Essentials in Youth Ministry: Small Groups

In my eight years as a small group leader to students (and their leaders), I’ve learned much about what to do and what not to do. About what works, and what doesn’t. So what makes small groups successful?…

Essentials in Youth Ministry: Retreats

Retreats. Chaos. Logistics. Long nights. Long drives.  Injuries. Fond memories. That is the sequence of words that follow in my mind when I think of youth retreats. When I think of what was most memorable in my time…

Rooted: What Are We All About?

Every week, I receive another postcard for a new youth ministry conference pledging to have the magic bullet for today’s youth. Nearly all of these ministries and conferences have much value; I wish I could go to a…

Essentials in Youth Ministry: Others

We want to feel necessary.  We want to feel important.  An easy way to fill these desires as a youth worker is to make our youth ministries about us.  We even do what I just did — call…

Alone I Would Not Have Done It

In a recent high school youth group meeting I was teaching on Psalm 51. To illustrate a point about the nature of sin, I shared a passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions, in which he remembers stealing pears one…

God Gave You Sex!

How many times have you told a group of students, “All you need is Jesus?” I know I have as many times as Michael Jackson did the moonwalk or as often as my junior high kids reference Lady…

The Theology of Sex

Rooted Blog editor Liz Edrington kicks off our new series on the Theology of Sex. We’ll address the question of why and how we approach and address sexuality in light of the gospel in our ministry to students….