Holy Website! It's a Wealth of Info for Church Youth Workers
by Allie Martin
November 24, 2004
(AgapePress) - The largest seminary in the U.S. is providing youth pastors and workers with an online resource to help their ministries run more efficiently.The resources for programming, scheduling, and administration are found at SBCstudents.com, and are organized by the student ministry department of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Dr. Richard Ross, professor of student ministry at the Southern Baptist seminary, says the Internet site is a valuable tool for staff members of both large and small, rural churches.
"At SBCStudents.com, all they have to do is choose from a broad menu, since there's going to be items on evangelism, discipleship, parent ministry, prayer -- just all the key areas of student ministry," Ross explains. "When they click on each one of those items, they're going to discover lots of printed resources -- camps, retreats, international mission trips; all kinds of things that are available to do ministry with students, with parents, and with volunteer leaders in that specific ministry area."
The website, he says, is also a useful resource for time-strapped youth and children's workers. "For volunteers out in those small churches, it's a completely different issue," he explains. "They perhaps have never had seminary education; [or] they haven't had formal course work in how to pull together resources for ministry. Maybe they work all day in a normal job and it's only in the evening that they can get something together for the youth group."
For such youth workers, Ross says, SBCstudents.com is a "life-saver" because it introduces them to "an entire world out there in student ministry that they really didn't know was available to their students."
The project is supported by youth professors at all Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) seminaries and the youth employees of national SBC entities and Baptist state conventions. The website is updated daily and provides prayer requests from around the world. Also among the categories of information available at the website are crisis ministry, training volunteers, and missions.
