rest assured she won’t be barren for long. The reason for this confidence is the pattern of God’s reversal of the state of barrenness.
Reformer's Syndrome, by J. V. Fesko (Credo)
If the gospel is at stake, then proceed. But if you are the chief beneficiary of your cause, then prudence dictates that you surrender. Beware, therefore, of Reformer’s Syndrome and remember that above all else we should seek the way of the cross, which to the world, and even many within the church, will appear like foolishness.
Cultural Reflection & Contextualization
On Culture War, Doug Wilson, and the Moscow Mood, by Kevin DeYoung (Clearly Reformed)
My concerns are not so much with one or two conclusions that Christians may reach if Wilson becomes their intellectual mentor. My bigger concern is with the long-term spiritual effects of admiring and imitating the Moscow mood. For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible with Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, and ultimately inconsistent with the stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project.
My Tea Bag’s Philosophy Doesn’t Hold Water, by Trevin Wax (The Gospel Coalition)
Gone is the notion you would conform yourself to the nature of things or submit to a revelation that comes from outside yourself. Your reality is at the center, and nature and religion must bend the knee.
Pastoral Ministry
4 Feasts We Eat Every Week at Church, by Kristen Wetherell (Crossway)
The question worth asking at this point is, Am I committed to a local church that loves the word of Christ? No church is perfect. But if you are disconnected from church, or if your church is not consuming the Scriptures on Sunday mornings (or whenever you meet), you are missing out on the meal that matters most to your spiritual health and to the spiritual health of other believers. It is never too late to connect or make a change.
Wanted: Catholic Pastors, by Mark Dever (9Marks)
Perhaps it’s because of this very love that sometimes I also find myself saddened by pastors. How many times have pastors made remarks that seem to show that their dreams and hopes begin and end at the doors of their own church? While there is sometimes admirable contentment and humility in this, I fear that other times it is self-absorption and small-mindedness.
Family & Parents
Instagram Addicted Your Teenager Because She's Worth $270 to Them, by Chris Martin (Terms of Service)
I have been banging the drum on this issue for years—that Facebook is actively, not passively, choosing profits over users’ well-being—often with people giving me the side-eye like I’m peddling some wacky conspiracy theory. Well, now we have it straight from Meta’s mouth: they knew they were harming teenagers, and they ignored this harm because of the immense profits.
God Teaches Me Through My Daughter with Down Syndrome, by Amy Julia Becker (Christianity Today)
Adults with intellectual disabilities can have robust spiritual lives. Are we learning from them?
From YPT this week
YPT Podcast Episode 52: Intentional Youth Missions with Alison Woodrow
Youth Ministry has a long legacy of commitment to missions, but where can that go wrong and how can we think more intentionally about giving students a vision for the Great Commission?
Who Were the Magi and Why Do They Matter?, by Bryan Barrineau
Here’s what we know about the Magi or “Wise Men”, what we don’t, and a few lessons teenagers can learn from their presence in the Christmas story.
Discussing Theology With Students through “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”, by Andrew Slay
The latest Hunger Games prequel offers meaningful prompts to discuss important theological truths with students: What does it mean to be a human, What is goodness, and How can we be saved? (Spoilers ahead)