Youth Ministry

How can youth ministers do an effective job of making disciples? Here are six hardships of youth ministry and how to overcome them.

The need continues for older spiritual mentors to come alongside younger believers in their unique journeys. It is a joy and privilege.

Praying for your kids, yourself, (as well as opposing teams and their parents, coaches, and referees) is a great way to demonstrate faith that God is interested in all aspects of your family’s life.

Okay, I’m going to tell you a weird story… but hang with me.Meet Jimbo. He’s one of those super-strong power lifters. The kind of guy that never skips leg day. He looks like a boulder, and if you were dumb enough to punch him, you’d know it to be a fitting description.One day, ol’ Jimbo tragically lost a leg in an underwater basket-weaving incident. Don’t ask. He doesn’t like to talk about it.Yet, Jimbo hasn’t stopped believing in leg day. He knows the importance of a whole-body workout. So, even though his leg is severed from his body, he still tends to it. He’s hired a leg trainer. He’s bought the best equipment. He keeps hobbling around and preaching on the virtues of leg day.Why in the world is Jimbo trying to keep that old leg alive? Well, he understands the importance of legs. And he also believes that there will be an unknown future where maybe, just maybe, his leg will be able to rejoin the body. If the Japanese can make square watermelons, why can’t we figure this one out?Now we all know how biology works. His severed leg is either going to start withering or stinking—as a detached body part would have a tendency to do. OR he’s going to figure out a way to keep that thing alive, but it’ll become some freakish Frankenstein version of his old leg.And then you’ve got the uncomfortable task of firing your youth pastor.Oh, wait, did I lose you there?Jimbo is a senior pastor who really believes that youth are the future of the church. He believes it so much that the church spends a ton of money and energy hiring a pastor just for the teens. Not a bad strategy. And it has the added benefit of making Jimbo think that he can “delegate” the youth to somebody else and get them trained up into mature adults that he feels far more equipped to handle.But the problem with the strategy is one little problem. The youth ministry is detached from the rest of the body. And then expected to grow into something that resembles the body. And could maybe even lead the body someday. That’s just silly. And that youth pastor you fired didn’t stand a chance.We wouldn’t have a story here if Jimbo hadn’t lost his leg, would we? He’d just be a guy passionate about health and growth, who hired a trainer to help him with an important but oft-neglected part of his workout routine. In other words, he’s strengthening the body by strengthening his legs. Not strengthening a severed leg in the hopes of keeping it alive until some day in the future when he decides to play the part of Gene Wilder (you should really watch Young Frankenstein if you don’t get that reference).Here are 5 ways a pastor can strengthen the youth ministry:Notice the direction of these. These are not five ways that you can help out your youth pastor. These are five ways that you can get your hands dirty and engage in the work of strengthening a part of the body that God has called you to shepherd.Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Zinkevych

Teaching new believers to study the Bible is about more than handing them a reading plan or recommending a good study Bible. Churches have to create a culture in which people can learn how to engage Scripture. Here are a few ways churches can create that kind of culture.

As parents, we’re eager for our children to experience the priceless gift of church for themselves. We feel grief and frustration when our teens resist attending services as a family. Here are seven ways to help teens break down their barriers to the church.

How do we as leaders get youth–especially those who are on the brink of adulthood—to prioritize their faith? Here are six amazing ways to teach them how to do that.

If you’re a parent, teacher, or church minister like me, you’ve worked with children and teenagers and challenged them to share their faith. Because you know how important it is for the world that we share the gospel, and you know that sharing faith also builds the faith of the person who does it.

If you gave your life to Christ as a kid, you might feel like your faith story doesn’t count. But what if that’s actually your greatest strength?

The past thirty years have seen revolutionary changes from the internet to the smartphone and all the good and bad these innovations have brought.

The often hokey attempts at entertaining the kids they were trying to keep around was not what kept me in the church. It was truth, community, and more than anything, a purpose and call to God’s Kingdom.

Social media can be harmful because it distorts our presentation and experiences of reality, priority, relationship, and rhythm. When our use of social media controls us instead of us controlling our use of social media, we become enslaved and our priorities distort to feed this new master.

Planning a mission trip? Don’t go without these five powerful prayers. They’ll help you check your motives, face spiritual battles, and figure out if this is the beginning of something much bigger.

Whether your youth ministry is large or small, is rich in curriculum or outreach programs or not, or has the flashy stage and band or not, the real heart of youth ministry is (and always should be) deep-rooted Godly teaching and guidance for the youth involved. Here are seven lessons that stood out to me the most during those formative years.

Discover the history, structure, and benefits of Vacation Bible School (VBS) programs for Christian churches.