“We never outgrow fear,” John Pavlovitz said in his second plenary at last week’s annual event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education. “As we get older, we just trade in our terror for more age-appropriate models.” Pavlovitz, a pastor, writer and activist from North Carolina, then described the two responses we have at any age to the storms that scare us: “We become frozen or frantic.”
For many of the participants at last week’s Shaping Our Story Conference, this was their first in-person gathering since the pandemic began 20 months ago.
Feedback from cohort groups sponsored by the Office of Christian Formation for Presbyterian Youth Workers Association has been so positive that the organization is considering making it part of it regular life.
As a way to mark May as Mental Health Awareness Month, Brian Kuhn, director of the Presbyterian Youth Workers’ Association and a licensed professional counselor, offered a webinar Wednesday that outlined the top 10 mental health issues all youth workers should be aware of.
Michelle Phillips, the acting director for the Presbyterian Youth Workers’ Association (PYWA), said a recent face-to-face-gathering of the Christian Formation Collective was “like a spider web tingling and then finally coming to life.”
