Youth Ministry 101: Balancing Family and Ministry One of the things I enjoy the most about my ministry is teaching college students. I teach a course each fall at Word of Life Bible Institute entitled, "Developing a Biblical Philosophy of Youth Ministry." I think it is imperative that we help students to think through their "principle centered" philosophy before they…
Category Archives Student Ministry
Back When the World Was BIG! When I was young I would visit my Grandmother and stay with her for days on end. I loved being there because she made me pound cake with chocolate syrup for breakfast. (Yeah, I have always been into health food.) She played the role of grandparent very well in that I got away with…
So you've read The Greenhouse Project. Maybe you even loaned it out to a friend (why not be a real friend, and buy them a copy...) Perhaps you find yourself wondering how you are going to transfer the truths from these sixteen chapters to your student leadership. Let's be honest: It's a big book. The Greenhouse Project has sixteen different…
Student Youth Ministry Conference I had a stimulating time with a group of youth pastors today in Atlanta. My friends Larry Lawrence and Roger Allen of First Baptist, Jonesboro, GA hosts a youth pastor's conference each year as a ministry of their church. Brent Crowe of Student Leadership University began the conference dealing with "Five Myths that Cause Ministry Syndication."…
Autonomous (capable of independent function) Youth Ministry - Part 4 Highly-effective youth ministries also have a parent ministry focus. The home should be the primary resource for spiritual training; however, we all know there are many spiritually-deficient homes. Is it our responsibility to be surrogate parents and take the place of their parents or are we to work in tandem?…
Autonomous (capable of independent function) Youth Ministry -Part 2 Our obvious goal is to reach students with the gospel but are we just as passionate about developing them to the point of embracing an autonomous faith that is contagious? Developing autonomous students within youth ministries is vital to the longevity and stability of our influence in their lives. In Part…
Autonomous (capable of independent function) Youth Ministry -Part 1 What would youth ministries look like if our goal was to give our ministry away? I'm talking about literally trying to work ourselves out of a job. At first blush this sounds like a kamikaze mission. I can hear the protest now, "If I work myself out of a ministry then…
I have been anticipating this day for a very long time. I have had multiple people ask me if I had a blog that they could follow and up until now the answer has been no. Thanks to the creativity, perseverance and investment of thousands of hours by our Headquarters’ staff, this is now a reality for me and all…