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.
Discipleship that doesn’t trigger a visceral physical reaction or evoke emotion in young people won’t get past their starting gate. Current research is proving that unless we somehow get access to the brain’s emotional center, triggering the area responsible for the decisions young people make, all we’re really doing is dispensing data that’s quickly filed away in the brain’s warehouse, where it gathers dust.…
I’m just imagining the first followers of Jesus taking a “discipleship assessment” just after his death and resurrection. Would a single one of them make the grade as a “fully formed disciple” by today’s youth ministry standards? If the model Jesus himself used produced the kind of results that would get most of us a poor performance review, maybe there’s a problem with the way we think about discipleship.…
As a teenager active in my church, I knew I “should” read the Bible. My youth workers often referenced their “morning quiet time”—I imagined them sitting in an overstuffed chair bathed in soft lighting, sipping fancy coffee, dissecting the original Greek meaning of “the” and “is.” On their knees.…
It was front-page news on a recent issue of USA Today. The headline read “Obituary Takes a Turn,” and that was enough to lure me into the article. The story was about 80-year-old Kathleen Dehmlow, whose obituary started with the standard stuff—date of birth, husband’s name, children, and so on.…
“One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.” – Eugene Peterson Join Rick as he pays tribute to Eugene Peterson by revisiting an interview with the beloved pastor and author from our first season.…
At the end of a novel, it’s helpful to see how a character’s past impacts their present. Moments of narrative foreshadowing are revealed and the ending hopefully makes sense. Is it the same with your own personal story? What does it take to slow down and see the narrative foreshadowing Jesus is using to make you who you are and will become?…
Teenagers have mastered the art of the excuse—they can give you creative reasons why their homework isn’t done and their chores didn’t get done and why it’s okay to hate their Algebra teacher. And, it turns out, they have lots of plausible-sounding reasons why they don’t read the Bible.…
Put 20 youth pastors in a room and tell them they can’t come out until the agree on a definition of discipleship and it’s possible their friends and families will never see them again! And IF they can agree, the odds of them implementing that definition in their youth ministries are about the same odds as me slam-dunking on a 10-foot rim (zero, in case you’re wondering).…
Fight Club (the 1999 cult classic film) tells the story of two bored men searching for meaning and identity, and finding it in underground bare-knuckle brawls. The film is brutal, violent, and sorta/kinda serves as a metaphor for the life Jesus calls us into.…
“They got more than me.” “Why do they get to and I don’t?” “That’s not fair.” These are phrases we’ve all used when comparing ourselves to siblings or friends, but if we’re honest, could they also describe our attitude toward Jesus when things don’t seem equal?…
 Eugene Peterson Revisited){kind=link}
 The Post-Testament Life){kind=link}
){kind=link}
 Fight Club, Jesus Style){kind=link}
 The Comparison Addiction){kind=link}