Posts Tagged ‘Focused Youth Ministry’

I’ve been spending time lately meeting with a youth pastor that works not to far from where I live. We’ve been talking about purpose and aligning all the “stuff” of youth ministry around a guiding purpose.

She’s still trying to figure out what the “big purpose” is that her group is called to run after. But she has been a lot more purposeful in planning each of their youth meetings, setting a goal for each night instead of just doing “what we always do.”

Last week she told me about a youth group activity she came up with to help reinforce the lesson from their Bible study. It was a simple idea, but I thought it was the best activity ever!

Read the rest of this entry »

Students are surrounded by endless activities and under pressure from every angle to perform flawlessly, constantly.

What really works me up is when the institutions that provide all these activities are so focused on themselves, they don’t have the time, energy or focus to give students what they really need.

And youth groups aren’t immune to this institutional selfishness.

Read the rest of this entry »

How does a mature Christian student look/act/smell? This is one of those questions that has been tossed around for ages. There are a lot of opinions out there. Wouldn’t it help if we had a solid answer?

Barna says that church leaders today struggle to define spiritual maturity. I wouldn’t doubt that. Spiritual maturity is a fuzzy concept, hard to specifically define and quantify. (Maybe it was never meant to be defined or quantified, just pursued…?)

Read the rest of this entry »

I had the opportunity to spend some time at the Dare 2 Share event in Chicago this weekend, and I had an incredible time. It was so encouraging to see teens get trained and even practice evangelism right there at the event, and to rub shoulders with some amazing youth pastors.

Props to Dare 2 Share and Greg Stier. Overall it was an amazing event. But I believe D2S missed a big opportunity to help youth pastors be even more effective.

Read the rest of this entry »