Beyond Leadership: How Volunteers and Students Forge a Winning Youth Ministry Culture

In the heart of every successful team, beyond carefully crafted plays and honed skills, lies a beating pulse – the team culture. While coaches set the stage with structure and game plans, it’s the players who breathe life into the locker room, shaping the atmosphere that can elevate or undermine performance. As former NFL center…

The 7 Expectations Every Youth Pastor Has To Meet

I am going to guess that you have not reached point where you do not care about expectation. You do not have the clout or the cash to say, “I don’t care what you think”. Which means you’re middle management. You care about what the people above you think, what the people below you think…

The Passionate Process Of Empowering Youth To Serve

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Buono, author of Youth Empowered. We walk through the process, and it is a process, of empowering students in your youth ministry to serve. Purchase Youth Empowered (I am an Amazon Affiliate, any purchase helps support the ministry) Here’s the abbreviated transcript of our conversation. Tell me a…

Youth Ministry Leaders or Chaperones?

I can remember going to school dances where chaperones were in attendance. Their job was to make sure there was no kissing, dirty dancing, or smoking in the parking lot. The goal was the  make sure something didn’t happen. Sadly, this is role many youth leaders/volunteers take. Youth Ministry chaperones make sure no one talks…

Can You Tell me A Story?

My 4th question in this series  for re-evaluating volunteers is, “Can you tell me a story?”. Every youth ministry has a narrative. We are a collection of stories but we tend to focus on numbers, activity, and logistics. Stories matter. Stories tell me what kind of impact you’re making. Stories reveal the characters you are impacting and…

Is Your Mission Big Enough?

This is the third post in my series about evaluating your youth ministry volunteers. If you do not happen to have a team, this would be great questions to ask yourself if you feel your own commitment slacking. Small church youth ministries struggle because the mission isn’t big enough not only to keep kids engaged,…