The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers - The Secret to Loving Teens Effectively - Assignment Example

The book "The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers: The Secret to Loving Teens Effectively" by Gary Chapman deals with teenagers and the bond they share with their parents. Teenage is a time of life at which an individual is establishing his moralities, social beliefs, and personality. Therefore children in their teens need their parent’s support, acceptance, and unconditional love. Teenagers are vulnerable to negative and accusing words; instead, they require words of affirmation and affection. Spending quality time with your teenagers and having real conversations is vital and so is to give your free acts of service. Parents should give thought to their child’s mood and preferences and should show patience when anger comes along, to win with their children ultimately by making them see reason. But in the view of the author the most significant of all things is to keep loving your children unconditionally, that is to show your support even when they fail to come up to your expectations.
Evaluation

"The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers: The Secret to Loving teens effectively" by Gary Chapman is a manual to the parent-child relationship when the child hits his teens. It looks into the matters of routine relationships and gives cause to make them special. It does that by giving counsel to parents such as when teenagers provide the parents with a cause of ceremony; they should celebrate it with gifts and praise. A particularly neglected idea when it comes to respecting a child’s want for independence was emphasized that teenagers should start being given suitable responsibilities so that they might not feel their lives are useless. The book also devotes some chapters to times when trouble in the life of a teenager or the parent-child relationship occurs. For example, it gives excellent advice upon times when your child is not the communicative type, and parents are having a hard time understanding the root of his problems. In addition, it has helpful advice for single parents, who are in the neediest cases.

Looking into cons, the book fails to address (at large) teenage children who have a natural inclination towards law-breaking and misconduct or have fallen into seriously bad company. Overall the book is a gain to youth ministry because it delves into teenage psychology to a great extent and provides reasonable solutions to the underlying intricacy.

“Middle School Ministry Made Simple” by Kurt Johnston
Author Information

Kurt Johnston is working for junior high ministry since the late 1980s; to be specific he is the junior high Pastor at saddleback church in southern California. He has written a couple of books at the request of Standard Publishing. His first book was “Controlled Chaos: Making Sense of Junior High Ministry”, whose upgraded version is presented in his new book "Middle School Ministry Made Simple”. He lives in Lake Forest, California with his wife Rachel, and his two children Kayla and Cole.
Content Summary

The book "Middle School Ministry Made Simple” and its author Kurt Johnston believe in the reforms that the junior high school world has been through and think it important to change the strategies to run junior high schools accordingly. The book provides a guideline on recruiting volunteers and the role they can play in middle school ministry by emphasizing taking in several volunteers but still making sure that they are the right people for the job. It argues that the best way to make the ministry effective is by taking the outlook of the parents and getting into discussions with them. If the parents want to be useful, then use their input (whatever kind it is). But most radically, one needs to be creative and an excellent planner, because only by planning one can lead to the good governance of the ministry.
Evaluation

This book is a first-rate resource on running a junior high ministry. It gave the unique and relatively nonexistent perspective of working not just alongside but with parents to improve life in middle school ministries. It took into account the psychological factors of junior high students while advising on how to help. Another thing to look out for when reading the book is the emphasis it gives to volunteering and the choice of volunteers, which shows how heartfelt the topic is for the author. The book also has a very interactive attitude and formatting which makes it easier to read and practical to follow. Since Kurt Johnston works for the junior high ministry therefore he is well aware of the resources that the youth ministry finds practical. In consequence, he has written a book worth the attention of the youth ministry as it contributes directly toward the practices that need to be followed for an up-to-date and futuristic middle school ministry.
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