Controlled Chaos was a book I read right before I became the jr hi youth pastor at New Covenant Bible Church in 2002. I’ve been wanting to go back and read it again and mark it up with my comments, questions, and ideas. Well now I’ve done that and I’m glad I did. Kurt Johnston is the author of this book and the Jr hi Youth Pastor at Saddleback Church. He writes in a way that is easy to digest and easy to see applications to use in a jr hi youth ministry. A lot of the material I read has been happening in our ministry. But there are two ideas that I would like to use in IMPACT (the jr hi ministry here at NCBC).
One – is to be more creative. I certainly don’t have a lot of originally creative ideas (I’m more of a scavenger of ideas). But I do think that our ministry can be very creative if we choose to use one of our greatest creative resource we have – the jr highers. The youth themselves come up with some great ideas and I believe we can and should give them ownership of the ministry by letting them be creative in it.
Two – As I said before I usually scavenge a lot of stuff we use for the ministry here. One of the challenges from the book to me was to try something original. So one of the messages I will be teaching this spring or summer will be totally from God working through me and the studies I have had in His Word. If it goes well I can only give God the glory if it doesn’t than I can apply the “once” principle.
If you are a youth pastor, a middle/jr hi youth pastor, or someone who works with a youth pastor you should read this book. It will give you insight, challenge you, and encourage you as you work with jr hi youth.
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1 comment:
Gave it for my interns to read this summer. the one that finished it, really liked it. Yes, it is a very good practical read.
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