Young People's Ministry - An Overview

This is the PowerPoint that I did for training session for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church

View more PowerPoint from Warren Bevacqua

Planning a Well-Rounded Youth Program

A lot of volunteer youth leaders struggle planning the "perfect" youth program. The issue is that a youth program doesn't have to be "perfect." It needs to have input from the youth involved, be well-rounded and be planned in advance. Here are a few tricks I learned to help me plan the best youth program at any size church.

Get Input from Youth - Youth are more likely to come and be involved in a youth program if they feel like they have had a hand in planning the program. An easy way to get their involvement is at the end of the school year or sometime in the summer you take a 3 x 5 note card and on the one side have the youth list three discussions/questions that they would like to discuss in the next year. This could be a thoughtful question or even a book of the Bible. On the other side of the 3 x 5 note card have them list 2 mission type events they would like to do and 2 fun events that they would like to do. (This will be important later.)

Make the Program Well-Rounded - Youth ministry to be successful and healthy needs to be well-rounded. What I mean by that is it needs to include discussion programs, mission activities and fun events. Having just one of those three can make it very one dimensional and what ends up happening is that you don't challenge the youth to grow spiritually, you don't teach them to reach out into their community and help others and you make it boring so that they choose to be involved other activities. I believe that you need all three: discussion programs, mission activities and fun events to make a youth program exciting and attractive for youth to choose to want to be involved.

Plan Ahead - A youth program cannot be successful without careful planning. I typically run a youth program during the school year (August - May). I will talk about summer youth programs in a future blog article. If you run your program during the school year, it follows the natural order of what youth are used to. So you might ask, "Where do we begin?" That’s easy! Remember those 3x5 note cards that you used to take input in from youth- use these as suggestions to craft a well-rounded program based on what ­ they want to do. You will begin to discover that there are common themes and program suggestions that will help guide you in the right direction. You won’t have to work as hard, and the youth will feel as though their input mattered.

As an extra bonus at the bottom of this blog article is a downloadable Word file that I use now to plan monthly what programs will be coming up. Fill free to use it and edit it to fit your own needs.

Youth Planning Worksheet

Social Media Passover Video

I got this from Jeremy Steele at Youth Ministry Geek. He thought it was funny, and so do I!

An Easter Message

Human ashes have been sprinkled into the sky from airplanes and spread over the ocean from ships.  But according to the Associated Press, Brian Kelly had something more glorious in mind.

In July 1994 Kelly, who lived in suburban Detroit, suffered complications from surgery on his intestines.  Knowing he was soon to die, Kelly told his family what he wanted done with his remains.  His request was unusual, but his family granted it.

Kelly’s boss, Mary McCavit, at Independence Professional Fireworks shop in Osseo, Michigan, rolled up Kelly’s ashes in a twelve-inch-round fireworks shell.  On Friday, August 12, at a convention of fireworks technicians near Pittsburgh, they shot that shell into the sky.  It trailed two silvery comet tails as it ascended into the night sky, and then it exploded into red and green stars.

If you want to go out in a glorious display, you have to admit, that is pretty spectacular.

But that’s nothing compared to the glory that God intends for the bodies of those who believe in Jesus Christ.  The glory of our resurrection bodies will far surpass that four-second arc of light and color.  There are those who believe there will be the awesome blare of the trumpet of God and the majestic voice of Jesus calling our bodies from the graves.  In glorious resurrection bodies like that of Jesus Christ himself, we will ascend into the clouds and meet the King of Kings whose brightness is like the lightning shining from east to west.  For ever and ever, Jesus said, we will “shine like the sun in the kingdom” of our Father.

However we meet Jesus, it surely will be amazing. I hope you have a great Easter as we once again Celebrate the Risen Christ!