Youth Culture Matters - A CPYU Podcast

Plato once said that “music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” While you might argue with the particulars of Plato’s words, you have to agree that music has power. And there’s no question that Scripture has influenced music since the first ever song was penned. Poet, author, and rock music critic Steve Turner knows this to be the cas...

Every now and then, a film comes along that offers a helpful, realistic, and compelling peek into the world of contemporary adolescence. The recent film, Eighth Grade , is a movie follows the last week of middle school before thirteen-year-old Kayla graduates and moves on to high school. It’s a good one that covers all kinds of issues including identity, family, social media, friendships, and sexu...

Over the course of the last few years, youth workers and parents have been increasingly lamenting the exodus of kids from the church once they graduate from high school and launch into the next phase of life. A growing volume of research is offering ideas on why this is happening, and solutions designed to reverse this trend. Why is it that our kids are leaving the church in droves after they grow...

We live in a marketing saturated world. When we engage with an average of 4,000 to 10,000 marketing messages a day, we become unaware of both the presence of marketing in our lives, and the power of marketing to shape our beliefs and behaviors. And for our vulnerable kids who are in the midst of growth and change, marketing is an especially powerful force. What would it look like to disciple our k...

Youth ministry has always needed to adapt and adjust to changes in the mainstream culture. With the advent of the metoo movement and our growing knowledge of the nature and extent of sexual abuse, youth workers must be thinking about how to best engage with students in ways that lead to healthy relationship building. Is it ever proper to give a student a hug? What about car rides, lunches, or havi...

Thomas Chisholm wrote the classic hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness , as a testimony to God’s enduring love. The hymn calls to mind the words of the prophet Jeremiah in Lamentations 3: "I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love...

It seems that you can’t watch the news or go online these days without encountering stories related to matters of gender and sexual identity. The conversations on these matters are progressing into unmarked territory that can leave parents and youth workers confused, and even paralyzed in terms of how to respond. In recent weeks, a new study has emerged that has opened the door for conversations a...

Summer’s over and a new youth ministry season is here. If you’re a youth worker, your youth group schedule is ramping up and you’ve no doubt been planning. . . or should be planning. . . your teaching and ministry schedule for the coming school year. So let me ask you, have you done your youth ministry planning? What goals, objectives, and priorities have guided your planning? What do you hope to...

It’s that time of year when the fall sports season is heating up, everywhere from the pre-school soccer fields to the NFL gridiron. Our sports-obsessed culture will be in full gear as we do everything from playing to spectating. If all of a Christian’s life is to be an act of worship, how can we engage in our playing, sports-parenting, and spectating to the glory of God? How do we push back on a c...

What did you learn about sex and how did you learn about it when you were growing up? Christian parents, with assistance from youth leaders and the church, are given the responsibility to bring up their children in the nurture and instruction of the Lord. This includes talking about God’s order and design for sexuality. And because we live in a hyper-sexualized world that’s providing its own narra...

Somewhere along the way, many of us came to believe that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are promised a happy and carefree life. But when you read the Scriptures, you see that to follow Jesus means that you are also called to take up your cross. For most of us, it doesn’t take long to figure out that living life in a broken and fallen world means that you will encounter suffering and hardship....

The poet John Donne once wrote that “no man is an island.” Donne was stating a basic truth about life. . . that is that human beings tend to do things not so well when we are isolated from others. We need community to thrive. That’s certainly what the Scriptures teach from Genesis to Revelation. If we’re in youth ministry, community is vital to our flourishing both personally and in ministry. Yout...

I was a twenty-one year-old college student when I first heard the term anorexia nervosa. I scratched my head for a moment, and then asked, “What’s that?” Yes, eating disorders and disordered eating were present in our culture forty years ago. But they were largely unknown and misunderstood. Today, the pressure to be thin and perfect is an ever-present part of our lives. Consequently, virtually al...

One of the most controversial and often discussed Netflix series of all time is 13 Reasons Why . When season 2 of the series was released two weeks ago, our curious kids began binge-watching, just like they did last year with the release of season 1. Because of the shows controversial content and concerns about the influence on children and teens, 13 Reasons Why has been a hot topic for discussion...

With the culture changing at breakneck speed, we need to know the culture so that we can contextualize the unchanging Good news of the Gospel in ways that can be heard by a changing world. As a result, we talk a lot about the need for relevance in our churches and youth ministries. Is it possible that our commitment to relevance can lead us to focus too much on forms, with the result that we forfe...

You can argue that if there is one band that’s been significant and enduring over the last thirty-plus years, it would be Ireland’s U2. Their story, their music, and their message has vaulted them to this place, making them one of the most beloved rock and roll bands of all time. What is it about U2 that makes them so provocative and compelling? How has the Christian faith played into the ethos of...

One way our culture has changed is the growing openness to new beliefs and behaviors related to sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender. Because we minister and parent on this changing landscape, we find ourselves engaged in all kinds of conversations with young people who express different beliefs and practices. As Christians work to be faithful to the Scriptures, we will encounter a variety of...

Research and experience point way too often to the fact that our youth ministries and churches are failing at equipping kids to leave our youth groups with a deep, significant, and lasting faith. Too many kids graduate from high school and into the next phase of life seemingly pushing the pause or stop button on their Christian faith. Consequently, they aren’t ready to faithfully navigate the diff...

As parents and youth workers, we are eager to see our kids come to faith in Christ, and to grow in maturity in Christ. Research and experience are pointing to the fact that some of the greatest strides kids make in their faith happen in the camp setting. What happens to kids when they go to a Christian camp? How has Christian camping changed over the course of the last few years? And what can pare...

When youth workers ask me about the qualities they should seek to develop in their lives and ministries, there are three that I’m always sure to mention: humility, teachability, and cooperation. Pride kills ministry. Without a determination to learn we get horribly stale. And if we aren’t working with others we forfeit the great benefits of ministering together as part of the body of Christ. How c...

Whenever Valentine’s Day rolls around our culture is prompted to think about romance, love, and sex. It’s no fluke that the latest installment in the Fifty Shades of Gray film series was released just a few days before Valentines Day. As followers of the one who created romance, love, and sex, we need to follow Christ by understanding and experiencing romance, love and sex in ways that bring honor...

We don’t like to talk about it, but we must. The spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being of our kids hangs in the balance. That’s why we need to be thinking about and strategizing for how to best push back and minister to kids in the midst of the growing epidemic of teen suicide. What are the signs? What are the myths? How can youth workers and parents intervene in a moment of crisis? Join u...

Over the course of Walt Mueller's years of youth ministry, he's developed some wonderful friendships with a variety of youth ministry peers. Some of the most significant relationships have resulted in sometimes fun, sometimes serious, and always profitable conversation about their personal lives and ministry matters. They don't always agree, but they always work to sharpen one another. All of us n...

One of the biggest mistakes we make in youth ministry is assuming that we are the ones primarily responsible for the spiritual nurture of teenagers. A second and related mistake is making the assumption that as youth workers, we can actually do a better job of nurturing kids than their clueless parents. Sure, parents might sometimes be not well-equipped to nurture their children in the faith, but...

Prayer is essential to the Christian life. As followers of Jesus, we must make the same request as one of His early disciples: Lord, teach us to pray. Once we learn how to pray, what should we be praying for? In today's incredibly confusing world, one of our primary prayers subjects must be our children and teens. What would happen if as individuals and churches we would begin to engage in daily p...