Equipped To Help Teens

Ellen says...
This is a valuable resource for any youth worker - professional or volunteer - as they minister to students and families. The comprehensive guide includes great conversation starters and extensive resource listings - excellent for equipping you to engage teens in their hurt and questions.


About the resource...

Quick Reference Guide to Counselling Teenagers
Chap Clark and Dr. Tim Clinton
Paperback • Baker Publishing Group • 9780801072352

Youth culture changes rapidly, so those in the position to counsel and advise teens often find themselves ill-informed and ill-prepared to deal with the issues that youth routinely encounter today. The Quick-Reference Guide to Counseling Teenagers provides answers. This guide for pastors, counselors, youth workers, and parents addresses 40 topics addressed including: culture and media influence sexuality stress drugs and alcohol parent-adolescent relationships

An excerpt... 

Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson observed that the “identity crisis” of adolescence is the most significant conflict a person faces throughout life. During these crucial years, young people have to answer the question, Who am I? For many, the question seems overwhelming. The pressures of peers, the new drives of emerging hormones, and the expanding opportunities to experiment with behaviors can combine to create a perfect storm of temptation and self-doubt. Some seek help from mature adults, and many find forgiveness and direction in life through Christ, but some teens try to cope by resorting to self-destructive behaviors.

In today’s world of adolescence, cutting, dusting, choking, and salvia don’t refer to cutting vegetables, cleaning your house, or choking on a burger. These terms refer to practices that are more serious—much more serious. Five years ago you wouldn’t have heard these words used with the meanings that are now common in youth culture vernacular. They reveal how desperate for healing many of our youth are. Cutting refers to cutting oneself in a desperate attempt to relieve internal pain and depression. Dust Off is an aerosol computer keyboard cleaner that contains compressed gas and can be used to get high. Choking oneself can cause a euphoric state. And salvia is a hallucinogenic herb that is banned in eight states and is more powerful than and considered to be the next marijuana. These new fads among teens are leading to many deaths.

Teens are crying out for connection and looking anywhere to find it. “Rave” parties—large-scale gatherings with fast, electronic music and free-form crowd dancing, often coupled with the use of illegal drugs—have taken the place of family night at home. Sexual morality is as broad and relative a term as ever, reckless relationships abound, and parents have never before been so uninvolved or unsure about what to do. Ministering to teens has never been more difficult.

More free resources:
Full excerpt of the book in pdf form

Born and raised on Vancouver Island, Ellen Graf-Martin now lives in the heart of Ontario’s Mennonite country with her husband Dan, where she continues to work in publishing and ministry.Learn more about her work at www.grafmartin.com

Are You Stuck?

Ellen says...

After going through Stuck with a small group of women, I can say wholeheartedly that I LOVE this study! This is the freshest curriculum for young adult women that I've ever seen - and it is quality material. Short, high-impact DVD sessions and achievable weekly 'homework', and a really affordable curriculum - this is a winner. From Ellen's Picks

About the resource...

Stuck by Jennie Allen
Bible Study, DVD Curriculum • Thomas Nelson • 9781418548735

We are often so stuck in invisible struggles in our hearts and minds, we barely have space for God. These deep struggles, these stuck places, are familiar to every one of us: brokenness, anger, discontentment, fear, and sadness. Stuck takes on these struggles within us so that we can encounter God. Because until we recognize that we are stuck and in need of God, we will miss what He has for us. Jennie Allen's fresh DVD-driven Bible studies are designed to draw women close to God and to each other. These shorter studies dig deep quickly, creating experiential conversations and allowing women to wrestle with Scripture in a deep and authentic way throughout the week.

Jennie Allen's Bible studies are designed to draw women close to God and to each other. These shorter studies dig deep quickly, creating experiential conversations and allowing women to wrestle with Scripture in a deep and authentic way throughout the week.

8 sessions on DVD + Study Guide, Leaders' Guide and "Conversation Cards" 

An excerpt... 

This study began for me out of a deep struggle—a stuck place. It would serve better to call it something a tad more dramatic . . . it was a war. The kind of war that happens inside of you, the kind that nobody sees. God versus me and all my junk. It wasn’t something I could even put words to at the time. In fact, those close to me were oblivious to the chaos ensuing behind my gathered exterior.

But it was real and raging, and even though I couldn’t describe it, I was keenly aware of its presence and was exhausted by it.

I was stuck.
I experienced a sense of bondage I could not name and did not know how to escape. The outside of my life was bright and shiny, but inside I was a mess: anxious, lonely, afraid, and looking for significance.

This study exists because I know I am not alone in this. The more I am let into the deep crevasses of people’s hearts, the more I am convinced that every one of us is fighting something. Yet we look out from our secret wars and see people who smile peacefully and seem to be all right—and we smile back at them.

