Favorite worship resources: We get great feedback on my book Enjoy the Silence. It gets kids meditating on Scripture and gives them a chance to carve out space for God. ExperientialWorship.com has a lot of free stuff and great ideas.

Best mission trip organizations: The Pittsburgh Project, Urban Promise, Center for Student Missions and Son Servants. All four do a good job of getting kids on the ground, among people, hands on. They also really emphasize community building.

Duffy is part of the faculty at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, a frequent speaker at youth ministry conferences and contributor to YouthWorker Journal. He's the author of Youth Ministry that Works (Victor) and This Way to Youth Ministry (Zondervan).

GINNY OLSON

Best curriculum to prepare college students for ministry: Rob Bell's Nooma films stir up great discussion and stay on students' minds long after they've seen them.

Best books able to resonate with all ages: Imaginative Prayer for Youth Ministry by Jeannie Oestreicher and Larry Warner, Sacred Space by Dan Kimball and Lilly Lewin and Contemplative Youth Ministry by Mark Yaconelli. One youth worker took her church through centering prayer and told about how people started weeping. Another talked about taking her kids through a labyrinth and how one middle school girl who's ADHD felt like she could finally focus as she prayed.

Favorite books about adolescence: Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a well-researched tome on adolescent development. His inclusion of different cultural perspectives makes it critical for ministry in this day and age. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith. When you read it, you can't help but ponder the implications for how we're ministering to and with youth and their families.

Best enduring adolescent book for girls: Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher and Ruth Ross.

Best book for new, desperate youth ministers: Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry by Doug Fields. For many, it's the life preserver that keeps them afloat until they can learn to swim.

Best youth culture book: Doug Rushkoff's Playing the Future: What We Can Learn from Digital Kids. When it came out in the mid-90s, he was prophetic about the impact of the digital age on children. I still go back to it to learn from his perspective on adolescents and culture.

Best book about ministry leadership: The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Age. Editor J. Thomas Wren has gathered a wonderful compilation of short essays which introduce various theories of leadership and explore how it's been practiced throughout the generations.