Author: Tony Gryskiewicz

A few years ago I was driving along a rural road in the Southeast United States, and I saw a church sign advertising an evangelistic “Youth Gospel Sing.” My first thought was, “Wow, they still do those!” My second thought was, “Wow… they still do those?” I wondered how many unsaved teens would see the…

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you will know our theme is multicultural youth ministry. I believe that most youth groups tend to look like and talk like the youth pastor. To be sure there are exceptions, but the data shows most churches (92.5%) are monocultural churches (DeYmaz, 2007; Gryskiewicz, 2018). However,…

Christmas is an amazing time of the year. As someone who studies cultures, I love to read about the Christmas traditions of different countries. In Austria, for example, the season of Christmas starts on December 5th, and on the day before Christmas, choirs will go house to house singing Christmas carols. Part of this tradition…

Youth Leaders Youth leaders (young adults, usually 20 years or older) come from two main sources, within the church body or from the youth group. Some of the teens that were a part of the teen leader group will often transition to youth leaders. Much of the youth pastor’s time should be spent discipling this…

Brooke was a skinny 12-year-old girl in overalls who started attending youth service the first week of sixth grade. Garret, a young teen boy with a bowl haircut, couldn’t wait for his first day of youth group. Moumi, a young lady from Ghana, started attending youth group during her high school years. Fast forward a…

For well over a decade I have lived in Europe. First in Madrid, Spain and now in Vienna, Austria. I remember one of my first culture shock moments took place in Spain when I walked into a supermercado (supermarket) and experienced the sight (and smell) of jamón serrano (cured ham) hanging along the wall. To our…

One of my favorite quotes about leadership in a multicultural context is by Dr. Geert Hofstede. Dr. Hofstede is a social psychologist who’s seminal work Cultures & Organizations, Software of the mind posits that cultures can be measured in six dimensions. About leadership, in a multicultural context, Hofstede writes, Learning to become an effective leader is like learning…

Often, when I am the guest speaker at a church or conference, I talk about the joys and challenges of multicultural ministry. To be sure the joys far outweigh the challenges, but there are challenges nonetheless. Occasionally I hear pastors and youth pastors say that one of their challenges is that their community is monocultural,…

Why multicultural youth ministry? After all hasn’t youth ministry been multicultural since the dawn of time? Yes, and no actually. Prior to the Civil War, many churches in the United States were multiethnic. When the war started many Americans of African decent felt unwelcomed in some churches and a few churches even split on the…