Author Archive: Shane Vander Hart
Shane Vander Hart served as Serve Our Youth Network’s Director of Ministries and Volunteer Development from 2002 to 2012. He has a B.A. in youth ministry (minor in Bible) from Trinity International University, and has been involved in youth ministry since 1992 in church, public school, Christian school and juvenile facility settings and has also recently been an interim pastor in an area church. Shane is available to come give a presentation to your church or group and has been sought after to provide pulpit supply in Central Iowa Churches.
Shane directed the Second Chance Juvenile Mentoring Initiative and Institutional Chaplaincy Programs while serving with us. He also coordinated all SOY’s volunteer training, maintained our website and led our social media efforts.
Ethical Principles for Youth Mentoring
All of these are items that we share with our mentors as they go through training, but I think it is a useful exercise to share the principles of a recent paper written by Dr. Jean Rhodes from the University of Massachusetts – Boston and then write some of my own thoughts. 1. Promote the [...]
Praying on Wednesday Mornings in Des Moines
Every Wednesday morning some of our Des Moines area staff come together to pray. Pictured above (after our prayer time) from right to left: Melanie Beath (our executive director), Karen Sieg (our volunteer coordinator for Amachi & Polk County Youth Services), Al Perez (a case manager for Second Chance) and Juliann Scearcy (a case manager [...]
Tween D8-ing?
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article tween dating. I struggle with that concept since I won’t let my kids date and here’s an application that any young suitor for either of my teenage daughters would have to fill out first. But I digress… some findings: Nearly half of 11- to 14-year-olds say they [...]
Real Men Mentor
It was a real blessing to be a part of the Real Men Conference last year. I will be presenting Serve Our Youth Network and Mentoring again at this year’s conference. The conference is on Friday, February 24 at 7:00p – 10:00p at Rising Sun Church of Christ. The keynote speaker will be Pastor Mark [...]
Are Your Kids Getting Enough Sleep? Four Reasons Why They Should
An interesting topic at the Youth Specialties blog, but I thought I’d expand it out beyond the context of church and camp youth ministry. Are your teenagers at home getting enough sleep? Mine do, but we have the advantage of homeschooling and being able to have a later start for the day. Sleep is vital [...]
Arguments Can Be a Good Thing
Parents of teenagers find that one of the greatest challenges of parenting is we once has this child who, for the most part, was compliant and respectful has now morphed into this argumentative, disagreeable alien. ”Who is this, and what have you done with my child?” Being a parent of three teenagers I find myself [...]
Spiritual Parenting
SmallGroups.com shared an excerpt from the book Authentic Spiritual Mentoring by Larry Krieder that I wanted to share a snippet of it with you: There are countless examples of spiritual mentoring or spiritual parenting in the Scriptures. Jesus modeled spiritual fatherhood to the 12 disciples. Paul discipled young Timothy. Elijah became a spiritual parent to [...]
Thank You for the Time (and the Candy and Cupcakes Too!)
A group from Glen Echo Christian Church in Des Moines, IA came into the Polk County Juvenile Detention Center last Friday night to throw a Fall Harvest party for the youth who were in detention. One young man wrote about the experience. He said: Thank you for taking time out of your day to come [...]
Are We Placing Limits on How High Teens Can Jump?
Kara Powell shared an interesting video about fleas in a jar. I know that sounds riveting, but apparently if you place fleas in a jar they will become conditioned to jump only as high as the lid goes – even when the lid is removed. Their offspring does the same thing. Watch below. You may [...]
A Faith That Sticks: Relationships, Relationships, Relationships
Our friends at Fuller Youth Institute have been researching what makes faith stick as youth transition to adulthood. The study they did with 500 youth group graduates revealed three surprising and key findings. I wanted to focus on the first key finding in this post. While churches across the U.S. have tended to allocate financial [...]