if you’re a youth worker and you don’t subscribe to the fuller youth institute‘s free e-journal, then you are seriously missing out or living in a cave.
this week’s e-journal had a link to an interview kara powell conducted with jim belcher, author of deep church (my review of this great book). i’m friends with both kara and jim, and worked with the two of them on a church staff a decade ago (and started a church service with them). so it was fun to hear them chatting. but i’m posting this on my blog, because the last 1/3 (or even 1/4) of the interview is where it seriously gets good, particularly for youth workers. jim says some really profound things about what we should be focusing on in youth ministry (based on his research for his book). i still recommend the book; but i highly recommend you take 5 or 7 minutes to listen to the last 1/3 of this interview (just fire it up, then click to the 2/3 point, if you don’t have time for the whole thing).
“OR” you don’t like the postmodern underpinnings of Fuller… ;)
Loved the book. I’ll check out the talk. Thanks for sharing and good luck with your new enterprise.
One of the reasons I came to work at First Pres Berkeley is because Mark Labberton [now at Fuller] was so good at articulating the central way and viewing many other things as perimeter items where Christians of good faith can disagree. I can’t amen that enough – I think we get stuck calling each other “bad christians” because we disagree on tertiary items, not on basic stuff like Christ, or that our faith should come from the Bible. Love it.
I’m a fan of Kara, Jim and Marko. I’m also a huge fan of Jim’s book and was blessed to get to be a part of all the talks leading up to it. Just thought I’d post to say to anyone who is thinking about reading it that I think Jim is a great new voice that brings a helpful/wise view to this whole thing. The Church is a changing and these kind of discussions need to happen.
Thanks for posting this Marko.
thanks marko for generating conversation about this!
nice…
me likey!!
=)