Preparing for the Storm In For the Sake of Our Youth, licensed professional counselor, mother to four boys, and first-time author Tessa Stuckey shares what she has learned about today’s youth and the struggles they face in our current culture. Through her work, Tessa has become well versed in depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts in young people, and she believes that suicidal ideation among children is on the rise. It has become a big cultural storm—a storm that we haven’t prepared for. Tessa gives advice to parents on what to do in response to the dangers our children face growing up in today’s world and shows them how to raise their children intentionally. Parents must make strong connections with their children and build resilience. Her goal is to save lives and raise awareness of this awful epidemic.

OUR DEAR YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN, we have great confidence in you. You are beloved sons and daughters of God and He is mindful of you. You have come to earth at a time of great opportunities and also of great challenges. The standards in this booklet will help you with the important choices you are making now and will yet make in the future. We promise that as you keep the covenants you have made and these standards, you will be blessed with the companionship of the Holy Ghost, your faith and testimony will grow stronger, and you will enjoy increasing happiness.

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.

One heroic schoolteacher has saved hundreds of lives with unconditional love and zero tolerance for rule-breakers. His students are the worst of the worst—drug addicts, gang members, and violent criminal offenders. They have flunked out or been thrown out of every other school they’ve attended. They may be the children of addicts, of abusers, or even of good parents, but they have one thing in common: they have been rejected by everyone except Paul White. With ten simple rules, he has helped hundreds of kids turn their lives around. “I can’t remember when I’ve been this happy. Since I came here I’m getting right with my family and friends, I’m off the drugs and staying out of trouble. I’m doing really well in school and I’ve got a job.” —Kathy, fifteen, West Valley student, former crystal meth user “He never gives up on you.” —Roger, seventeen Among students, they’re the worst of the worst: chronic truants, drunks, drug addicts, even violent criminals. Some haven’t been to school for months, even years. Some have spent a year or more locked up for gang-related offenses and felony assaults. All of them, it seems, are on the short list of life’s early losers. Enter Paul White, the teacher whose combination of unconditional love and unbreakable rules has changed, and sometimes saved, the lives of the most troubled students in Detroit, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. When they walk through the door of his one-room high school, the West Valley Leadership Academy in Canoga Park, California, White treats them like his own children: loving them, protecting them, and requiring them to become men and women of moral courage, integrity, and high achievement. Sometimes it only takes one person to turn the tide. During his twenty-five-year career as a teacher, Paul White has saved hundreds of students from falling through the cracks. Veritable miracles have taken place in his classroom: ?The reading skills of a fourteen-year-old recovering crystal meth addict climbed from a seventh- to a tenth-grade level in six months. She finished high school at age sixteen and went on to complete a nursing program. A fifteen-year-old girl was flunking out of school—and so violent that the safety of the people around her couldn’t be guaranteed. After joining Paul’s class, she not only brought her grades up enough to graduate from high school at sixteen, but has gone on to finish several semesters at a local community college. A seventeen-year-old boy who had been a neo-Nazi asked a Holocaust survivor to forgive him for his disrespectful behavior. White’s Rules is a lesson to parents and educators who can’t control their kids or their classrooms. For Americans who truly want to stop the violence, end the apathy, and improve academic performance, White poses a challenge: Try his rules. The ten-rule list that he developed covers everything from character values to schoolwork, from getting off drugs to learning personal finance skills. By enforcing these rules, parents and educators can attack both the causes and the effects of the crisis in our schools. This is the moving story of how the program evolved and what we can all do to save our youth, one kid at a time.

"The strong and spicy heat of the gospel is the secret to effective and exciting ministry just look at the early church! Gospel advancement was at the heart of the early believers? discipleship, and the book of Acts gives us a vibrant picture of God's plan to use us to build His kingdom. In Gospelize Your Youth Ministry, Greg unpacks the model found in the book of Acts, unveiling the seven key ingredients present within the early Church. Today, youth leaders can blend these same basic ingredients together in their own unique, customized recipe to create a gospelized youth ministry that results in dynamic kingdom growth. For youth leaders and adults with a heart for youth ministry who are looking to spice up their ministry and (re)discover the joy, excitement and transformation they?ve been longing to see and that Jesus promised! The gospel is the perfect kick! "

Dennis—with a famous painter father and social activist mother—is a small-time drug dealer and total mess. His hero-worshipping friend Warren has just impulsively stolen $15,000 from his father, an abusive lingerie tycoon. When Jessica, a mixed-up prep school girl, shows up for a date, Warren pulls out a wad of bills and takes her off, awkwardly, for a night of seduction. A wildly funny, bittersweet, and moving story, This Is Our Youth is as trenchant as it was upon its acclaimed premiere in 1996.

A fascinating, photo-rich exploration of early aviation in Canada, told through the backstories of pilots who flew, fought, and risked their lives in the First World War, through the interwar period, and beyond. In Our Youth explores the lives of thirty-two young Canadian military and civilian flyers, viewed through the medium of archival photography. All of these young men were pilots in the First World War, a time when flying was pure adventure and danger. Some of them were from humble origins, some from elite families, some became heroes, one was cowardly, and most have now faded from our attention. However, all embraced the romance of flight and the danger of war. Although much of the book is focused on military experiences—including the mental stress and injuries faced by pilots who had barely reached adulthood—the book looks beyond war, examining the fascinating world of civilian aviation from 1908 to 1941. Featuring long-hidden photography uncovered from provincial archives, confidential military records, and precious family collections, this book covers the lives of many young Canadians who made important contributions as they flew and fought in what seem today to be the flimsiest of machines.