Summer is over, students are back in school, and weekends are filled with football. Oh, how I love the fall. Having been in my current role less than two years, I am still in the early stages of the “figuring out the culture of our group” learning curve.…
Looking for some fun Thanksgiving activities for your student gatherings? Perfect, because here are eight ideas you can adapt to fit the needs of your youth group! 8 Hall-of-Fame Youth Ministry Thanksgiving Activities Turkey bowling. Grab a frozen turkey – don’t thaw it out – and a dozen two liter bottles filled with water.…
A few years ago, our goal was to have at least one of our adult staff or volunteers at every one of our graduates’ parties. As our number of high school seniors grew, this task became more and more challenging … and exhausting.…
We love summer! No more alarm clocks, bonfires, and planned spontaneity! And if you’re a youth worker, we’re guessing you probably love it too. Our summer youth calendar is jam-packed with cool stuff like camp, mission trips, and summer activities all designed to help our students grow in their trust in Jesus.…
Is your wonder-er broken? You know it’s broken when you lose your sense of wonder. What if …? We think that’s one of the most powerful and provocative and downright fun questions our wonder-er can think about. It opens the door for us to imagine, invent, and dream.…
One of the things we’ve enjoyed most in our nearly 25 years in youth ministry is the conversations we have with students. (And the free T-shirts—we love the free T-shirts.) Although these conversations sometimes happen spontaneously, we can make the most of every encounter by asking better questions.…
It’s often helpful to think about youth ministry in three parts: teenagers, volunteers, and parents. For most youth leaders, ministering to parents is the most difficult of the three. As the two of us have grown older, we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that parents don’t need certain things from us.…
Tasha and I weren’t raised in the church. The tradition in which we found faith had a very guarded view of the Holy Spirit in general and supernatural stuff in particular. In fact, we heard more than one church leader semi-jokingly talk about the Trinity as the Father, Son, and Holy Bible.…
If it hasn’t happened already, it’ll happen soon enough: the late night phone call from a student or parent dropping a bombshell. “Tim, my dad just beat me up. What should I do?” “Tasha, my mom just left my dad, and I don’t know where I should go now.”…
One of the most difficult aspects of student ministry is learning to meet the needs of each individual student. Over the years, we’ve gotten pretty good at assessing and addressing the general needs of the larger group, but getting past the “one-size-fits-all” mindset is tough.…
