Tag Archives: Youth Ministry

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8 Reasons Why I Love Summer Church Camp

Summer is here, and with it come a busy schedule of church camp!

Church camp is one of my favorite aspects of youth ministry.  It’s busy.  It’s exhausting.  It’s long.  But it’s extremely effective and incredible fun.

Rock Garden Christian Camp

One of the drawbacks to spending so much of my summer at camp is that it takes me away from my wife and kids.  That means that Heather is at home with all five kids, on her own for a while.  But she and I both realized the importance of camp and the boost it can be to youth ministry.  So it’s a sacrifice we are both willing to make.  On the plus side, our camp is only seven miles from our home, so they can come down and hang out every day if they wanted to.

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The Difference Between Purpose, Vision, and Mission

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

I believe that it is crucial to define exactly what youth ministry is all about.  When we establish some parameters, it can move us on dramatically toward realizing success for the Kingdom and the Church.  It can give us direction.

Compass and Binoculars

As I struggled to define my ministry early in my career, I had a rough time.  I was taught what to do in my youth ministry classes, but there was very little discussion on the why or the how to do it.

It took me several years to figure out some of those things.  After many ministry experiences, some good and some not so good, I developed a concise philosophy of ministry.  I sat down and wrote out the reasons why I do youth ministry the way I do it.  I detailed what I thought were key ingredients in my ministry, and dug in deep to discover why they were so important. Finally, I had a definitive statement that described why I did things they way I did, but I was still missing a very important piece of the puzzle.  Why was I doing ministry at all?

So I decided I needed to figure that out.  And that was tougher than I thought it would be.  Do I need a Purpose Statement?  Or a Mission Statement?  Or a Vision Statement?

I found out that the answer is yes.

On the one hand, I need to be more broad.  A philosophy of ministry helps me see the details and specifics of my ministry, while I need to develop the big picture.  But on the other hand, I need to get very specific, and determine what ministry, my ministry, looks like.

Many people talk about mission, and vision, and purpose.  But not many people understand what these things are.  These three words get thrown around a lot and are used interchangeably by a lot of people.  But there are some key differences.

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Foundations Of Youth Ministry

I’ve been in youth ministry for over twenty years now.  And in the world of youth ministry, that is a long time.

Foundations of Youth Ministry

Over the course of two decades, I’ve learned a lot.  I’ve learned a lot of things that they never taught me in my youth ministry courses in college.  I’ve had to establish a lot of things to help me out.  Things like a solid vision for my ministry, a strategy for implementing that vision, the answers to the questions, what, why, and how.

I’m not suggesting that I’ve figured it all out.  I am saying that I’ve put together some tools, and tweaked them over the years.  They seem to work for me in the ministries I’ve been a part of.  Maybe they’ll work for you; or at least give you some ideas on how to develop your own.

This post will serve as a landing page for the entire series as I write them.  I’m looking forward to this series, and I hope you are too.

I will continue to add ideas here as I think of them, and write articles covering each of these topics.  If there is something you’d like to see covered, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments!

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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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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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Benefits 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!

One thing I’m convinced is necessary in youth ministry is student involvement. Several years ago, youth ministry could be a one-man show, with the youth minister as the main star. I’m not so sure how effective it really was, but it seemed to be the main trend in youth work for quite a while.

Youth with hands up

In order for a ministry to student to be effective today, the students have to be involved, not only in the life of the youth ministry, but in the greater church as well.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing about this necessity. Today, I’ll address some of the benefits of involving student in the life of the church. My next post in the youth ministry category will take a look at some of the dangers and challenges. And the third part of the series will look at some examples from my ministry, both successful and unsuccessful.

Benefits of Involving Students In The Life Of The Church