This video that was put together recently by YouthSpecialties does a great job portraying the ministry of many youth workers.
HT: YouthSpecialties
Archives For Youth Ministry
As students transition from middle school to high school, it is a key time for a youth ministry to be very intentional about keeping students. That means that for middle school ministry there will be a new set of 6th graders coming in and a group of 8th graders heading out. These moments of transition can be scary and often are difficult; it is all too common to lose students as we try to transition them from one group to the next. Yesterday on Josh Griffin’s blog I posted 5 Ways We Encourage a Smooth Transition.
High School student leaders. As a part of our middle school ministry, we encourage some of our older high school students to attend some of the middle school retreats as leaders. Whenever we have high school students leading on retreats, the relationships that are built between the two groups is incredible. And because of this there are healthy relationships built with high schoolers and some natural promotion of high school events and programs.
Dual role volunteers. There are a few volunteers that spend time volunteering for both the middle school and high school ministries. This is great as it provides some familiar faces as students make the jump from one to the other. Because of the comfort of having a leader that you already know, I also try to make a point to join our high school team on a couple of retreats throughout the year.
To read the other 3 ways, read Josh’s post.
What do you do to encourage the transition between middle school and high school?
As I was in my final year of college, I began looking for an opportunity to get hired into a full-time youth ministry job. I was newly engaged and didn’t have a job with benefits, so not only did I want to find a job that fit my passions, but I also wanted to make sure that I didn’t end up a garbage man (nothing wrong with that vocation, just not for me). Thankfully, I was able to find a job at Trinity Lutheran Church in Clinton Twp; I was lucky enough that they were willing to hire a twenty-one year old guy about to finish school. I have obviously sinced moved on to a new job, but the process of applying, interviewing, and following up was a process that I’ll never forget. It took a lot of work and and time to try to make sure I came across as the best candidate and I thought it might be helpful to share what I learned for other people that might be looking for a job.
[This post is a part of the Technology in Youth Ministry series]
If you are leading a youth ministry, you are likely also utilizing some form of web technologies as a way to communicate with parents and students about your ministry. Oftentimes student ministries choose to have their own websites apart from the main church website, which allows for some extra flexibility and freedom when it comes to posting new information, sharing media, and making it “youth friendly.” Building a website can be a daunting task; from working with FTP servers, writing html code, and all kinds of other tasks that will hurt your brain. There are countless services and options that are available to make this easier for you; the following describes one option that we use when we build our websites.
Hosting. In order for your website to exist on the internet you have to have somebody that is willing to host it. Or more accurately, you have to pay someone to be your host. Often when you register for your domain nomain, you will do this through a company that also offers some kind of hosting. My favorite option for youth ministry hosting is Dreamhost; dreamhost actually offers free hosting for non-profits.
This is a video of our confirmation students affirming their faith using the words of the Apostles’ Creed.
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If you have ever considered a career in youth ministry, there are certain things that are absolutely necessary if that is going to happen for you. This post is not about specifically the hiring process, but more importantly about some of the specific things that are needed if you hope to get your name in the hat when a church is going through the hiring process. When I was in college I was fortunate enough to be a part of a student ministry that gave me incredible opportunities that shaped me as I tried to figure out the whole youth ministry thing. By the time I was done with college, I was “ready” to dive into full-time ministry. If you want to do youth ministry as a career, you will have to make some intentional choices about what you are doing and how you are going to gain experience, skills, and knowledge relevant to student ministry.
[This post is a part of the Technology in Youth Ministry series]
As tablet devices get more and more popular, there are also more people looking for ways to specifically utilize them for their ministry. Perhaps you are trying to justify buying the new iPad as a ministry expense or simply trying to find ways to use the device that you already own within your ministry. As the iPad continues to grow in popularity, the library of applications that are available continues to improve and therefore the amount of quality apps for ministry also continue to grow.
Starting last weekend and throughout this month, our middle school is working through a sermon series called “Grow Up.” This series is a part of XP3 Students produced by Orange. If you’ve been wondering why you havne’t seen teaching notes, I haven’t been posting them because several main ideas from the series is a part of the curriculum. There are times throughout the year that using produced curriculum is highly beneficial. As we are preparing for the summer season, I wanted to have a series that I could use that would also allow me some freedom creatively to begin thinking about summer events and retreat themes.
Market Colors is a new non-profit that is focused on seling hand-made products made in Africa. Poor people throughout the country that normally don’t have access to any market beyond the locals and missionaries passing through are being given an opportunity to support themselves and their families by giving their products a much larger market. One of my favorite things about buying something through market colors, which will start selling items this summer, is that you aren’t just buying a purse or a laptop case, but you are connecting yourselves to a story. It’s more than buying a product, you’re supporting someone who needs help supporting themselves and their family.
Confirmation is a tradition that has been common in many denomations for a long time. Students typically around the time of middle school go through a process of instruction about the core teachings of Christianity and some of the doctrines that make their denomination unique. The confirmation process primarily happens in denominations that practice infant baptism; at the end of their instruction process (maybe 1-3 years), the students make some sort of declaration of their faith and their desire to own their faith.
