Youth Ministry Institute of Pacific Life Bible College

Playin' With Fire - New Resource for Teaching Online Integrity to Teens

Playin’ With Fire strives to help teens think about the relevant issues that surround them in with all things technical. Our video: “Confessions of a Fireater” encourages teens to act the same online and off as well as bring up issues that they struggle with in regards to tech use with their peers, mentors, and parents. We are trying to change the world: One parent, One teen, and 1 computer at a time.  http://www.playinwithfire.org/

The Best Curriculum Package We've Ever Seen!!

The folks over at Simply Youth Ministry have packaged a 4 year curriculum that is reproducible!!  Downloads of it become available August 1st.  It is $499/first year plus $99/year after that (if you want the web resources/tools).  We've taken an in depth look at the site and the free demo and it looks good!  Check it out at http://live.simplyyouthministry.com/Home/tabid/73/Default.aspx

How Teens Use Media - Neilsen Report

A Nielsen report on the myths and realities of teen media trends has been made available online.  Click here to download the PDF.

YouthMinistry.com - New Resource

Group Magazine and Simply Youth Ministry have created a new online resource for youth workers and parents at www.youthministry.com.

Good Resource on Pornography

Mark Driscoll has written a small book that is available online for free!  http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/

Journal of Psychology & Theology - A Good Resource

The folks over the Rosemead School of Psychology (Biola University) publish a great journal that often includes very relevant articles for youth ministry.  Their most recent Journal, Winter 2008, has two good resource articles on Masturbation and another one on Religious Doubt and Identity Formation: Salient Predictors of Adolsecent Religious Doubt.

Check them out at www.biola.edu/jpt

Great Video Testimonies by Celebrities

A friend of ours discovered this site!  It is fantastic.  It is filled with quality testimonies from celebrities about why they have placed Jesus first in their life.  This can be a great resource to your youth ministry.

www.iamsecond.com

Inspirational Video About People Who Were Considered Failures

Download the video in WMV format - failure.wmv .

Phone Interview with an Adolescent Psychologist

From Fuller's Center for Youth & Family Ministry
Brad Griffin interviews Kelly Schwartz, adolescent psychology specialist, on understanding the adolescent brain. Kelly discusses risk behavior, decision-making, video games, and allowing kids to experience and process their failures. Good stuff for any youth worker or parent!

Editor's Note:  Listen through the whole interview, there is some good information that will be helpful to how you understand and therefore minister to youth.

Download the MP3 here.

Dangers of Cohabitation

In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are five conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:

1. Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.
   
-1. Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage—particularly when it comes to caring for children—without the legal protection. Research has also found that cohabiting women contribute more than 70 percent of the relationship's income.
    
-1. Cohabitation brings a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, because cohabiting men are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.
    
-1. Poverty rates are higher among cohabitors. Those who share a home but never marry have 78 percent less wealth than the continuously married.
    
-1. Those who suffer most from cohabitation are the children. The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households. Children ages 12–17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems and 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school.
    

Brian Lowery, associate editor, PreachingToday.com; source: A. Patrick Schneider II, "Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children," www.lifesite.net (10-4-07), reprinted from an original article in the New Oxford Review

From: http://preachingtoday.com/illustrations/weekly/08-03-10/10031008.html