Ministry with Kids, Students, Young Adults, and Parents
Two and a half years ago we shifted our young adult ministry strategy to one more like church planting, a “church within a church.” After using a more “integrative approach” for 8 years, I realized that we just weren’t reaching our potential. I did a little local research and found that there are over 5000 young adults […]
For the the first 8 years of my ministry as the youth and young adults pastor in our congregation of about 1400 total active people, we focused primarily on congregational integration by getting college students to our Sunday worship services. They enjoyed our contemporary worship, the preaching […]
Building a great team is vital to building a great ministry with kids. This post is part of a series of posts exploring tangible ways to build a great children’s ministry team. The last two posts were about key roles you’ll need on your team and various teams you’ll need in your ministry. This post is about determining how many people you really need in those roles. […]
Building a great team is vital to building a great ministry with kids. This post is part of a series of posts exploring tangible ways to build a great children’s ministry team. The last post was about key roles you’ll need on your team. This post is about additional teams that are helpful to have within your larger ministry. Some teams are vital to your ministry with kids. […]
We’ve put together a handbook for all the leaders and staff in NextGen Ministries at our church. While every church is different in scope, size,Read More
It can be really hard to tell if you’re #winning as a small group leader. Showing up week after week to lead sometimes seemingly meaningless discussions onlyRead More
Four Things that DON’T Grow Your Youth Group 4. Fun Games It’s fun to play games at church or youth group. In fact, fun and laughterRead More
I’m convinced that there is a sequence to building a great small group experience. One step leads to the other. Unfortunately, many small group leaders,Read More
Over the years I’ve experimented with a variety of formats for running youth group. And, I see a lot of other people experimenting, as well. OfRead More
So for the last few months, I’ve been pushing a little harder to see our team put more energy into making sure that every student in ourRead More
Every year, this is how we plan our curriculum for the next year. It’s all laid out in advance but, of course, we make changes asRead More
Another thing we’re trying to develop is a better approach to helping our seniors transition to college. We now ask all our 12th grade smallRead More
What are we doing to help our students form a Sticky Faith? We Partner with Parents. Building a partnership with parents is vital to anyRead More
Our growth started reaching into a certain direction the last couple of months. But, it’s too much for us to handle well. So, we hadRead More
As our youth ministry has grown there have been a few things that we’ve had to let go. Some of them were difficult to letRead More
To help our small group leaders stay in control, we use simple a four step process for behavior management (4 R’s inspired by Josh Griffin’sRead More
There are probably a million little factors that contribute to the growth of any youth ministry ranging from the unilateral work of God to theRead More