I’m done smiling.
Many of us have known God for a long time—and honestly, we know a lot—but are we living what we believe? For some, this may be your first encounter with Him. Wherever you are, I ask and pray that you be honest. Pretense and pretending have never really been God’s thing. Not much tolerance for it. So my prayer is this study will be a safe place to explore God and your own heart. The state of our hearts and what we believe about God are the two most important things about us.

Excerpt from STUCK by Jennie Allen. Copyright ©2011 by Jennie Allen. Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Used with Permission.  All Rights Reserved

More free resources:
Author Website
Church Resources

Publisher Website
Official Study Website
Another Video

Born and raised on Vancouver Island, Ellen Graf-Martin now lives in the heart of Ontario’s Mennonite country with her husband Dan, where she continues to work in publishing and ministry. Learn more about her work at www.grafmartin.com

I Am Second

 Ellen says... 

"I Am Second" is the honest, raw, and often painful journey of broken people who have decided that life is not about them. This highly compelling collection of testimonies of those who have hit bottom and found God there would be excellent study material for older youth & young adults.

About the book...

A major league baseball player. A pastor. A reality TV star. A single mom. A multi-platinum rocker. What do these people have in common? They’ve all hit bottom. And none of them stayed there.
These are the stories of real people who reached the end of their strength, the end of their control, and found the most surprising truths. It taught them not to rely on self or substance but to lean on the only completely reliable source of love, hope, and freedom: the God who created them. 

Shocking in their honesty, inspiring in their courage, these testimonies are critical reminders that no one is too far from God to find him.

An excerpt...

…becoming Second isn’t the journey of perfected saints or of superhero believers. It is the honest, raw and often painful journey of broken people who have decided that life is not about them. It is not about what they want or about what they can do. Some have tried money, others pleasure, success, beauty, family, or religion. They all tried something to calm the ache in their soul, to find purpose, love, or happiness. But whatever they tried and whatever they were looking for, they only found it when they surrendered and said, “I am Second.”

Second is a simple concept. It summarizes all that Jesus taught, all that he lived, and all that he expects from those that claim his name. God is first and others are before ourselves. That is the motto and manifesto that “Seconds” live by.

It brings no guarantee to health or wealth and it makes to promise to take away troubles and trials. Some may describe the rewards of such a life as less tangible. But a smile on your face when the lights go out and a peace in your heart when the storm rages is much more real than any dollar bill or any quick pleasure.

In the following pages, you will see the full gambit of life. Falling in love and facing divorce, healing and sickness, rich and poor. But in every one of these stories, the lesson is the same. Second is the only way to find love, peace, joy, contentment, or whatever else you are looking for. It is the only way to find a life worth living. These are the stories of those that have found this to be true.

More of the book can be read online here for free  

Excerpt from I AM SECOND by Doug Bender and Dave Sterrett. Copyright ©2012 e3 Partners Ministry. Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Used with Permission.  All Rights Reserved

*curriculum coming Fall 2012


More free resources at the website: www.iamsecond.com

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Born and raised on Vancouver Island, Ellen Graf-Martin now lives in the heart of Ontario’s Mennonite country with her husband Dan, where she continues to work in publishing and ministry. Learn more about her work at www.grafmartin.com

Youth Ministry FAIL

Youth Ministries have failed our youth and families for too long. We have focused on only two areas of youth development:

- physical

- spiritual

We know how to watch out for the physical changes that youth go through and we even help parents and youth through this process as best we can with the relevant information. We also help students and their families with the spiritual development from acceptance to asking tough questions as a normal development of youth from jr. high through high school and college. Where we have failed in youth ministry is that we have stopped right there.

Youth are very complicated beings yet when it comes to any other development and their stages we ignore them.

What about emotional, social and brain development? Do you take any of these aspects into account when you lay down the various forms of your programming or teachings or Bible studies?

Tomorrow from 9am - 1pm (est) a few of us will be attending One.Day Underestimated for youth workers. This event is being held in Toronto and will focus on the four key "Ages and Stages" of youth development. Jr. High and High School facilitation track where youth workers can share their ideas, thoughts, failures and success's based on the 4 stages of youth development.

$10 youth ministry training that you can miss if you can join us live.

Follow the conversation online

Twitter: #ODU
Live Blogging: thinkyouthministry.com

Jeff Smyth is husband to Heather and father of one active boy Nathan. He has been involved youth ministry for 15 years in both the local church and non-profit areas of Canada. He has been serving for the past 3 years as the coordinator of community initiatives with DOXAToronto.com the Scarborough area of Youth Unlimited (Toronto YFC). Learn more about him by visiting his blog ThinkYouthMinistry.com or follow him @jeffsmyth