Teenagers, by nature, are inappropriate. Their immature brains, sometimes, come up with terrible things to say and do without any guardrails or filters. I’ve never had to create a formal code of conduct, mostly because I’ve never needed one. The students who came to my youth group were mostly well behaved, I had a good…
It’s the beginning of the year and, if you’re like me, you’re looking for new books to read. These are books I have already read, wrote, or are on my reading list for 2023. I have divided this list into three sections Ministry Nuts and Bolts, Soul Care and Other Non-Fiction. Ministry Nuts and Bolts…
Three Pillars of Youth Ministry This past year, I felt like I was all over the map as far as programming, teaching and planning, then I had a talk with my pastor. I wanted to find out what his thoughts were about narrowing down the focus of the youth ministry to three pillars. These three…
Welcome to part five of my series The Five Plans Every New Youth Pastor Should Have. You can check out the beginning of the series here. Can I tell you when I most often felt the burn of burn out? It was was when the wheels in my head started to grind together effecting the…
Welcome to part four of my series on The 5 Plans Every New Youth Pastor Needs. You can read about the first plan I think is important here. Every new youth pastor needs a meeting plan. When I first started planning youth meetings I was pretty gung-ho about evangelism and every meeting I had was…
Welcome to part two of my series The Five Plans Every New Youth Pastor Needs To Have. You can start at the first post here, If you like. I started youth ministry by just reading my bible, praying about it and then teaching on what God showed me. There’s nothing wrong with that, it was…
If you’re new here, and are not caught up, you can start this series here. If you are a Youth Pastor working hard to keep their youth ministry afloat, I feel for you, but you are working too hard, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Physically you’re work too hard (the set up, the planning) Mentally…
There are weeks where I struggled with pre-youth group anxiety. I was anxious with questions like would the service go well? was I prepared? was the sermon good enough? would the students like the game? These questions were all part of my need to make sure things were perfect. Why? Why did I need to…
Sunday School was a part of my teen life for forever. I wasn’t committed because of the ugly room we met in, the bad snacks or the hard chairs; I was committed because I thought that is what I was supposed to do, so I did it. Classrooms have, generally, gotten better but the structure…
I know getting students signed up for anything is a chore, but is there anything you can do about it? Start with why Why does this event exist? Why did it make it on to your calendar? It’s much easier to get students signed up if you know, and they know, why an event exists.…
