Rebuilding Youth Ministry


Book Description

Christopher Wesley is on the front lines of youth ministry. He’s been in the parish trenches, refocusing an unpopular youth program and making it one where teens feel connected, stay involved, and grow in faith. In Rebuilding Youth Ministry, Wesley offers ten indispensable strategies to help you make your youth programs just as successful. Wesley coaches fellow Catholic ministry leaders on how to overcome common hurdles of ministering to young people. Wesley shares how he faced feelings of complacency, underestimated youth, and entertained rather than ministered in his own parish. Wesley built a distinctive program based on small group faith formation and sustained it with the assistance of more than sixty volunteer adult mentors. Wesley lays out ten strategies that helped grow participation in his high school program from nine teens to ninety and the middle school program from forty teens to eighty-five, including: Making your youth program about more than pizza; Pursuing authentic relationships between small groups and mentors; Shaping a dynamic youth ministry team; and Creating a space that’s welcoming to teens.




Rebuilt


Book Description

Drawing on the wisdom gleaned from thriving mega-churches and innovative business leaders while anchoring their vision in the Eucharistic center of Catholic faith, Fr. Michael White and lay associate Tom Corcoran present the compelling and inspiring story to how they brought their parish back to life. Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making Church Matter is a story of stopping everything and changing focus. When their parish reached a breaking point, White and Corcoran asked themselves how they could make the Church matter to Catholics, and they realized the answer was at the heart of the Gospel. Their faithful response not only tripled their weekend mass attendance, but also yielded increased giving, flourishing ministries, and a vibrant, solidly Catholic spiritual revival. White and Corcoran invite all Catholic leaders to share the vision, borrow their strategies, and rebuild their own parishes. They offer a wealth of guidance for anyone with the courage to hear them.




Toward a Prophetic Youth Ministry


Book Description

Fernando Arzola Jr. addresses the gap in the literature of youth ministry resources conceived and realized in an urban setting. He brings together three dominant paradigms--traditional, liberal and activist--to create an approach that is informed by Scripture and the contemporary realities of adolescent development in an urban setting.




Rebuilding the Family Altar


Book Description

Families are in crisis, and as a result, so is society. The number of children who are leaving the church and completely walking away from the faith is alarming. All of this is part of a deeper issuefamilies have stopped worshiping together at home. Dr. Clint Ritchie examines the change in family worship in Rebuilding the Family Altar and challenges parents to accept their God-given role as the leader in the spiritual development of their children. Ritchie provides a biblical foundation for the family altar, examines key elements of family worship, and offers fifty-two family worship devotionals. Rebuilding the Family Altar stresses the need for parents to include more than church attendance in their childrens spiritual journey. This resource strives to bring the church and parents together to revive family worship. With the precision of a surgeons scalpel, Dr. Ritchie dissects the cause of todays family struggles. With clarity he goes step by step in diagnosing the issues and along with it, offers solid biblical examples of how to move forward to be the family that God desires and to aid parents, even includes a years Bible study. This book, with Gods guidance, will convict parents and create a new, sold-out generation for His glory. Rev. John Yates, John Yates Ministry, LLC




ChurchMoney


Book Description

There is a secret formula to help convince parishioners to give financially to your church. It’s pretty simple: Just ask them. And when you do, make sure it’s not about the money. In ChurchMoney, Rev. Michael White and Tom Corcoran—award-winning authors of the bestselling book Rebuilt—will help you learn the basic skills you need to discover that true success in raising funds comes from the incredibly freeing approach that connects giving to discipleship. The two share stories of success and failure during their twenty years leading the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland. They tell you what they learned to meet the real financial challenges of their mission. And they offer the practical wisdom and inspiration you need to tackle the thorny matter of raising money in your Catholic parish. So if giving isn’t about the money, what is it about? Giving is about: loving God and serving him; loving others and helping them fall in love with their Savior; transforming the world little by little through love; and the eternal impact we can and need to make with money. White and Corcoran contend that giving actually glorifies God and attracts others to the Church. Over and over again in scripture, they point out, you’ll find the same, simple point: Giving gladly serves as a key ingredient to the Church’s growth from its very beginning. White and Corcoran share the lessons, facts, habits, and great ideas they’ve implemented from some of the most successful and vibrant churches in the United States. ChurchMoney offers a proven plan for raising money in parishes. It’s readily adaptable, firmly rooted in the reality of leading a Catholic parish, based on the Bible, and finessed with the best advice of communication professionals. You will read stories of embarrassing failure and exhilarating success in tripling a budget and running three extraordinarily successful capital campaigns over a ten-year period including a recent campaign leading to the construction of $16 million sanctuary built debt-free. White and Corcoran have increased staff fourfold and significantly raised salaries and increased staff benefits while expanding mission outreach both locally and internationally.




