Everyone wants to love and to be loved—they are the echoes that still reverberate in us from the Creator. But for whatever reason, it seems like it is getting more and more difficult to find and keep love. Some think it’s because we hardly talk anymore. With the advent of texting, twittering and Facebooking, it seems we’ve lost the art of holding in-depth, substantive conversations essential for long-term, loving relationships. Instead we have become masters of the pithy, witty, short blurb—the communication of a throwaway world. We throw away everything in our culture—even the things that should never be thrown away, things that are designed to last for a lifetime—like marriages.

Faith shaping in the lives of an adolescent is, among other essentials, fundamentally about two key factors: Helping a young person along the path of discovering her identity, and helping her realize her calling in life.

My heart cringes when I hear about a 13-year-old going to the emergency room ready to deliver, her arms full of stuffed animals. I’m at wits end figuring out what to say to a former youth group member with three babies from three different fathers, the third with no job or concern that she’s still married to father number two.

I am hearing a wonderful amount of chatter around ’story’ and the art of storytelling in youth ministry. What I am thinking more about these days, however, isn’t our ability to craft good stories and tell them well. What I have been absorbed by lately is what is commonly referred to by some as narrative intelligence, which is the ability and capacity to think in story.

Sean: Since we’ve started our “Sparks” discussions, Tony, I’ve wondered how our views on the Bible compare. We’ve both expressed concerns about the lack of biblical knowledge today among youth, but I can’t help but wonder, Is it for the same reason?

I’m concerned about the lack of biblical knowledge among young people, because I believe an accurate understanding of the character and nature of God is critical for spiritual formation. This is why I often wonder, Can true health in the church take place apart from accurately handling the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15)? This is why much of my concern about new movements in the church revolves around the de-emphasis on the authority of Scripture.

Students see school as one of the most important facets of their lives. For the most part, the relationships and interactions at school are the ones they attend to the most.

I see four primary threads of thinking regarding youth ministry these days, and I believe understanding these threads of thinking can help us better understand one another as the youth ministry conversation begins to flatten.

[For more about the “flattening” of youth ministry, see the January/February 2008 “Re-Culturing Youth Ministry” column.]

The senior leadership of Young Life recently published an eight-page document entitled, “Non-Negotiables of Young Life’s Gospel Proclamation,” in order, it says, to “provide a foundation on which [staff] creativity can be expressed.”

The world of youth ministry is flattening.

By flattening I mean that youth ministry is leveling out.  I’m not speaking about ways that for-profit and non-profit organizations may be changing, whether they’re old or new.

One of the most difficult currents of Christian faith that we must navigate is the relationship between the Law and the Gospel. As with so many other things, we tend to err on one side or the other.