Middle-School Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide to Working with Early Adolescents
Mark Oesteicher and Scott Rubin
Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2009, 384 pp., $15.99
zondervan.com

For rather appropriate reasons, there’s a squirrel on the cover of this book. While middle-school ministry has received more dignity in recent years than the church has given it in the past, working with young teens requires the same kind of intentionality as approaching a fuzzy rodent in its natural habitat.

As the authors contend, this stage of life cannot simply be written off as a “holding tank” for high school–much care must be put into connecting early adolescents to Christ in this “make-or-break” timeframe if they hope to experience a lifetime of spiritual significance.

While the average youth worker already knows all of this, a hole has existed in many ministry circles regarding the appropriate training and insights this resource dynamically addresses. Oestreicher and Rubin blend humorous narratives with confident passion seamlessly to volley their combined experiences and research with the 11- 14-year-old age group. The result is this comprehensive offering that uses humble, everyday language with just the right amount of academic color commentary from other professionals.

The first section helps unpack what is happening within and to the average preteen, while the second section offers practical ideas to be sure that what is happening within and through you appropriately matches. The authors give you every reason to succeed and stay inspired, from the guest contributor’s “Why I Do This” story provided in each chapter to the special Q&A and ideas section that closes out the book.

As a father, I found the insights on “normalizing their experiences” the single-most-important take-away about how I relate with my own kids. As a reviewer and lead pastor, though, I can’t think of a better book to put into the hands of anyone in youth ministry…or your whole church.