The Complete Book Of Youth Ministry

Michael McGarry explores the foundation of youth ministry in the Old and New Testaments and brings that together with Church history in a compelling way. McGarry presents a thorough biblical framework to think about youth ministry as the church's expression of partnership with the family for co-evangelizing and co-discipling the next generation.

While most youth pastors are being regularly evaluated (or even scrutinized) for what they’re doing right now in the youth group, the reality is that the most important thing they are doing won’t actually be evident until much later. That’s because the biggest challenge for any youth ministry is helping teens embrace a whole-hearted devotion to God that lasts far beyond their years in the youth room. Unfortunately, much of youth ministry seems to be designed on the model of setting teenagers up for a “date” with God—a delightful evening that involves music, laughter, food, and light conversation. But what scripture calls us to is not a “one-night stand” with God, but a lifelong love of God that endures.Youth ministry educator and veteran, Duffy Robbins, offers youth workers a blueprint for building that kind of faith in teenagers. In this concise book, ideal for busy youth workers, they’ll be equipped to build a youth ministry that instills that lasting faith in its students.

What is youth ministry actually for? And does it have a future? Andrew Root, a leading scholar in youth ministry and practical theology, went on a one-year journey to answer these questions. In this book, Root weaves together an innovative first-person fictional narrative to diagnose the challenges facing the church today and to offer a new vision for youth ministry in the 21st century. Informed by interviews that Root conducted with parents, this book explores how parents' perspectives of what constitutes a good life are affecting youth ministry. In today's culture, youth ministry can't compete with sports, test prep, and the myriad other activities in which young people participate. Through a unique parable-style story, Root offers a new way to think about the purpose of youth ministry: not happiness, but joy. Joy is a sense of experiencing the good. For youth ministry to be about joy, it must move beyond the youth group model and rework the assumptions of how identity and happiness are imagined by parents in American society.

Think about sin and the cross—the way that salvation changes who we are and how God sees us. It’s a central part of our faith, and yet it’s one of the most confusing and difficult things to teach. Especially to a room full of teenagers. In Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, Andrew Root invites you along on a journey with Nadia—a fictional youth worker who is wrestling with how to present the cross to her own students in a meaningful way. Using Nadia’s narrative, along with his own insights, Root helps you reimagine how the cross, sin, and salvation can be taught to students in a way that leads them to embrace a lifestyle that chases after Jesus, rather than creating teenagers who just try to “be good.”

The ultimate resource for powerful youth ministry! Backed by the proven experience of youth minister Ron Luce, Revolution YM: Training Youth Specialists for High-Impact Ministry is just what the title implies - it's a comprehensive guide to high impact, vital youth ministry! And this two-in-one book is designed to help both experienced and new youth leaders grow their ministries in effectiveness and in numbers. Care is taken in helping leaders establish a youth ministry philosophy, and by providing inspiration and step-by-step plans to help them make their ministry visions a reality! This 480-page manual offers complete training for youth leaders, helping them grow their ministries not only by providing practical instruction in ministry and leadership development but also teaching them how to prioritize and balance their spiritual and personal lives.

Join the conversation as experts propose, defend, and explore Four Views of Youth Ministry and the Church.In a dialog that often gets downright feisty, four youth ministry academicians delineate their distinct philosophical and ecclesiological views regarding how youth ministry relates to the church at large--and leave a taste of what’s profound and what’s not in these four typologies:Inclusive congregational (Malan Nel). What happens when a church thoroughly integrates its adolescents, making them full partners in every aspect of congregational life?Preparatory (Wesley Black). Why and how should a church consider its teenagers as disciples-in-training and its youth ministry a school of preparation for future participation in church life?Missional (Chap Clark). What does a church look like, whose youth ministry does not necessarily nurture "church kids" but is essentially evangelistic? Whose youths and youth workers are considered missionaries?Strategic (Mark Senter). How feasible is it for a youth ministry to become a new church on its own--the youth pastor becoming the pastor, and the new church planted with the blessing of the mother church?In Four View of Your Ministry and the Church, solid academic writing and an inviting tone and design create a compelling text for both in-the-field, practicing youth workers and undergraduates and graduate students.

We tend to organize our youth ministry from the inside out. We give gathered groups of individual youth tools and teaching to form their souls around a Christian identity. So far, so good. But what if our identity is not merely or even primarily rooted and established somewhere inside ourselves? What if our identity is shaped and cultivated in the relationships we inhabit—each with their own distinctives and demands—and in the overlapping stories we find ourselves in? Prefabricated approaches to ministry that focus on the interior makeup of our youth may make for good youth group members, but these limited approaches don't reach beyond the youth room into other corners of their lives. Rather than centering them on the faith, our inside-out approach may be pushing their faith to the margins of their life. Brandon McKoy mines the insights of social construction theory to help us locate Christ not in our hearts but in our midst. We learn to embrace him as our own and our students as whole people engaging in a life's worth of encounters. Approaching youth ministry from the outside in, we discover our students in a whole new light—and with them, the fullness of our faith.