Youth leader, what is your passion? What is it that makes you endure drama, politics, the “mess” of ministry to week after week, pour into these students? If I had 50 youth leaders in a room and asked those questions, I would have many different answers. That is OK. God […]
Guest Post From Rick Lawrence…
Editor’s Note: This post is in conjunction with the release of Rick’s new book – Skin in The Game. The following is an excerpt… Jesus Wants Your Skin In the Game By Rick Lawrence There He is again, playing a game of verbal “Battleship” with the Pharisees in the temple […]
Healthy Youth Leaders : Learn
In the last post in this series, we looked at what it means to be a healthy youth leader. The first element of youth leader health is a willingness to learn. I am not necessarily talking about college or seminary. There are some great programs and resources out there that […]
A Unique Fundraising Idea
I have a fundraising idea that’s a bit out of the box. I’ll warn you that it is not conventional. It’s not exactly easy either. But, if done right, it could net your youth group a good amount of money and cost you almost nothing to do it. Willing to […]
An Early Christmas Gift for SBC Pastors…
Christmas is coming, you are decorating the trees that are in your churches, hanging lights, and putting up the nativity set. We all know that there may be a lot of new faces (or ones we only see a couple times a year) at church on Christmas Sunday. Many churches […]
A Youth Ministry Prayer for Today
“Be still and know that I am God – Psalm 46:10” In our society we have a hard time slowing down, to relax , to wait. We want it our way and right now. STOP IT. Just sit here and rest in the next sentence. God is. That’s it. Not […]
On Suffering
For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. Philipians 1:29-30 One of the biggest questions […]
A New Perspective on Budgets
So, I’ve been away from MinistryPlace.net for a while. It was sort of by choice. You see, I’ve had a lot of changes in the past few months. We had a new baby. I moved six hours away. I started my senior pastor position in Illinois. I began my work […]
A Simple Approach to Youth Ministry Budgets…
Its that time of the year again!! Time to start looking at next year’s budget. I know some of you are asking “what’s a budget?”, I will get into that in a future post. Preparing a budget seems to be a necessary evil of Youth Ministry, but here are a […]
Teen Devotion Ideas
One of the largest challenges in youth ministry is keeping students growing in their faith. One of the tools we have available to help in this area are daily devotions to help students think through having a daily time focused on prayer and God’s word. Here are some great resources […]
Bible Study Tools I Use…
If you are just starting out in ministry, you have a few great advantages that those before you have not enjoyed. One of those advantages is the Bible study tools available to you. When I started in Youth Ministry 14 years ago, we were just starting to drift out of […]
10 Blogs to Watch If You’re a Youth Worker…
I have been blessed to be around some folks that are smarter and more experienced than I am in the last several years. That can cause you to learn and can keep you humble. Some of them regularly blog. Here are 10 blogs that you can glean some great things […]