Serving in youth ministry is both rewarding and challenging. As a leader, you’re a catalyst for helping teenagers grow as disciples of Jesus, a counselor who must deal with upset parents and discouraged adolescents, and an EMT who has to treat the occasional dodgeball injury. Often, all in the same day. As you walk through the ups and downs of your calling, we’re here to support, encourage, and equip you with ideas that will fuel your journey as a Jesus-centered leader.
What You’ll Find
Our leadership topics are designed to give you the knowledge and skills to confidently guide your ministry. We’ll cover the must-know areas—including working with parents and volunteers, planning and productivity, and the broad range of skills you need as an adolescent specialist in ministry. And, most important, we’ll help you grow your own relationship with Jesus so your leadership flows out of a “deeper well.”
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we tap into the realities today’s parents of teenagers are facing and target some powerful ways we can come alongside them in youth ministry… For years I’ve strategized and brainstormed and innovated new ways to support and equip parents of teenagers.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we step into one of our most important ministry skills—mirroring back to teenagers the truth about their identity. Becky and I explore the practical ways we can pay ridiculous attention to kids, looking for the details about their identity and depending on the Spirit of Jesus to help us reflect back to them their Kingdom of God purpose.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we recognize the reality of our context in youth ministry: We are key players in a “spiritual war” that’s focused on young people. We can, and must, play a strategic role in fighting for the true identity that Jesus sees in them (and in us).…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we take a surprising plunge into authenticity, and what it looks like to create a ministry environment that invites vulnerability and a sense of relaxed honesty. Teenagers growing up in a “curated” and plastic world are starved for authentic relationships—we explore the way Jesus feeds people who hunger for deeper connections in their life.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we upend the way we frame our relationship with Jesus—from a serious slog through principles and disciplines to an adventure on the playground. Here’s how you can help your teenagers re-imagine their life as a disciple in the childlike way that Jesus, over and over, urged us to embrace.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we explore the “mechanics” of a dependent relationship with Jesus—where the reality of his presence is not confined to the pages of the Bible. Jesus made it clear that the gift of the Spirit means we have an ongoing, real-time, experiential relationship with him.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday experiment, we show how to unlock the truth about Jesus, and the truth about the Bible, using “The Oprah Question” and “Reading Filters” as tools. Our pursuit of the Bible’s truths can be transformational for teenagers when we help them slow way down, or really speed up, when they read.…
In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday feature, I invite a group of young people to experience the Bible in the epic way it was meant to be experienced. It’s a live experience, and therefore as messy as you think it would be.…
There was a time when Bible-reading seemed, well, normal… No more. As a first-year college student, I quickly learned that all of the Christian upperclassmen I looked up to owned Bibles that looked like they’d been through a crop thresher. They were marked-up, flagged, underlined, highlighted, dog-eared, and encased in leather-like covers imprinted by swords and flowers and crosses.…
Some who have the role of leader don’t actually have the soul of a leader—that’s a problem, because “everything rises and falls on leadership.” We didn’t make that iconic statement; John Maxwell did. But we believe in it so strongly that it feels like we wrote it! …
