I served as Editor for the Youthfront Book Shorts Series published by Barefoot Publications. The title I'm featuring today is Leslie Snyder's No Easy Answers: The Shared Role of Parents and the Church in the Spiritual Formation of Teens.
I first met Leslie Snyder in Seminary. I quickly labeled her as the fanatical advocate for parents who have kids in youth ministry. This turned out to be an accurate label. Leslie is passionate and deeply committed to help parents in our churches be more involved in the Christian Formation of their children.
Leslie eats, drinks, sleeps and dreams about ways to serve parents of young people. She insists that youth workers must be more aware of the family context of the young people they minister to. Leslie’s voice joins the growing chorus of voices articulating the importance of Christian Formation of young people needing the involvement of the entire church community. She describes ways that youth workers can become guides, facilitators, pastors and leaders for the movement toward creating a broader faith community engaged in passing the faith onto our emerging generations. For Leslie, investing in parents of teenagers is an essential aspect of nurturing a more holistic faith community for our youth to be spiritually developed.
Leslie gives youth workers practical ideas for helping parents of the youth you minister to and how this will broaden you ability to disciple them. One of the biggest challenges we face in the church today is to help our churches really live for and love Jesus, and for our congregations to be deeply committed to Christian formation. It’s no wonder our young people don’t take their faith serious when they haven’t seen this modeled by the adults in our churches. Leslie makes the case that we have to look at his issue holistically and in doing so we can make a difference.
*The cool thing about this book short series is the fact that they are downloadable and can be reproduced by youth workers to engage in conversation with their volunteer staff for the purpose of training and shaping the ethos of the youth ministry of a church.
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