Category Archives: Youth Ministry

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My Current Philosophy Of Ministry

This post is part of the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series.  Check out the rest of the series!

A couple of days ago, I wrote an article on Why You Need To Develop A Philosophy of Ministry.

In that post I discussed four things that having a philosophy of ministry will help you with:  effectiveness, passion, organization and intentionality.

Open Bible

Today, I’d like to share with you my current philosophy of ministry.  This is always open to change for me, because I want to make sure that my philosophy grows with me as I grow.  Here is my most recent version:

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Why You Need To Develop A Philosophy Of Ministry

This post is part of the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series.  This is the first post in the series.  Check out the rest of the series!

A philosophy of ministry is one of the most important pieces of the youth ministry puzzle.

This simple document is foundational to developing a solid youth ministry.

But what, exactly, is a philosophy of ministry?

The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle

Simply put, it’s a brief description of why you do ministry the way you do it.  It’s not what you do in ministry.  That’s your vision and purpose.  It’s not how you do ministry.  That’s your strategy.  The philosophy of ministry states the why behind it all.

Why do you do what you do?  I think that’s a pertinent question for us to ask, no matter what flavor of ministry we may be involved in.  Why do we do it.  The answer to that question can help you become more effective in your ministry role, as well as more passionate, more organized and more  intentional.

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The Battle: Rise Of Darkness

Our church is performing a pretty extensive evangelistic drama this week.

It’s called The Battle:  Rise of Darkness.  And it’s incredibly bold and creates and atmosphere where people are faced with the reality of life, death and eternity.

The Battle: Rise Of Darkness

Here’s the concept:  The Battle has several scenarios.  In each of these scenes, someone dies.  Sometimes it’s several people that die.  All of a sudden, they are in the presence of Christ, and whether they enter heaven or are cast into hell depends on how they lived their life.

With several scenes portraying different tragedies, this drama is a major dose of the spiritual reality that we often ignore.  Some of the include a car accident, a gang fight, a robbery gone bad, an earthquake, a plane crash, and a young child who gets a hold of a gun.

Like I said, it’s pretty intense.

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Four Things I Love About Youth Trips (That You Should Too)

I’m headed out on a weekend trip with some of the teens from our church this weekend.

I’m taking some of the guys from our youth group and we are going to a weekend retreat hosted by Ozark Christian College.  It’s called Deeper Life.

Deeper Life At Ozark Christian College

It’s a pretty simple concept.  They host high school students on campus for the weekend and provide main sessions with incredible worship and a challenging message.  There will be an array of inspiring workshops to choose from, as well as some awesome fun.  They house us in the dorms with the students and feed us in the school’s cafeteria (read into that what you will…).

All this for $25!  Not too bad.

For this particular weekend, we didn’t have any girls sign up.  So this will be just a guy’s weekend.  We’ll be able to do a couple of fun things while we’re out.  We plan on heading down to see if we can see the Spook Light.  Probably not, but we’ll try.  We’ll also try to fit in a few hunts for geocaches.  (If you’ve never tried geocaching, you need to do it right away!  Excellent fun!)

I love weekend get-away like this.  Here are four reasons.

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Real Life Examples Of Involving Students In The Life Of The Church

This post is part of the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series. Check out the rest of the series!

I’ve been examining the concept of involving students in the life of the greater church body recently.  This is something I’ve determined to be crucial in keeping students involved in church throughout their lives.  Simply put, when people feel like they are owners of a ministry, they are much more likely to remain committed to that ministry.

Electric Plug

In this series, I’ve examined several different aspects of this idea.  I started off with a look at the many benefits of involving students in church.  That was followed by some of the challenges you may face in doing so.  Most recently, I wrote about the biblical precedent for this type of ministry.

Today, I want to give you a peek at a couple of examples from my ministry experience.  These are people who I’ve taught and mentored in my various youth ministries.  And I can’t take any credit for any of these successes.  God did the work; I just happened to be there to watch.  But I do feel responsible for the unsuccessful story below.  I’m not sure what else I could have done, but it didn’t work out like I desired.

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A Scriptural Basis For Involving Students In The Life Of The Church

This post is part of the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series. Check out the rest of the series!

I’m convinced that involving students in the larger church body is essential to keeping them involved in church for the long haul.  I think that there are many benefits, although there are a few challenges to the process as well.

Open Bible

I also believe that there is a biblical basis for this type of ministry.  I could mention the fact that David was selected for leadership at a very young age, or the possibility that many of the disciples were very young.

But I think it goes deeper than that.  I think that there is scriptural support for involving teens in all aspects of the church’s ministry.  Here’s why.

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Challenges Of Involving Students In The Life Of The Church

This post is part of the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series. Check out the rest of the series!

I recently wrote about the benefits of involving students in ministry.

Sign - Risk

In that post, I described five of the main benefits I’ve discovered in plugging students into the ministry of the larger church body.

But there are also challenges to this.  Some might call them the dangers of involving students.

Here are some of the biggest challenges that I’ve experienced.