Bob Rice provides a picture of how youth ministry can follow God’s ways of ministering to us.
The USCCB document, Renewing the Vision, listed eight necessary components of youth ministry: advocacy, catechesis, community life, evangelization, justice and service, leadership development, pastoral care, and prayer and worship. But many don’t understand how they should connect with each other.
So how can we describe the organic connection that should exist between these components of youth ministry? Jesus told us, ‘The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown becomes the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches’ (Matthew 13:31-32). So let me build on that parable to show how the components of youth ministry can work together.
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