resources for effective youth ministry
 

Team-Up!

    Just as we looked at resources for parenting in "About the Children's Department", we will also look at resources for parenting teens in this edition.  It would be so amazing if we as churches could commit to building and strengthening the families in our church so they are stronger and healthier as we go into the new millennium.  Yes, it is a job that takes time, but there are few things worth more of our time, prayers and work both as parents and as churches.  In each issue of ATYD in the coming year we will look at resources to help parents pass on their faith to their teens.  In this issue we will look at three excellent resources.

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    Just as we think we are finally getting the "hang" of parenting, we learn that parenting teens is so totally different from parenting younger children.  There can be many wonderful aspects about parenting teens, but it can also be tremendously frustrating.  When we have to deal with teen attitudes and anger we often feel like failures as parents.  This book by Dennis and Barbara Rainey is one of the best resources for practical information that really works!

    favorite features:

• excellent, genuinely helpful information that will really work
• Biblically sound advice
• teaches about the top 14 "traps" our teens face and how to guide them through these traps
• peer pressure
• sex, part 1 and part 2
• dating
• attitudes
• media
• unresolved anger
• appearance
• deceit
• substance abuse
• busyness
• the tongue
• mediocrity
• pornography
• false gods


• seven priorities for the effective parent
• prayer
• standards
• involvement
• training
• community
• direction
• perseverance


• each chapter on a "trap" provides:
• information to help you determine your convictions related to that trap
• information to help you shape your child's convictions
• information to help you test your child's convictions
• helpful information for the single parent
• active teaching idea to help you teach that truth to your kids
• conviction building plan to help "you move from just thinking about how to help your teen to face challenges and form convictions to actually implementing ideas and solutions
• appendix A - helpful information on puberty
• appendix B - resource list

    There are many excellent resources to help parents learn to parent better and more effectively, but this has to be one of the best!  I am so thankful that the Raineys chose to be so open and transparent about their own parenting journey - it is so encouraging to see that having a "perfect" family is not the goal - that is unattainable - rather the goal is to raise children who want to love and glorify God by guiding them through the "traps" that would destroy their lives.  This book is one every parent needs to read and then keep handy for reference throughout the teen years.  Extremely well done Dennis, Barbara, Bruce and Thomas Nelson!

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Table of Contents

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About The Youth Department - Volume 1, Edition 3
Copyright © Lynda Freeman
Last Updated Dec. 12, 1998
Web Page by Lynda Freeman

Send an e-mail to Lynda at dfreemansr@earthlink.net