that fuller center for youth and family ministry interview i posted about the other day just showed up as an article in the christian post. it’s not a bad article, really, though i’m always surprised that the christian post doesn’t call or contact to check anything. but, i’m still very grateful that they do this kind of thing!

a bit of the article:

Two years leading up to puberty, teens are at a stage when the brain goes into a “wild overproduction mode” of creating new neurons. Two years after puberty, neurons not being used disappear.

To Oestreicher, understanding the brain development of the adolescent has huge implications for his ministry work with junior high school students.

“What this is saying is that the way the brain is utilized in the two years following the onset of puberty is how the brain will be fine tuned for the rest of life,” he said.

So rather than cramming in a lot of information, Oestreicher calls youth workers to set teens on a course that would most likely become their future practices. The course includes helping kids develop the ability to think about their faith, to process what it means to have a relationship with God, to help them understand what it means to doubt and to embrace their doubts and to move through them and beyond them.

“If we can help them to start to attune their brains to those things, those will become practices, you might say, brain function that will sustain their faith development for the rest of their life,” the Youth Specialties head stated.