Quotes & Sayings About Youth Ministry

Yes, it's important to inspire the next generation but let's not forget to inspire the now generation too. — Onyi Anyado

American youth ministry often looks beautiful on the surface, with big youth rooms and conferences full of excited kids, but underneath the shine is rot, for the youth ministry has been more about mammon than manna, more about investment in banked faith than about inviting young people to partake with parents and other adults in the daily gift of faith that comes to us all as we pray and confess, I believe. Help [our] unbelief. — Andrew Root

Youth ministry is not about getting things accomplished - only the act of God can bring about the transformation we seek. Youth ministry is about participating deeply in young people's lives as we await, together in suffering & joy, the coming of God. — Andrew Root

Youth Ministry, as traditionally organized, has also suffered the impact of social changes. Young people often fail to find responses to their concerns, needs, problems and hurts in the usual structures. As adults, we find it hard to listen patiently to them, to appreciate their concerns, demands, and to speak to them in a language they can understand. — Pope Francis

Grace is costly because it calls us through our person to the person of Jesus Christ. And when we follow the person of Jesus Christ, when we follow his call through our person, we're sent to act for the concrete person of our neighbor in the world. — Andrew Root

Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry. When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in humility. — James M. Barrie

Apathy sets in when our passion for the future is miscarried. — Andrew Root

Ministry is about joining God where God can be found. — Andrew Root

The students in your youth ministry don't need your clever ideas and great programming skills. They need a living model - a man or woman of God who is passionate about his or her faith. — Doug Fields

Ministry with volunteer youth workers is not primarily about volunteers bringing refreshment to students, nor about youth pastors bringing refreshment to volunteers. It is about creating a space wherein people can find refreshment from Christ. It's about creating an upper room - holy ground where disciples can encounter Christ and be washed and refreshed by him. — Duffy Robbins

Jesus is center, people are central. That's an equation for a healthy youth ministry. — Doug Fields

We have created youth ministry that confuses extroversion with faithfulness. We have effectively communicated to young people that sincerely following Jesus is synonymous with being 'fired up' for Jesus, with being excited for Jesus, as if discipleship were synonymous with fostering an exuberant, perky, cheerful, hurray-for-Jesus disposition like what we might find in the glee club or at a pep rally. — James K.A. Smith

Here we see a young man in an empty room, checking his watch as no one comes to share in the refreshments he has carefully placed on the table behind him. There is some comfort for those of us taking the theological turn in youth ministry to hear of Bonhoeffer's own failures, especially with young adults. We also often find it hard to create the spaces to connect with young adults. And if Bonhoeffer is our forefather, it is important to recognize his failures as much as his glowing successes. — Andrew Root

My heart's toward youth ministry, but I don't know. I never would have thought I would have written a book. And God kind of directed that. So we'll see what the next is. — Tony Dungy

This conference on religious education seems to your humble servant the last word in absurdity. We are told by a delightful 'expert' that we ought not really teach our children about God lest we rob them of the opportunity of making their own discovery of God, and lest we corrupt their young minds by our own superstitions. If we continue along these lines the day will come when some expert will advise us not to teach our children the English language, since we rob them thereby of the possibility of choosing the German, French or Japanese languages as possible alternatives. Don't these good people realize that they are reducing the principle of freedom to an absurdity? — Reinhold Niebuhr

A mission trip in youth ministry is not about bringing the resurrection; It is about witnessing to the resurrection. — Andrew Root

Paul connects faith and hope. Rather than saying young people have faith if they believe without doubt, it might be better to say they have faith if, up against doubt, fear, and struggle, they hope. — Andrew Root

And like so many of us in youth ministry, he explains at the end of the letter that he felt small next to the significance of the boy's deep theological question. It is more than ironic that the arrogant young man felt insecure next to the ten-year-old's question. Bonhoeffer never doubted himself in defense of his dissertation or while wrestling with Harnack in his seminars. But in the shadow of the ten-year-old and his cosmic question raised by the lived sorrow over his dead dog, the overly confident Bonhoeffer sits in fear and trembling. — Andrew Root

The point of the mission trip is to invite young people to act in ways that witness to the promise of God's action, which will make all things new. — Andrew Root

Hope trusts in the promises of God. Hope seeks the action of God that brings forth a new reality. Optimism stands in the current reality, wishing to make the best of each individual experience. But hope stands knee deep in the history of this reality by yearning for the action of God to bring forth a new reality in which everything in this reality is reconciled and redeemed. — Andrew Root

Friendship means we are obligated to one another, but obligated in a way that doesn't destroy our freedom. — Andrew Root