While I was on a coaching call with a volunteer youth director from a small rural church, she said: “I don’t think we’re meant to have a youth ministry at our church. We only have 10 teenagers on our church rolls and I’ve never been able to get more than seven of them to come to anything!”…
We all know that a cockroach is hard to kill… After the atomic-bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the military reported that the only living things to survive the blast zone were these disgusting little pests.…
We are about to record hours and hours in the church van. Summer is here and we are ready to take our relationship with GPS to a new level. Cheers, my fellow road warriors! You deserve all the pay-off that is sure to come with the investment of time you’ll be making in youth ministry this summer.…
I had an interesting conversation not too long ago with a fellow youth worker who was feeling overwhelmed. Our conversation kind of centered around this statement, “The world is getting crazier and crazier, and it almost seems like what we’re doing isn’t working.”…
Our number one mission in youth ministry is to share the love of Jesus with our students. We can talk about the love of Jesus or we can demonstrate the love of Jesus. We can tell them they are loved but unless we demonstrate love to them our words really are just words.…
#ScreenFreeWeek There was one time I was sitting at a coffee shop enjoying a café Americano with one of my favorite friends. We were catching up, being stupid, making each other laugh, and absolutely we were people watching, when all of the sudden she hit me over the head with this doozy: “My school is doing screen-free week,” she said with ease.…
As a former military member, I learned the value of a ‘go-bag’ long ago. Here’s the idea: You keep a bag ready to go at a moment’s notice. In this bag you put everything you will need for a specific operation, or in the case of youth ministry, an event.…
My pastor, Rick Warren, always says, “You don’t learn from people’s strengths, you learn from their weaknesses.” If that’s true, then I have a wealth of knowledge! But seriously, I’ve been doing youth ministry for a while now, and throughout my years in ministry, I’ve tried to be intentional about learning from my mistakes.…
Have you ever worked with a student who just couldn’t stand you? I have. You know the deal – the rolling eyes, snarky comments, being completely ignored, blatant efforts to be disruptive, and the heaps of sarcasm. Having a hater is totally awesome.…
I got an email from a youth worker asking for some guidance. He’s feeling the holiday pinch concerning the engagement and attendance of his students. So I sent him my response and thought I’d share it with all of you since we are all in the same boat one way or another this time of the year.…
