When I think of youth ministry, I think of a grand and gracious adventure!

All of us in youth ministry have come to understand during the past two or three decades that we can't afford just to be doers. We have to be thinkers. To steal a metaphor from Jesus, only a fool begins to bu...

Authentic is one of the hot buzzwords in contemporary youth ministry, as in, "Like, Dude, we really want to be authentic."Overall, this is a good thing. Any discussion of leadership needs to include authenticit...

 I could hear the anxiety in the words on my voice mail. It was a former student, now serving as a youth worker in the New England region. His words were tinged with fatigue and a hint of mild exasperation...

Obsessed with cool. Trendy. Impulsive. Self-focused. Caught up in the moment. Probably sounds like a description of some of the kids in your youth group.Actually, um...well...this is not an article about youth ...

When Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to find a crew for what turned out to be his ill-fated voyage to Antarctica in 1915, he placed an ad in the Times of London which read: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Smal...

Deciding whether or not to leave a youth ministry position is perhaps the most difficult issue youth workers face. It's typically marked by gut-wrenching periods of soul-searching and cross-examination—co...

Popular wisdom of late has it that the way to build disciples is through relational ministry, through missions and service projects. Programming...sure, it keeps the fringe kids happy, but can it do more?Severa...

This article first appeared in the print journal, Fall 1990 Teenagers today pay a high price as they learn (if they learn) how to make ethical decisions. In Going to Extremes (Plume/Penguin Books), author Joe ...

If you’ve been in youth ministry for more than about 20 minutes, you probably already have a sneaking suspicion that kids have a lot of disposable income — and they seem predisposed to dispose...