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.
Stressed-Out Teens The most stressed-out people in the world are sitting right there in your youth room every Wednesday night. Listen, and you’ll likely hear your teenagers complaining about their workload—homework, college apps, choir tryouts, after-school jobs, SAT prep, chaos at home… The list of woes is long.…
I’ve worked with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) youth as a youth pastor and counselor for the last 15 years. Because I’ve listened to their stories for years, I know the world looks alienating at best and hostile at worst to them.…
Read part one here: Peer-to-peer Mentoring: What is it? In 2005, I was serving in a church where my lead pastor, Kevin, said to me: “If we were a factory that made cars, how would we make cars?” It went on for a couple of moments, and then he told me to think about church in the same way.…
It’s Wednesday morning at 11:15 a.m. The freshman class pours into the gym with some juniors and seniors thrown into the mix. Coach hands me the mic, and I ask the students, all 100+ of them, to circle at half court.…
I wrote a post a while ago (click here to read), and I mentioned that I have twenty questions ready to go when I meet a new student. I’ve gotten more responses on wanting those twenty questions than anticipated, so I thought I’d just make it a post.…
NOTE: We understand that this article reflects stereotypes of males and females and not all of your students fit these assumptions. We simply made a statement acknowledging it, gave both genders permission to not like some of the planned activities, and moved on.…
“Heads bowed, eyes closed… but THEN what??” I clearly remember the adrenaline infusion the first time I got to help someone invite Jesus to start leading their life. His name was Aaron, and he was a high school freshman who I knew pretty well.…
We stood in the middle of an arena while hundreds of junior high students were running around, playing ninja and 4-square with more AXE body spray on than any human should be allowed. The concern on Rebecca’s face was real. She had been leading her youth ministry for just over a year and was feeling as if their Sunday morning small groups were a little flat.…
Hillary was right. It takes a village. Kara Powell and the research she has helped lead at the Fuller Youth Institute has confirmed in recent years that one of the primary factors in limiting the risk of faith abandonment (or as I like to call it, “faith fade” since very few people intentionally abandon their faith) is the presence of about five caring, Christ-following adults involved in the life of a teenager; a Christian village might be another way of saying it.…
Let’s spend this month talking about small groups! Small groups are nothing new, but many youth groups are just about to kick off a new season for the school year. And the beginning of a new small group run is a great time to remind yourself of some basic principles that may help get things off and running on the right foot.…
