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Global Youth Ministry
By Terry Linhart, David Livermore
Zondervan/Youth Specialties; 256 pages; hardcover
Authors Terry Linhart and David Livermore offer a truckload of practical advice in their new book, Global Youth Ministry: Reaching Adolescents Around the World. And though it was written as a textbook for students of youth ministry, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and enjoyable it was to read. I was also surprised by how meaningful the content was to me as a youth worker in the Midwest.
Youth ministry leaders from all over the world contributed to the book, each with his or her own unique story to tell. The different cultures represented—from Africa, Great Britain, Latin America, Croatia, the Philippines, Japan and Korea, for example—all offered many differences, but also many similarities to what we experience in North American youth ministry. This book, in fact, was one of the most insightful reads into the world of student ministry that I’ve ever read.
I really appreciate the fact that the authors didn’t settle for what I’d call the “cheap investment”—churches that have youth ministry departments as another program offering an easy way to separate those “troublesome teenagers” from the rest of the congregation.
For far too long the church, in general, has separated the generations, and this book challenges that trend. The high calling throughout the text is reconciliation of the generations in the church.
I appreciate the importance of questions raised by the authors. For instance: “How do we show respect to youth, and how do we minister to them wherever we are?” And, maybe even more important, as posed in the book’s foreword: “What can we learn from one another as we show respect toward and minister to, with, and through youth?”
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Reviewed by: Shawn Michael Shoup, NextGen representative for the Gateway District