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Tag Archives: Community Building

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It’s Easier To Reach Rising 9th Grade Students Now Rather Than Later!

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Once they start school in the fall and get involved in all kind of school activities, it will be much harder to reach those rising 9th grade students. Here are 5 things you can do to reach out to the rising 9th grade students at your parish: 1. Visit them in Edge or their current [...]

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Community or Bust!

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10 years ago today, we signed the papers to purchase Life Teen Camp Covecrest in Tiger, GA. I can still remember the excited feeling of our owning a camp, and the sinking feeling of hoping that our obedience to God to purchase the camp wouldn’t lead to a huge dose of humility if it didn’t [...]

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The Catholic Youth Leaders Top 10 Christmas Songs

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You can’t go anywhere these days without catching some Christmas music. Radio stations, stores and even airplanes are playing Christmas music. So keeping in the spirit of Christmas, I have compiled the ultimate top 10 list of music that Catholic youth leaders are reflecting on this year. 1.) Little Drummer Boy – For that teen [...]

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Parishnormal Activity

Is there Parishnormal Activity happening surrounding youth ministry at your parish? – do the Knights of Columbus accuse the teens of taking all their left over ketchup packets from last year’s Parish picnic? – is the key to the closet in the Parish Hall now attached to a Hockey stick because you as youth leader [...]

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Have You Talked to Gladys?

Ever feel like you don’t know where to start? Youth ministry at your parish needs a boost, or maybe you are getting ready to kick off youth ministry and you don’t know the first step? Well – Have you talked to Gladys? You know her – the lady who organizes the rosary prayer group at [...]

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The Multiple Levels of Face Recognition

Ok, I’ll admit it, I am a fan of technology and how it can impact youth ministry. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have all recently introduced more and more advanced face recognition technologies that have the potential to revolutionize the web once again. The way it works is that through now common digital photos, the [...]

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What (Teens) Want

One of my favorite blog writer’s is Seth Godin. Seth inspires me to always think out of the box. He recently wrote a blog entitled “What (People) Want”. I couldn’t help but notice how it applied not only to adults but to the teens we serve. So here is my reframing and tweaks to Seth’s [...]

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The Case for Unassuming Youth Ministry

The most effective parish youth ministries maintain what I call an “unassuming youth ministry” stance. This means that they know they need to re-earn attention, re-earn loyalty, and reconnect with teens and parents as if every day is the first day they started the ministry at the parish. Signs that We Have an Assuming Youth [...]

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Talking With > Talking About

I believe that who we talk about is a big indication of where our hearts are. If we spend a lot of time talking about God that normally means are hearts are alive for Him. If we talk about our families, it is a sign that family matters to us, even if it is messy [...]

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How to Rock the Parish Bulletin

I visit a lot of parishes in the course of a year and I usually will pick up a parish bulletin to see what is happening. Since my passion squarely is with parish youth ministry, I always look at how the youth leader communicates with the community via the bulletin. First of all, let me [...]