The common belief that the average youth ministry has failed to prepare students for their faith to survive in college has been challenged recently.  All the stats about the massive percentages of students who will leave the faith after high school… might not be due to the university experience but might be more about how…

This might seem a bit odd but something arrived in my inbox that I wanted to react to. It was advertising resources for churches to use that are based on the next summer blockbuster.  It was not even a “Christian film”. What happens when we base sermons on a Hollywood movie?  What about doing that…

I had the opportunity to preach at our cathedral church on the 5th of May.  They have posted the sermon online for listening HERE

The Gospel Coalition talks including the workshops are all available online now.  My workshop can be found at GCYM:Jesus Mission to the Next Generation and great messages by many excellent speakers can be found at TGC Conference Media. Enjoy!

In the workshop I suggested that Gospel Centered Youth Ministry: 1. Recognizes that how we do ministry impacts whether or not students will plug into the church in the future. 2. Teaches students how to be the body of Christ, the church. 3. Looks to scripture to inform how we make disciples. It is incredibly…

For years I thought I had an unchanging message to proclaim in a rapidly changing culture. I thought I had license to do ministry however I saw fit. This worked great with my innovator instinct as a youth pastor.  However, I have come to believe otherwise.  It’s time to explore the second reality I shared…

Several realities should shape our pursuit of Gospel Centered Youth Ministry.  Due to the brevity of this workshop, I only have time to dive into two.  They are both facts.  One is observable in experience and the other is observable in scripture. I’ll unpack the first one here and then the second one in a…

An awkward question… I raised this in the workshop without time to really reflect on it.  The question is this: Where in the life of a teenager does a team, a club, or a school do something irrelevant in order to attract students to their purpose?  My friend Ken Moser points out that in his…

The result of the training that was so common in the late 80’s and into the 90’s and the need to produce “results” contained some unintended consequences.  My first several years of ministry revolved around efforts to attract and retain. I had the advice of a guy on our staff who had previously been a…

I confessed that my circumstances as a rookie youth minister led me to fall into several traps that have been common amongst youth pastors for decades.  Having been hired by a mega church as a rookie straight out of college, I was way over my head.  Given that no young guy wants to fail in…