There are zillions of activities, games, curricula, resources and methods youth workers can use; but which are really the best? To find out, we asked nine youth ministry veterans to pick their “Best of the Best.”

DAN KIMBALL
Favorite commentaries to prepare youth Bible studies: The NIV Application Commentary and Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Both are rich with study and applications that you can transfer to the lives of teenagers. Youth who have grown in up in churches have heard a lot of Bible lessons, but most never have heard about the cultural contexts and  reasons for what was going on behind the stories.
Favorite small-group Bible study materials for youth: The Life Application Bible Study Series that goes through various books of the Bible.
Best youth ministry books: Mark Oestreicher’s Youth Ministry 3.0 goes into a history of youth ministry and frames the context of why we do what we do today in youth ministry. I also highly recommend Chap Clark’s Hurt to understand youth deeper.
The book every youth worker needs to live out: Too Busy Not to Pray by Bill Hybels. Youth ministry can be consuming, so we need to take heed of this book’s message.
Favorite youth culture resources: CPYU.org and Entertainment Weekly to track movies, television and what’s popular in our culture.
Best youth culture resource: Youth! Ask them questions and learn directly from them about what influences their own cultural understanding.
The leadership book new youth workers need to read: Developing the Leaders Around You by John Maxwell. If youth workers don’t see a primary function of their role to be building teams of youth leaders, they can burn out and get overworked.
Favorite book for developing shepherding gifts in people: Henri Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus.
Best worship band to connect with youth: David Crowder—his music always seems to connect lyrically and musically. Knowing his heart as a worship leader makes his music all the more credible.
Best thing to teach youth how to worship: Move from only singing and teaching to more interactive ways of worship. Youth have different temperaments, which reflect different learning and worship styles.
Favorite Internet resources for youth ministry: The Youth Specialties Web site and Jonathan McKee’s site TheSource4YM.com.
Favorite youth ministry conference: The Youth Specialties conference is still the one I feel is broadest and hits so many topics. I also encourage youth workers to go to non-youth ministry conferences for their own spiritual development.

Before he planted Vintage Faith Church in California, Dan was as a high school pastor. He’s the author of  Sacred Space: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Multisensory Worship Experiences for Youth Ministry (Youth Specialties). Dan is a Contributing Editor to YouthWorker Journal.

DUFFY ROBBINS
Favorite curriculum for developing teens’ appetite for Scripture: Barry Shafer’s inductive Bible study materials (see: InWord.org/unleashing.html).
Best youth curriculum: Life Hurts, God Heals by Doug Fields, John Baker and Megan Hutchinson. It’s very honest and authentically addresses some really tough issues.
Best game resources: Youth Specialties Ideas books and Play It! by Wayne Rice and Mike Yaconelli.
Favorite resource for initiative games: The resources from Project Adventure.
Best discussion starters: The 36 Parables DVDs. They utilize a lot of different learning activities. Also one of my books with Helen Musick, Everyday Object Lessons–we get a ton of great feedback on it; it’s very user-friendly and gets kids into the text.
Best youth ministry book: Mark DeVries’ Family Based Youth Ministry. It’s well-researched, down to earth, and grounded in great theology.
Best youth culture books: Hurt by Chap Clark; Walt Mueller’s books, Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture or Opie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Where Faith, Family and Culture Collide. Chap and Walt are always thoughtful and reflect sound theology. They’ve done their homework. David Wells has written a series of books on culture at large. The most recent one is Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. It’s not a light read; but it’s good, solid, theological thinking that brings in culture and history.
Youth culture books not read enough: The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel and Church and Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith by Shane Hipps. We don’t reflect enough on what the digital universe does for us. It’s part of everything. It impacts how we think and live. Paul Hiebert’s book Missiological Implications of Epistemological Shifts: Affirming Truth in a Modern-Postmodern World is brilliant. It helps people understand the flaws of postmodernism, the weaknesses of modernism and to understand a third way.
Favorite resource for staying in touch with youth culture: CPYU.org
Best ministry management book: Management Essentials for Christian Ministries. It’s thoughtful and theologically based. They’ve researched widely.
Best youth ministry leadership books: Youth Ministry Management Tools by Ginny Olson, Diane Elliot and Mike Work and Leadership 101: An Interactive Leadership Development Guide for Students by Denise Van Eck.
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.
Favorite book to teach leadership classes: In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri J. Nouwen. He explores the shadow side of leadership and guides the reader toward redemption.
Favorite mission trip organization: Center for Student Missions (CSM) because of its long-term commitments to the neighborhoods they serve. Long after groups have gone home, CSM is building relationships with the local ministries.

Ginny is Co-Director of North Park University’s Center for Youth Ministry Studies. She’s the author of Teenage Girls: Exploring Issues Adolescent Girls Face and Strategies to Help Them. Ginny is a contributor to YouthWorker Journal.

