Quotes About Youth

That boy is talented. You don't develop those gifts in houses or in schools.

Didn't young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.

When I can look Life in the eyes, Grown calm and very coldly wise, Life will have given me the Truth, And taken in exchange — my youth.

Wisdom When I have ceased to break my wings Against the faultiness of things, And learned that compromises wait Behind each hardly opened gate, When I can look Life in the eyes, Grown calm and very coldly wise, Life will have given me the Truth, And taken in exchange -- my youth.

A Boy Out of the noise of tired people working, Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead, His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing, Clean boyish beauty and high-held head. Eyes that told secrets, lips that would not tell them, Fearless and shy the young unwearied eyes-- Men die by millions now, because God blunders, Yet to have made this boy he must be wise.

Those who love the most Do not talk of their love, Francesca, Guenevere, Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise In the fragrant gardens of heaven Are silent, or speak, if at all, Of fragile, inconsequent things. And a woman I used to know Who loved one man from her youth, Against the strength of the fates Fighting in lonely pride, Never spoke of this thing But hearing his name by chance, A light would pass over her face.

The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, I met their eyes and found them mild— Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder, And for them am I too a child?

When engaging youth with the Bible-as-story, we must be wary of our impulse to "clarify" what's happening in a given narrative, to explain "what John is getting at" or "what Matthew is trying to say" or "what Paul really means here."13 I've been guilty of this more times than I care to admit, and I'm not alone.

In my estimation, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism points to a colossal failure of the imagination regarding both the claims and demands of the gospel. The failure isn't primarily on the part of youth or even their parents: it's on the part of the church.

Rarely are youth challenged to take up their cross and follow Jesus down the narrow road called faith—but even when they are, they can't imagine what that really means unless someone famous makes a movie out of it. Without

It's easy for our young people to think of the biblical stories as taking place long, long ago and far, far away, and thus having no real relevance for our contemporary situation.

We've forgotten how to humbly interact with a story on its own terms; we've lost the ability to wonder, especially when it comes to stories of human encounters with divine power. So have our young people. As a church, how do we restore that sense of wonder? By restoring our sense of the Bible as story, both for us and for the youth we serve; and by surrendering to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through this text that is mysteriously more than text.

The youth-pastor-as-bard is charged with expressing the language, narrative, and culture of the kingdom to listeners who think they already know what the kingdom is all about. For the leader among quasi-believers who are bored and mostly apathetic, who think they know all about "God and stuff," the emphasis is on story.

Youth in our Sunday school class can repeat almost verbatim some obscure parable we dramatized last year, and yet they forget the core doctrinal statement we taught last week. Why is this? Why does story stick with us for so long?

When was the last time you heard a long passage from a novel read aloud during Sunday school or worship? Or how about the last time a youth pastor subverted his or her "talk" through satire or parable rather than proof texting the six main points? Yet

Youth are natural-born storytellers. Our task in discipleship training is to steer them into a particular storytelling tradition—that is, the narrative, language, and culture of the Christian faith as it has been lived and expressed for two thousand years.

if there is no light by which we see, no Great Story that illumines our days—and no Storyteller—then we have no source by which to enchant the young people in our charge.

Catechesis means impressing upon youth a Life, not a religion. —KENDA DEAN AND RON FOSTER

To use C. S. Lewis's distinction, perhaps we could even say that for the evangelistic youth minister, it's about truth; for the bardic youth minister, it's about meaning. Both approaches are necessary and appropriate. But they are different and depend on the context.

confirmation is one of the most important and serendipitous storytelling opportunities we in youth ministry will ever have.

vital role of the imagination in spiritual formation is to help a young person make meaningful connections between the church, the world, and her life.

As I look back on my seven years in full-time youth ministry, the experiences that were the most formative for youth weren't the ones that required the largest sound systems or the most persuasive Christian apologetics, but the ones that made the strongest imaginative connections.

That is when I realize that I have the same gift he does: We can give each other back our youth.