In Search of Paul


Book Description

Stand on the shoulders of giants!Have you ever wished you could have a mentor like the Apostle Paul—someone trustworthy to guide your spiritual development and ministry? Tony Cooke, author, teacher, and student of church history, has assembled a panel of the greatest Christian spiritual leaders of all time, curating a profound, yet...




Art of Forming Young Disciples, The


Book Description

Not long ago, veteran Youth Minister Everett Fritz counted the number of his former Youth Group members who were still practicing the Faith. The result? Almost all of themhad left the Faith! Fritz learned that otherparishes reported similar staggering losses, pointing to a grim truth: today’s Youth Ministries simply do not form young people into lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. Not satisfied with these dismal results, Fritz devised a different way of forming young people in the Faith. It’s an approach that can truly transform the spiritual lives of young people by applying the same one-to-one personal method that Jesus Himself used to form his twelve original disciples . . . only one of whom was lost! Fritz has worked with countless parishes, helping them make the shift to a small-group discipleship structure. You’ll learn to avoid the many pitfalls and common mistakes parishes make, as well as ways you can easily build the volunteer base needed for a successful transition. He will help you create a comfortable environment that leads young people into self-reflection, as well as the critical role parents and the parish community play in youth formation. Finally, Fritz shares various resources that can help you accomplish your goal. But he warns: you’re not running a program that has been pre-developed. Relationships and mentoring make disciples; programs do not. If you’re troubled by the number of young people in your parish who leave the Faith year after year, then open these illuminating pages and learn the art of forming young disciples.




Broken Walls


Book Description




Rebuilding Catholic Culture


Book Description

Rarely does a book come along that so succinctly explains the decline of modern culture, articulates a defense of the Church's teachings, and offers a hope-filled path for building a civilization grounded in Catholic truth. In these pages, Dr. Ryan Topping does all three, pulling back the curtain on the false philosophies of the secularists and showing that in the West today the most formidable threat to freedom is not failing economies or Islam, but secularism. Our best defense, he claims, is a vibrant Catholic culture, and our best hope for creating it lies in the principles found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In Rebuilding Catholic Culture, you'll discover sensible ways to begin restoring Catholic culture - right now-in your own life and family, and in our larger communities as well: in the theater, in the classroom, in our hospitals, and even in the public square. This profoundly accessible book will renew your confidence in the world-transforming character of our Creed and in the potency of our Faith to shape and redefine the culture of the West. Book jacket.




Unleashing God's Word in Youth Ministry


Book Description

Whether Bible studies are a regular part of your ministry, or you’re thinking about how to bring Bible study into your ministry in a more significant way, chances are that you want to help your students enter into God’s word in a way that challenges them and changes their lives. That’s a goal worth working towards...but sometimes you will feel like it’s a goal that you may never reach. Unleashing God’s Word in Youth Ministry is designed to help you develop a Bible study approach that engages students on a deeper level—even if you’re an avid curriculum user or someone who creates all your own discipleship materials from scratch. As you devour the wisdom Barry Shafer brings from decades of student ministry and engage in your own study of God’s Word, you’ll discover that Bible study for your students can be taken to a whole new level. In the pages of this book you’ll:·Get beyond the typical Bible discussions and learn to confidently engage students in an in-depth search of God’s Word·Teach teens how to study the Bible on their own·Be invigorated in your own personal interaction with the Bible·Gain confidence and competence in leading teens deeper in Bible studies, and much more! If you want to take your students deeper into the Bible, discover what it takes to unleash God’s Word in your own ministry and watch your students and youth ministry be transformed.