100 new and exciting ways to pray Do you or your children struggle to know what to say when asked to pray? Is prayer time becoming routine around your house--even boring? Karen Holford has an idea. Actually she has 100 Creative Prayer Ideas that are guaranteed to make time with Jesus interesting, meaningful, and even fun And don't assume grown-ups are left to watch from the sidelines. A helpful index organizes the various prayer activities by age and other categories. Many of these ideas will work especially well in small group settings, or use them in your own prayer time to put a fresh sparkle into your prayer life From Bag of Bits Prayer, and Blessings Basket, to Garden Prayers, this book provides a smorgasbord of simple activities that will help kids and adults find new delight in talking to God.

What is youth ministry actually for? And does it have a future? Andrew Root, a leading scholar in youth ministry and practical theology, went on a one-year journey to answer these questions. In this book, Root weaves together an innovative first-person fictional narrative to diagnose the challenges facing the church today and to offer a new vision for youth ministry in the 21st century. Informed by interviews that Root conducted with parents, this book explores how parents' perspectives of what constitutes a good life are affecting youth ministry. In today's culture, youth ministry can't compete with sports, test prep, and the myriad other activities in which young people participate. Through a unique parable-style story, Root offers a new way to think about the purpose of youth ministry: not happiness, but joy. Joy is a sense of experiencing the good. For youth ministry to be about joy, it must move beyond the youth group model and rework the assumptions of how identity and happiness are imagined by parents in American society.