Before you Hire a Youth Pastor: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Fit. By Mark DeVries and Jeff Dunn-Ranking. Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2011. 124 pp. $7.99. The search for a youth pastor can be a tedious one. While many churches have a plan in place for replacing their departing youth pastor, often times,…
Why did you write Family-Based Youth Ministry? Tell us about the process by which this book came into existence. So many youth workers, including myself, were heartbroken over the disconnect between kids who participated in youth group and those who continued to live out their faith for a lifetime. It set me on a search…
I first read Family-Based Youth Ministry by Mark DeVries when I was just a couple of years into ministry. As a 20-year-old student pastor, that book shaped my thinking in crucial ways. In those early days, I was well-intentioned, but I had in my immaturity developed a subtle bias against parents. I saw the problems…
In this article I will argue that Jesus has given believers a “key” that promises to help them glorify God in their families. It is a priority that is plainly spoken, but one that is easily missed when well-meaning Christians sinfully put their family above God. Though this “key” may at first seem to be…
Higher education, while never a completely stagnate field, is experiencing what has been called a ‘flurry’ of changes in recent years, driven mainly by technology.[1] The technology of inexpensive computers, high speed internet, and high quality multimedia educational delivery systems have allowed for increased flexibility in higher education so that students can easily take courses…
Expectations are always high when it comes to short-term mission experiences. After all, the sometimes multi-year process of identifying where to go, who will go, and how they will get there usually comes to an exhausting, but successful conclusion, complete with video clips and jet-lagged participants. The reentry from the trip commonly brings with…
A series of recent and ongoing research studies are exploring the nature and extent of intellectual and ethical maturation among pre-ministry evangelical undergraduates at varying institutional types. This line of research represents the most in-depth analysis ever conducted among this population with regard to epistemological development—i.e., students’ maturity in their ways of thinking, reasoning, and…
Many contemporaries have a deep-seated suspicion of catechisms. In our own Baptist denomination, many would consider the words “Baptist catechism” as mutually exclusive. A popular misconception is that catechisms are used in times and places where inadequate views of conversion predominate or the fires of evangelism have long since turned to white ash. If the…
My first response was to reject family ministry as an utterly ridiculous and impractical idea in my context. It took two years for the struggles of ministry and the work of the Spirit to change my mind. “I Don’t See Any Way That This Could Work Here” In 2002, I was called to oversee children’s…
Why should we study people from the past, especially the distant past? Why not merely focus on current issues that the church faces, for after all, what do people from a previous era have to teach us today? Two responses can be given to these questions, one from Scripture and the second from experience. First,…
Michael A. G. Haykin is is Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also Adjunct Professor of Church History and Spirituality at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Ontario, Canada. Dr. Haykin is the author of many books, including “At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word”: Andrew Fuller As…
Shawn D. Wright is the Associate Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also earned his PhD in Church History. Dr. Wright is the author of numerous articles and of Theodore Beza: The Man and the Myth (Christian Focus, 2015). In addition to his responsibilities at Southern Seminary, he is…
Lee Gatiss is the Director of Church Society, an Anglican Evangelical ministry based in the United Kingdom, and Lecturer in Church History at Union School of Theology. He has studied history and theology at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and trained for ministry at Oak Hill Theological College in London. Having served churches…
Tim Cooper is Associate Professor of Church History in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He earned his PhD from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He is the author of John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (Ashgate, 2011) and Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century…
Russell T. Fuller is Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He earned his PhD in the Old Testament from Hebrew Union University. Dr. Fuller is the author of numerous articles and An Invitation to Biblical Hebrew (Kregel, 2006) and the forthcoming An Invitation to Biblical Hebrew Syntax: An Intermediate Grammar…
Herman J. Selderhuis is professor of Church History at the Theological University Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and director of Refo500, the international platform on projects related to the 16th Century. He wrote his PhD on “Marriage and Divorce in the Thought of Martin Bucer” (1997) and is the author and editor of several books, including…
