Summer is quickly approaching, and many church leaders are busy planning summer trips, camps, and retreats. When I was in young adult ministry we would spend our Spring anticipating the changing season and plan out our Summer and Fall retreat environments.…
Every great organization has great leadership… period. It’s going to be nearly impossible to become great if your leadership is sub-par. Believe it or not, this relates to churches as well. Many times, in church work, we find ourselves in a tough spot; desperate for help, so we compromise in the area of leadership and we get ‘Volunteers’ to serve in our ministries instead of ‘Leaders.’…
My guess is big event planning is either one of your favorite things to do or one of the parts of youth ministry you barely tolerate. For me, it is one of the things I put up with and just get through.…
You wake up exhausted. Was that overnighter a dream? Where did your black eye come from? Why is your arm in a cast? Why are there 13 missed calls from various parents? What speeding ticket? If you’re like us, after a big event or activity the last thing you want to do is re-live all the details.…
Most youth workers like events. We may have mixed emotions about their overall effectiveness, but they aren’t going away anytime soon….we simply won’t let them! And while we all like events, we aren’t all great at planning them from start to finish.…
One of my favorite roles as a youth pastor is taking students out of their environment to experience a retreat or to serve their community. When this happens, more times than not, discipleship can more easily happen. To make these trips, events, retreats, and camps happen, we must clearly communicate through our promotions.…
When I got the privilege of writing this I thought “Sweet! Can’t wait… hope it’s not on teaching.” Dead serious. Then I got the topic. Holy goodness. Some of us are gifted at the whole preaching/teaching gig… others of us just survive this part of the job.…
This marks my 20th year as a youth pastor in Southern California. I began youth ministry as a 20-year-old when a college girl invited me to come help lead as some guys began showing up at a girl’s Bible study she was leading.…
I have always liked the title of Josh Griffin’s blog: “More than Dodgeball.” My guess is that titles like “More Than Dodgeball” are in reaction to a youth ministry approach that has been pretty popular in the past 20 years, featuring a bunch of splashing in the kiddy pool without wading into the deep end.…
My friend Chris at youthministrygeek.com tells me that “Games” is the most popular search word used by youth workers. That makes sense, since I’m always looking for more ways to have fun and create healthy interactions with our teenagers. So in that spirit, here’s my top-five list of both paid-for and free tech-games.…
