When I sit down and talk with Youth Pastors, staff, and volunteers I hear a lot of the same thing—that their students want more. This is incredibly exciting. In the late 1990’s the face of youth ministry was this…
It is very common these days to see Student Ministers or other staff members want to be lead pastors. It has been my experience that, as youth guys get around each other, they talk a lot about the…
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?…
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…
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…
When I was a kid I remember staying with some relatives who were very devout Christians, and while we were with them we had to go to church one Sunday. I was asking my aunt about the day…
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…
In one sense, what we do as youth ministers is unique in the world of church ministry. Our job definitely includes some of the most fun – and perhaps, also, the most heartbreak. But in another sense, our…
In my early twenties upon moving to Birmingham, AL, I attended for three months a mega-church with an impressive growth rate. The pastor regularly boasted about the church’s increasing attendance in between opportunities to talk about the large…
