Founder and President of HomeWord, Jim has a heart for bringing help and hope to struggling families. He's the author of several books, including Partnering with Parents in Youth Ministry. Jim is a contributor to YouthWorker Journal.

ANDREW ROOT

Favorite confirmation curriculum: A new one being created by Sparkhouse called Re:Form. It's doing some cool stuff with media, but I'm not a huge curriculum person because I think the key to teaching is for the material to mean something to the teacher. It won't matter to the students if it doesn't have some kind of contextual connection for the teacher.

Favorite youth culture books: Thomas Hines' The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager and Anthony Giddens' Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. These provide some broad theoretical frames to think about youth culture and are accessible to youth workers.

Best ministry leadership book: Mark Devries Sustainable Youth Ministry offers a number of really helpful practical perspectives in this area.

Best worship activity for youth ministry: Prayer. I've been thinking more about how the prayers of the people may, because of their shared narrative shape, function as central for worship, maybe even more than preaching.

Favorite mission trip organization: YouthWorks! The people I know there are great. I think highly of them because of their desire to be really inclusive to broad traditions and denominational perspectives. They serve mainline and evangelical congregations, which is saying something in our cultural climate. Others should learn from them in how to do this.

Favorite grassroots blogs: The blogs of Jake Bouma, Dan Haugh and Matt Cleaver. They present what's really going on practically on the ground, but do so by asking a number of interesting theoretical questions.

Favorite conferences for youth workers: The National Youth Workers Conventions offer something helpful. I've also done a lot with the Princeton Youth Ministry forums, which have been great in deepening the theological discussion on youth ministry. These are two really different events, but both have their place. At Luther Seminary, we're starting some more interactive events called FirstThird. We invite people who are in the first third of life who think deeply about ministry to come and talk.

Andrew is a professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., contributor to YouthWorker Journal and author of several books, including his most recent The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church.