Sometimes it is our youth parents. Sometimes it might be students. It could even be your small group leaders, teachers or volunteer leaders. But there will always be those who don’t agree with what you’re doing. When we get caught up in pleasing those who aren’t happy, we often lose sight of the vision God planted in our hearts to begin with.
As you look over your mission trip checklist for sunscreen, water bottle and other essentials, make sure you have made plans to take these people along with you.
In the old Frankenstein movies, even after the creature was completely assembled by Dr. Frankenstein it needed a jolt of energy from a lightning bolt captured from the storm raging outside. Here are three of my top lightning bolts that every youth ministry should be passing on to our students.
When I began helping a new church start develop a youth ministry I told myself it would be short-term. Oh, how things have changed. This crazy journey has shown me a few things about starting and maintaining a youth ministry in a new church start—3 valuable lessons for anyone in youth ministry.
If you have taken a mission trip with students, you inevitably have encountered a student or two who was on the trip FOR THE WRONG REASON! Whether he was following a girl or she was fulfilling her service hours requirement, there are students who go on trips for reasons other than serving the Lord and His people. What do you do with these students?
An important part of youth ministry can be Summer interns, but only if you are preparing now to develop, “WINTERNS.” It may feel like Summer is months away, or right around the corner, but Summer can important season in your youth ministry, as well as that of your interns.
Over the course of adolescence, young people need multiple significant adults who know, love, and guide them through the peaks and valleys of adolescence. In this post, we look at compassion, consistency, and Christlikeness as three characteristics of adults who effectively relate to young people.
As youth ministers, when we do something that works, it is usually not an accident. Great ministry takes thoughtful foresight. This month as you walk in ministry with your students, parents and volunteers, I encourage you to look up with an eye towards summer missions.
Only in this era is that a possibility to be able to blast out your thoughts on a person or post an embarrassing photo of someone else for all your “friends” that you do and don’t know from school to see. The best part is you won’t get in trouble for it because nobody knows you actually posted it. Here are a few responses we should have to this kind of gossip.
A few years ago we added the 6th graders and their families to our special infant baptism service mid-afternoon on Palm Sunday. In their confirmation class in the weeks prior, we explain that baptism is an act of God through the grace offered by our Lord Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit, and then we invite them to experience it in a new way.
Let’s be honest: not many of us have degrees in counseling, but over and over again we walk with students that need to be heard, healed, or saved, and it all begins with, “can we talk?” Here’s my 10 Starbucks counseling basics. They are not all inclusive, and I’m sure you have others… but it’s a start.
There are numerous companies that have wonderful experiences that your group just can’t attend. By planning your own trip you can save a lot of money so more students can attend and it allows you to know what content the students will be learning. Here are five simple steps to planning any youth trip.
