Ode to Joy: The Adolescent Experience of Joy as Arousal
Searching for Joy: A “Tangled Portrait”
Adolescent Joy and Christian Worship
Spiritual Awakening: Joy and Depression A Unified Pathway
Opportunities and Obstacles for Joy During Adolescence
Rejoicing in Adolescence: A Parable of God
An Open Letter to Youth Ministers – Eric D. Barreto
DRAFT—Please do not circulate without author’s permission.
Dear Colleagues in Ministry,
We have a problem. This problem has a public face. This problem becomes evident when we reject refugees fleeing from horrors we can barely imagine, when fellow Christians look at these neighbors with fear and a mindset of scarcity. This problem becomes evident when we worry that letting “them” into this country will mean there won’t be enough for “us.” This problem becomes evident when we note the disproportionate ways people of color encounter the police and justice system, when too many Christians simply refuse to believe the witness of our […]
An Open Letter to Youth Ministers – Amanda Mbuvi
DRAFT—Please do not circulate without author’s permission.
Dear Youth Ministers,
My daughter has taken up acro gymnastics, a sport in which a pair or small group perform routines together. The effectiveness of the routine depends on how well the members of the group come together as one, bringing their different roles into perfect harmony. For girls, uniform requirements extend to having the same hairstyle, and of course the same outfit. At the upper levels, they wear elaborately decorated leotard dresses similar those worn by figure skaters, the kind that give the illusion of showing more skin than they actually do. Or at […]
An Open Letter to Youth Ministers – Matthew Croasmun
DRAFT—Please do not circulate without author’s permission.
Rejoicing in the Lord Always and the Modern Duty to Be Happy
Matthew Croasmun
Yale Center for Faith & Culture
Each semester, I have the privilege of discerning the shape of the good life with fifteen or so 18-22 year-olds. We gather twice or three times a week to try to catch a glimpse of what is most central in our lives but at the same time so elusive: the nature and character of flourishing life—the life most worth living for ourselves, our communities, and our world. We ask questions like: How should we live? What […]
An Open Letter to Youth Ministers – Michal Beth Dinkler
DRAFT—Please do not circulate without author’s permission.
Dear Youth Ministers,
We love stories. We tell them, we read them, we watch them on television and in the theaters. Toddlers demand that the same story be read over and over again before bed. As we grow, we tell the same stories over and over again in our heads about ourselves, about others, about life. And as everyone who works with teenagers knows, those stories take on a special kind of self-conscious intensity during adolescence. Who am I? Who do my parents say that I am? How do my friends see me? Why am […]
An Open Letter to Youth Ministers – Allen Hilton
DRAFT—Please do not circulate without author’s permission.
Dear Amazing Youth Leader:
Thank you for all you are doing to form young lives in Christ! I hope my little letter will be useful as you continue your ministry. I’m asking, “Where does flourish lie?” and to search out an answer, I begin with a story.
A high school girl I knew had just gotten that prized invitation to the “in” girls’ table for lunch. Our sophomore friend (shall we call her Lydia?) couldn’t believe her good fortune, but nerves were nibbling at her as the bell ended fourth period and noon arrived. She collected […]
Trusting God in Anxious Times
