May the Peace of Christ be with you.

Explain yourself. young man!  After the recent posting about Editing, I thought it might be appropriate to explain, just this once, how I use the links that are being provided as part of this weekly series. 

So, here are Catholic youth ministry hyperlinks for you just In Case You Missed It s well as the backstory of their selection for this posting

• I always like a good gut check / examination of conscience regarding my motivations for ministry,  Wes Ellis just reminded us all to Get Out of the Way and make space for the Lord.
• My catechists were recently requested to start their sessions in prayer.  With that  request came this resource to assist them.
• My Edge team has all received this Christopher Wesley description of 6 characteristics of a strong small group leader.
• It is always important to be knowledgeable about the stuff related to our field:
  • CARA research indicates that young Catholic parents are loyal to raising families in the faith, but Mass… not so much.
  • Pew Research has recently concluded another study and offers these 6 facts about teen romance in the digital age.  (good for packing away in my arsenal of stuff I know about kids.)

• In the past weeks, I’ve broken up some of the links into sections. With this edition, you even getting banners for them!  The predominant sub-category here  is related to our ministry with parents.  Why is this important? Matt Larkin through Youth Specialties offers an explanation.
• Mobile devices aren’t bad, but they might be hindering relationships for the SmartPhone generation.   Jonathan McKee has three ways to help young people connect with people in the room. 
• Sometimes parenting can be hard, heartbreaking work.  ParentCue helps us to remind adults to be the adult. Blessed are not the peace-likers or peace-supporters, but the peacemakers..

• I am a heavy user of Twitter (as you are likely or with other social networking sites.)  I want to avoid these five common twitter mistakes.   
• Michael Hyatt is a former Christian bookseller who now has a phenomenally large leadership platform.  When he writes in admiration of Pope Francis’ leadership style, I want to pay attention and emulate the Holy Father’s example.

The editorial choice to link the past week’s posts on the ProjectYM site is simply supporting the home team just In Case You Missed It!  (Hey, that’s a clever title!)

• We talked twitter mistakes a few bullets above and now Jenn wonders are you are fluent in Emoji?
• Father MatthewP. Schneider, LC  still has Papal Visit Fever and reviews his twitter feed for 14 lessons to take home from Pope Francis’ US visit.
• See Matt Damon’s movie The Martin  yet?  Scott did and considered the spiritual implications of Growing Potatoes on Mars.

There you go, editorial choices explained. One last note:

Don’t wait until you are ready to do a generous act for another. All acts of grace, mercy, and kindness matter, no difference if they are large or small.  I found these four minutes worthwhile, invite you to do the same and to pass this TED video along.