In the often-chaotic cloud that is everyday youth ministry, one goal always rises to the surface—growing disciples who follow Jesus with an all-in commitment. You’re after life-changing, inside-out transformation—driven by a passion for Jesus that spills out onto the lives of others.
What You’ll Find
The Discipleship section offers practical ideas and insights about effective discipleship in youth ministry. We explore the method and models and strategies your ministry can use to help “seed” a generation of teenagers who are all-in for Jesus.
For more than a decade, I’ve been involved in youth ministry in the United Methodist Church. During this time, I’ve participated in hundreds of confirmations, both as a youth director and as a volunteer. Confirmation literally means “to make firm.” The journey involves guiding young people toward publicly affirming their faith in front of family members, friends, and the congregation.…
Season 2, Episode 27: Fighting the Cancer of Self-Doubt Our doubts about ourselves, sometimes buried beneath a façade of overconfidence, eat away at our identity. We hear that sneering voice telling us we’re not good enough, we’re a failure waiting to happen, and we should hide the truth about ourselves from others.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, Rick explores five crucial practices that make it possible to “go into the cave” on behalf of students or their parents—five things that give us the foundation to offer real help in times of great trauma, tragedy, or challenge.…
Season 2, Episode 26: Throwing Our Pearls to Pigs Early in his ministry, Jesus delivers a shotgun-blast of teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount to a massive crowd following him. In the middle of a litany of “required behaviors” that are pretty much impossible for any of us to maintain, Jesus says something that sticks out, because it seems out of place.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday, we explore how you can use social media to make a big impact in your youth ministry. It’s tough to convince teenagers that anyone over age 20 with fewer than 5,000 Instagram followers is “culturally relevant.”…
Middle-school ministry isn’t easy. And as a 54-year-old who’s been engaged with young teenagers in one role or another for more than 35 years, I’m finding it more challenging than ever (which, I think, is more about me than them). >>Struggling trying to plan lessons for Junior High.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, I explore the powerful transformation that happens when we use experiences as a basis for teaching, and show you my simple process for crafting and embedding experiences in your main teaching times. When I’m training youth workers, I sometimes ask them to get with a partner and share “something you’ve learned that has deeply impacted your life—something that turned your life around.”…
Season 2, Episode 25: The War on Sin We have lots of choices when we consider what to do about patterns of sin in our life. We can ignore them, explain them away, beat ourselves up about them, or “reframe” them.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we take a hard look at our “cultural diet” and consider what wise, Jesus-centered standards we can use for both our own life and for our ministry. The Old Testament urges God’s people to be holy—to set themselves apart from an “unclean” culture.…
Season 2, Episode 24: Dependence > Discipline Jesus is about to send his disciples on a daunting (to say the least) mission, so what does he do to help them out? He takes every last support and comfort from them before they leave.…
 Fighting the Cancer of Self-Doubt){kind=link}
 Throwing Our Pearls to Pigs){kind=link}
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 The War on Sin){kind=link}
 Dependence > Discipline){kind=link}