Walt is the founder and president of The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (CPYU) and was a former youth minister. His previous body of work sets the standard for Christian parents and youth workers to understand and engage youth culture. This book is essential for parents today, and provides the basic framework for our ParentLIFE meetings. His insights are incredibly eye-opening and very informative, yet it is written in an accessible style from a biblical world view. His three most important contribution for me in preparing the ParentLIFE meetings is his emphasis on how aspects of marketing to youth affects youth culture, his thorough treatment of the nurturing role of media for our youth, and finally, he introduces adults to postmodernism and how it changes teens. He is not Catholic, but nothing that I’ve encountered would be considered to be a danger to the Catholic mind. 

 

Chap is a professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary (Conservative Evangelical College) in the Youth and Family Ministries department. He was a youth minister for years and has training in not only theology, but also the social sciences. This book is written from a bit more academic perspective than Youth Culture 101. This book, though written by a Christian, is focused more on the psychological and sociological than theological perspectives, but the appendix in the back of the book offers a section for parents and one for youth workers. Hurt is so important for understanding teens today because, while human nature is the same, the times have changed so radically from even a few years ago that it has affected deeply the family, parent-teen relationships, and the psychological development of the adolescent. Do not pass this book up. You need to purchase this book and read it cover to cover. Again, Chap Clark is not Catholic, but there is nothing heterodox in this work.

 

As Walt Mueller remarked, “You should start your day with a bible in one hand, and this website in the other.” This is the main website for the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, which is here “Understanding Culture to Impact Culture.” The site contains up-to-date news and information about youth culture, especially in the ever-changing areas of Media and Marketing. Walt Mueller keeps us a great blog on the home page, as well as full “Resources,” “Articles,” and “Research and Trends” sections that are wealths of information. Most of the site’s content is updated daily and you are always current with the Top 10 Movies and Music for youth today. I love this site. Highly recommended!

 

This is the website for the Center for Youth and Family Ministries at the Fuller Theological Seminary. They have a series of articles that parents can tap into, but most of this stuff is for youth workers. This site is less helpful for parents, but still has some stuff on there that you can assist you. I’m listing this because Chap Clark, author of Hurt, is associated with this site and so there are a lot of books that you can buy from here that provide additional information. Medium recommendation.

 

How could we ignore our own ministry’s website?! Life Teen is a portal for your teen into the Catholic world. There are articles a-plenty on this site for teens to grow in their faith, whether it is about understanding Scripture, apologetics, prayer, Q & A with a priest, Vocations, and other topics. They are developing, with every dollar they get, the video and audio portions more and more for our youth. Parents should visit this website in order to see how Life Teen approaches issues with teens and discover the questions that teens are asking about life, morality and faith. My favorite section is the “Reviews,” which covers books, music, movies (as a podcast), and video games from a Catholic perspective. To be honest with you, these reviews are more in line with Church teachings than some found on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (did I say that?). And to be even more honest with you, I wrote about 35 of the book reviews and a handful of the movie reviews before they switched to the podcast format. It’ll tell you the good, the bad, and the holy! Highly recommended!