MARK DEVRIES
Best youth curriculum: Dare to Share’s Gospel Journey Maui. It creates incredible discussions and is brilliantly produced. It gets kids engaged and thinking, regardless of theological assumptions.
Best game resource: Great Group Games: 175 Boredom-Busting, Zero-Prep Team Builders for All Ages by Susan Ragsdale and Ann Saylor. It’s really helpful—no-prep games with processing questions that launch back to community.
Best practical youth ministry book: Doug Fields’ First Two Years in Youth Ministry. It’s solid and a great introduction to stuff that every youth worker ought to know.
Most thought-provoking youth ministry books: Kenda Creasy Dean’s Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church and The Godbearing Life. If you like to stretch your mind and think about youth ministry, there’s no one who does that like Kenda.
Best books about ministry leadership: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box by the Arbinger Institute. Though it’s directed at businesses, those principles carry over. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni is a business book written as a story with leadership principles embedded within.
Favorite mission trip organization: Amor Ministries. Its builds a “house in a box” in Mexico; 15 kids can build a house in a week and feel like they’re doing something important.
Favorite conference for youth: The Great Escape by Youth Conference Ministries. It’s a junior high conference that becomes the entry point for our kids into the youth ministry.

Mark is the founder of Youth Ministry Architects, a consulting team that helps build sustainable youth ministries and increase the longevity of professional youth workers. He’s also author of Sustainable Youth Ministry (IVP) and contributor to YouthWorker Journal.

CHRIS FOLMSBEE
Most effective youth curriculum: Echo the Story. The curriculum is designed to take the participants through an overview of the entire redemptive arc of the Bible through storying, a process based on an applied learning model. It’s learner-centered and allows for the imagination of students to be deeply engaged through guided questions, reflection and journaling.
Best youth Bible study: The Way of Pilgrimage, because of the “liturgy of meeting” that each session includes. The Welcoming, Noticing, Moving from Head 2 Heart, Naming and Blessing, and Sending Forth segments are a great framework for guiding students into spiritual formation.
Favorite youth ministry book: The Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster book, The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry because of its emphasis on youth workers becoming spiritual directors to youth as opposed to recreation directors. This book is deeply theological and socially aware.
Best youth culture book: Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture by Jon Savage. Savage describes how the western world started using the term teenager and what major world events played a role in shaping today’s youth culture.
Best book to be in every leader’s library: Leading Change by John Kotter. Youth ministry is in constant change, and youth workers need a strategic plan when implementing change. This book gives an eight-step plan for leading people through change, whether that change is wanted. It’s packed with great insights on vision casting, encouraging teams and managing transitions.
Best Internet resource for youth workers: Barefoot Ministries, because the subscription-based Web site is very inexpensive. It has more than 10 lines of curriculum and a tracking assistant that acts as an administrative assistant to care for students, event logistics and fundraising efforts. This subscription also dumps daily devotionals and engaging articles in your inbox and has a widget that develops a weekly plan for the subscriber, minimizing the time spent planning and maximizing the time spent building relationships with students, adult leaders and parents.
Favorite conference for youth: A weeklong event called Merge. Merge is a creative learning experience that inspires high school students to merge with God’s story, way of life and mission. Merge uses creative storytelling, art and media, group discussion and interactive experiences to engage the mind, heart and soul of the participant. It helps students discover their identities and callings in life. It focuses on God’s mission to restore the world as opposed to humanity’s often misguided and selfish mission.

Chris is the Director of Barefoot Ministries, a non-profit youth ministry training and publishing company. He’s the author of Story, Signs and Sacred Rhythms: A Narrative Approach to Youth Ministry and a contributor to YouthWorker Journal.

MARK OESTREICKER
Favorite youth Bible study: Barry Shafer’s inductive Bible study materials (see: InWord.org/unleashing.html).
Favorite Bible study for teens to do themselves: Dave Ambrose’s Chew on This.
Favorite teen devotional: Everything Counts, Steve Case’s spin on Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest.
Favorite game resources: The Ideas Library CD-ROM because it’s so wonderfully searchable, and Jonathan McKee’s Web site TheSource4YM.com, which is an excellent free resource.
Best youth ministry books: Chap Clark’s Hurt because it put words to much of what I was seeing in teenagers. Eric Venable’s A Tale of Two Youth Workers: A Youth Ministry Fable was deeply profound in its simple, yet counter-intuitive suggestions.
Favorite youth culture resources: Walt Mueller’s stuff is indispensable—CPYU.org and Youth Culture 101. The research coming out of The Fuller Youth Institute is like stumbling onto a pot of gold. Christian Smith’s Soul Searching caused me to re-think many things.
Best worship activity: Planned silence. Nothing like giving kids a question or prayer to wrestle with and some intentional space in which to listen for the still, small voice of God.
Most trusted mission trip organization: Adventures in Missions. It has a deeply intentional approach to responsible missions culturally, fiscally, theologically and practically.
Curriculum products Mark was most proud of during his tenure at Youth Specialties: The Justice Mission and Good Sex 2.0. Both are deeply engaging for teenagers and provide excellent tools for youth workers to teach biblical concepts on challenging subjects.

Mark is the former President of Youth Specialties, an expert on middle school ministry and author of Youth Ministry 3.0. He recently launched a Youth Ministry Coaching Program, a year-long coaching plan focusing on whole-life development and youth ministry issues. Mark is a columnist for YouthWorker Journal.

