5 Practical Things you can do to have a Healthy and Relevant Youth Program Webinar PowerPoint

Webinar - Get Real-Youth Ministry for the 21st Century from Warren Bevacqua

Great Youth Ministry Websites

Here are just a few web sites for adult youth works / parents of youth to check out.

Youth Ministry Exchange
By youth workers and for youth workers, YMX is the place to discuss all things youth ministry, with thousands of threads on every imaginable subject. Some sections are free, but a $5 annual pass gets you access to the whole thing—and it’s totally worth it.

The Source for Youth Ministry
Jonathan McKee started this site (formerly Jonathan’s Resources) as a labor of love for youth workers. Chock full of free resources and ideas (the game section alone is amazing).

The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding
This website, from CPYU founder Walt Mueller, is really for parents, but youth workers find it extremely helpful. It’s loaded with blogs, articles, links to relevant stories, and more resources than you can imagine to help you learn about youth culture

YouthMinistry.Com
When Group Publishing partnered with Doug Fields’s Simply Youth Ministry, they resurrected this long-dormant domain to create a new site, distinct from their two other sites. They’re just beginning to move from a commerce-only site to a content-and-commerce site.

Youth Specialties  

Truly my favorite for all things concerning youth ministry, with thousands of pages of articles, ideas, and free stuff—plus the most comprehensive youth-ministry job bank anywhere (with over 700 listings at any time).

Division of Ministrywith Young People (DMYP)

This is the United Methodist General Church’s web site for youth and young adults. It features youth ministry that is happening globally and how your local church can get involved.

Resource Review: What Did I Sign Up For?

As summer winds down it's a perfect opportunity to do some practical training for your youth mentors and/or volunteers. A great resource that I found to do this is a program called "What Did I Sign Up For?" By Chris Folmsbee. To help you better understand the program I've highlighted the pros and cons that this program has to offer.

Pros

It’s Systematic - What I mean by that is that it deals with training in a very logical step-by-step way. It sets the foundation for learning and gives some practical and programming ideas that can be easily employed by any size youth or young adult program.

It's Interactive - This program is DVD based with the author actually leading the sessions. Each session is not too long and can easily be incorporated into a regular volunteer meeting throughout the year.

It's Makes the Training Relevant to your Situation - a lot of training programs that I have reviewed and used don't take into consideration that every church is different. This one does. And if I might add, does it quite well. It allows you to take the concepts that are thought and helps you process what you're learning and what it will look like in your particular context.

Cons

It's Too Long - if I have one complaint about this program is that it is way too long. Unless you were doing this as a retreat, it will take you nearly half the year to go through this program. You can take bits and pieces of the program but to get the full impact of what it has to teach you really need to do the whole program. However, the 20 sessions that it requires I believe is too long for most volunteers.

Conclusion

I would definitely recommend this program even though it’s long in length. The principles it teaches and the way it helps you relate it back to your specific situation is great. There is another bonus as well, it's not that expensive. So if you're looking for instances way to train your nervous volunteers and/or mentors I would highly recommend this program. If your church is within the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, you can borrow the program from our resource center Discovery Place (discovery-place.org)

Some Thoughts on Youth Leadership

This week I am teaching the leadership camp and the topics that I then asked the: is "Attitude. " it got me thinking about other important aspect youth leadership. And here are just a couple of things to keep in mind:

Lead with Optimism

Teaching students to see a future of what could be, not necessarily the painful road of difficulty to get there. They need to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. this will help them in problem solving said that when roadblocks occur (and they always will), they will be prepared to face them positively.

Build Fun Into Everything

I love to have fun! Everyone enjoys having a good time. Teaching students that leading can be fun and not boring, will energize them and attract more youth to enter leadership roles. don't forget, God created us to laugh, so let’s have some fun.

   

Conflict Leads to Peace

Difficult conversations need to happen – if they don’t , something small will inevitably grow into something significant and potentially rectifying.  I have done this well and I have also done this poorly. So by all means don't avoid conflict, you will not like the outcome.

By the way, if you're looking for a good leadership training curriculum for your youth. Check out Leadership Lab. Below is a you tube video that explains it in more detail.

I highly recommend this program and hope it will help you train the next generation of leaders for the church.

5 Must Read Books Concerning Young People's Ministry

If you are new to Young People's or have been involved in Young People's ministry for a long time these 5 books would hope you understand young people and their culture, as well as, develop a well-rounded plan for ministry with young people.

1.  “Almost Christian” by Kenda Creasy Dean – A statistical look at the development of faith for millenials and those to follow. Interesting points on faith differences between generations.
2.  “Sustainable Youth Ministry” by Mark DeVries – Consistency makes a huge difference for youth, and avoiding burnout by building a sustainable ministry begins with introspection of yourself as a leader.
3.  “Safe Sanctuaries” by Joy Thornurg Melton – Building safe space for ministry to happen means lessons for adult leaders as well as your church as a whole. A must have!
4.  “You Lost Me” by David Kinnaman – An exploration of why young people are leaving mainline denominations in the US and rethinking their faith. This one is perhaps most powerful when thinking about youth after they have left youth ministry (whether via graduation, moving, or choice).
5.  “Sticky Faith” by Kara Powell Brad Griffin – This original concept has grown into a full-blown resource with several different print versions and online offerings, and is associated with the Fuller Youth Institute. Combination of resources for youth workers and parents.