Chris Jones
Youth Ministry & High School SRE Advisor (Northern Region)
Chris has served in long-term youth ministry, most recently for 11 years as the Youth Minister at Normanhurst in Sydney’s northern suburbs. He is passionate about equipping and supporting young people in local churches to love and serve Jesus.
Mobile / 0402 251 234
Email / chris.jones@youthworks.net
As an SRE Coordinator there are many joys to the role – you get to see the impact that SRE is having on students across many classes and often, across many schools. However, there are also aspects of the coordinator role that can be challenging. One of these is negotiating effectively with schools, especially when they propose scheduling changes.
In December 2025, the social media landscape in Australia changed for young people, when the government introduced new restrictions that represent a significant cultural shift in how young people remain socially connected with each other.
Here are some suggestions for ministry workers to disciple young people, their leaders and families through these changes.
In the context of ministry, there’s almost no limit to the ways in which we might employ AI tools to assist us in our tasks. Yet this is an arena in which we need to do some thinking before we blindly use the tools at hand. So how do we wisely discern what is beneficial for us and for those we are ministering to when it comes to faithfully using AI for ministry purposes?
In recent times many of our churches have done some helpful thinking about ‘mission’. Yet current trends in church culture have meant that when we use the term ‘mission’ we now mostly mean local evangelism.
Amongst this increase in mission thinking it’s worth taking a temperature check and asking the question – Have we unintentionally side-lined a heart for global mission in our youth ministries?
Equipping and empowering teenagers to serve as junior leaders within your church’s ministry programs is one of the best places for this to happen.
So how should we be thinking about junior leaders, and how can we best help them to start well?
