It’s that time of year. It happens every March. Some students in your youth groups are excited for it and others could care less. Here’s the good news, your group doesn’t have to have a lot athletes for you to use March Madness as a fun tool to have fun or spiritually challenge students. For…
One of the hardest things to do is get a teenager to go from apathy to action. Usually somewhere in between there, we’re trying all kinds of methodology. Parents, teachers, youth pastors, try everything, right? And I’ve done it. I have three grown children. It’s hard to get them from action, from apathy to action.…
Welcome to part 6, the last in my series on mastering your youth ministry calendar. If you’d like to start this series from the beginning, check out Part 1. Have I Made Any Assumptions? Critical Thinking Challenge your assumptions and consider alternative perspectives. I thought they were going to do X I thought the church…
Hey, you’re back for more, huh? Unless this is your first time here and you are coming in on the middle of this series, which is perfectly fine, each of these posts cover an important point in calendar development. If you want the full experience, head over to the first post and work your way…
Well, hello there. First time here? Welcome. If you’ve stumbled into the middle of my series on youth ministry calendar development and would like to start from the beginning, you can head over here. If you’re back for more of the series, thank for returning. Some of you may be thinking, “Paul, you’re pretty obsessive…
If you’re new around here, first of all, welcome. And I bet you’re observant enough to see that there are 2 previous posts to this topic so here is Part 1 and Part 2 for your reading pleasure. Now, we come to part 3 in this 6 part series and these are the questions you…
If you are in ministry you live and die by the calendar and, depending on the size of your church, you “death by calendar” could be imminent if you are not careful. So, stop clacking those keys and put the pencil down until you’ve asked these 6 questions, starting with this one. Does The Event/Program/Message…
Re-launching is a big deal and how you go about it matters because, as they say, you can put a diamond ring in a pig’s snout but it’s still a pig. Don’t re-dress the pig, better to smoke it and eat it. At least this way you’re being honest, a pig is a pig. There…
In a world overflowing with information, our attention spans are shrinking faster than ever. Our students are overwhelmed with emails, social media posts, texts and advertisements – all vying for a sliver of their precious time. This begs the question: how do we get students to notice our events and care about what we have…
Most youth ministries do not have the luxury of separating their middle and high school students, which is optimum, when it comes to Sunday school, small groups or even in your main meeting. This is mostly because of not enough volunteers or not enough volunteers who want to work with middle school. The challenges with…
