When I started my job, I inherited a student leadership team that was elected through a popularity contest. As a result, the team was one giant clique, interested far more in what they wanted than in what was best for our youth ministry.
After...
What the book's about: Godbearing Life is a classic book in youth ministry. In it, Kenda Creasy Dean & Ron Foster discuss, as it's subtitle suggests, "the art of soul tending for youth ministry." Published in 1998, it's withstood the...
Every Monday night, my high school students run a program for refugee kids called Kids Club. Each week, what the kids look most forward to is snacks.
When it comes to Kids Club snacks, we have one rule: Everyone gets exactly the same thing.
That's...
Recently, my senior pastor had our staff watch Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action . The basic gist of Simon’s talk is that if you want people to follow you, you’ve got to tell them why you’re doing what you’re doing. You’ve...
I am a big believer in the power of experiential learning. To this end, instead of giving a talk about prayer, I'd much rather create a series of prayer stations designed to give students the opportunity to pray in a variety of ways.
Over the...
As he dipped his fingers into a bowl of rice and beans, one of my students whined, "Why do you always have to mess with our food?"
At the time he made this comment, this student, along with the rest of our mission team, was busy participating in a...
As I mentioned last week, one benefit of taking the summer off is that it gives leaders the time to invest in other things. One of the things I routinely invest in during the summer is our youth ministry’s space.
Roughly every other year, we hold...
Earlier this week, Josh posted a poll about taking the summer off saying, “I’m not talking about changing it up a bit in the summer, I’m talking about largely taking the summer off.”
My youth ministry definitely falls into the category of “largely...
Yesterday, I talked about how to use positive reinforcement to handle disruptive students. I wrote this post in response to a question posed on an online youth ministry forum I'm a part of: “How do you handle disruptive students during a lesson or...
Recently, someone posted this question to an online youth ministry forum I'm a part of: “How do you handle disruptive students during a lesson or sermon?”
One of the most helpful ways I've learned to “handle disruptive students” is actually...