JONATHAN McKEE
Favorite resource for discussion starters: The Movie Clip Discussions page at TheSource4YM.com. This page constantly is updated with new discussions. These free write-ups provide small-group questions, a relevant Scripture passage and a wrap-up talk.
Best epic youth ministry guide: Doug Fields’ Purpose Driven Youth Ministry.
Best youth culture resource to wade through the muck so you don’t have to: Walt Mueller’s CPYU.org. Walt provides a weekly glimpse of current media and trends and shares incredible insight as to how it will effect this generation.
Best ministry leadership books: Anything by John Maxwell (JohnMaxwell.com).
Best worship activity with youth: We had 100 kids lying on sleeping bags in a parking lot. A youth leader with a guitar walked around playing soft music while the students looked at the stars. The leader talked about the stars, planets and solar system and shared the fact that the Creator of the universe loves each of them and wants a relationship with them. Lying in their sleeping bags, facing the heavens, they all sang praises, thinking about a mighty Creator who loves them personally.
Best Internet resource for youth workers: TheSource4YM.com, because it’s free, updated almost daily, relevant and easy to navigate. It’s a one-stop shop for youth ministry, providing great youth culture insight, as well as resources to reach this rapidly changing generation.
Favorite youth conference that delivers year after year: Dare 2 Share’s evangelism training conference. Nothing makes a kid grow and wrestle with his or her own faith more than trying to share that faith with others.

Jonathan is President of The Source for Youth Ministry, which provides free resources and ideas for youth workers. He’s the author of The New Breed.

JIM BURNS
Favorite youth Bible studies: Simply Youth Ministry. Doug Fields is a great Bible study teacher; much of SYM’s material is what he’s done at Saddleback. I also like the way Gospel Light has reformatted the Uncommon Bible Studies in its new Bible study materials.
Best game products: The game books from Youth Specialties. They’re fun to play and watch. They’re usually not based on coordination or athletic ability but are just pure fun. The games are the best games youth workers already have used.
Best discussion starters: Talk Sheets by Youth Specialties. They make discussion very easy and the material is relevant to students. Author David Lynn is a therapist who was also a youth worker, and he gets it.
Must-read for every youth worker: Doug Fields’ Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. There’s never been another youth ministry book that has sold so well and impacted the field of youth ministry. PDYM was one of the first books on youth ministry to give an overall strategy that was written from a veteran youth worker who not only knows youth ministry but was doing it when he wrote the book.
Best youth culture books: Walt Mueller’s new book The Space Between: A Parent’s Guide to Teenage Development. Walt is one of the best to help us understand youth culture. He’s relevant and writes to help, not just to shock. His book, Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture was also helpful. Chap Clark’s Hurt was a classic for me, as well.
Best life-changing leadership books: Good to Great by Jim Collins and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Although not written from a Christian perspective, both develop a philosophy of leadership that’s easy to follow.
Favorite mission trip organizations: Youth World in Quito, Ecuador, is an organization made up of youth workers who do a wonderful job of giving students a life-changing experience. Also, the Mexicali Outreach group at Azusa Pacific University—I’ve participated and spoken at its spring break events. To watch thousands of students come together to worship and serve is incredible. The coming together of a large group for inspiration is combined with the opportunity for churches to minister in a specific community.

Founder and President of HomeWord, Jim has a heart for bringing help and hope to struggling families. He’s the author of several books, including Partnering with Parents in Youth Ministry. Jim is a contributor to YouthWorker Journal.

ANDREW ROOT
Favorite confirmation curriculum: A new one being created by Sparkhouse called Re:Form. It’s doing some cool stuff with media, but I’m not a huge curriculum person because I think the key to teaching is for the material to mean something to the teacher. It won’t matter to the students if it doesn’t have some kind of contextual connection for the teacher.
Favorite youth culture books: Thomas Hines’ The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager and Anthony Giddens’ Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. These provide some broad theoretical frames to think about youth culture and are accessible to youth workers.
Best ministry leadership book: Mark Devries Sustainable Youth Ministry offers a number of really helpful practical perspectives in this area.
Best worship activity for youth ministry: Prayer. I’ve been thinking more about how the prayers of the people may, because of their shared narrative shape, function as central for worship, maybe even more than preaching.
Favorite mission trip organization: YouthWorks! The people I know there are great. I think highly of them because of their desire to be really inclusive to broad traditions and denominational perspectives. They serve mainline and evangelical congregations, which is saying something in our cultural climate. Others should learn from them in how to do this.
Favorite grassroots blogs: The blogs of Jake Bouma, Dan Haugh and Matt Cleaver. They present what’s really going on practically on the ground, but do so by asking a number of interesting theoretical questions.
Favorite conferences for youth workers: The National Youth Workers Conventions offer something helpful. I’ve also done a lot with the Princeton Youth Ministry forums, which have been great in deepening the theological discussion on youth ministry. These are two really different events, but both have their place. At Luther Seminary, we’re starting some more interactive events called FirstThird. We invite people who are in the first third of life who think deeply about ministry to come and talk.

Andrew is a professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., contributor to YouthWorker Journal and author of several books, including his most recent The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church.