I love interacting with youth workers online! I’m often challenged with new perspectives, the stories of how God’s working through other people energizes me, and new ideas abound. Not only does my ministry benefit from the input of lots of other youth workers, but my personal life does, as well.

If you’re looking for ways to interact with other youth workers online, here’s where I am online. Feel free to join me or comment below with other places online you’ve found to be significantly beneficial.

Facebook “Youth Pastors Only” group

Unlike most groups of Facebook, Rob Kashow, the creator of Facebook’s “Youth Pastors Only” group (and an old college friend of mine), does a great job of keeping the group alive and active. There’s always new forum posts of questions, struggles and ideas. If you need input about something, this is a great place to start. Just remember, like anything else you post online, this group is open to the public, so don’t write anything you don’t want your kids or other church people to potentially read.

Twitter

The thing I love about Twitter is that I can ask a question from anywhere via txt message and within minutes several people respond with great ideas, insights, or stories to make me laugh. Just last week I asked for a movie recommendation, input on upcoming blog posts, WordPress help, and more. Even cooler, though, is the opportunity to answer other people’s questions, too, and just generally keep up with what other youth workers are up to during the day. If you’re on Twitter, follow me here. I recommend following these youth guys, too:

• Mike Kupferer
• Josh Griffin
• Adam McLane
• Mark Matlock
• Mike Lovato
• Doug Fields
• Youth Ministry
• Brian Eberly
• Youth Specialties
• Kevin Twombly
• Brian Ford
• Dana Schmoyer, my wife

Skype

I prefer Skype as my choice for instant communication because it’s so versatile: text chat, voice chat, video conferencing, SMS, even telephone calls, and it does it all better than any other communication client out there. Since the Life In Student Ministry Skypecasts started, my contact list has grown to include a lot of youth workers from around the world, which makes for a lot of great conversations during the week. Add me to your Skype contact list: rockinyp. If you join our Skypecasts on Fridays, you’ll also start making a lot of these connections, too, which is exactly why I use Skype for our youth ministry conversations over other voice conference-call technologies.

Youth Ministry Blogs

Since you’re already reading this site, you obviously know the value of connecting with the ideas and stories of other youth workers through blogs. I’ve formed great relationships with many youth workers around the world just through simple comments and linking back to others posts.

Here’s a couple of my favorite youth ministry blogs:

• GregStier.org - President of Dare 2 Share Ministries
• Insight - by Grahame Knox, a veteran youth worker in the U.K.
• More Than Dodge Ball - by Joshua Griffin, high school pastor at Saddleback Church.
• Youth Ministry Ideas - Resources and ideas by Steve Blanchard
• Youthblog.org - by Ian, a Anglican youth worker in Oxford.
• YSMarko.com - by Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties
• Married To A Youth Pastor - Just started reading this one. Fun YM stories!
• Rethinking Youth Ministry - Two guys exploring different approaches to youth ministry
• Thoughts of a Student Pastor - A student pastor in the ATL
• BrianEberly.com - by a youth pastor in Oregon who started blogging around the same time I did.
• The Poulette Family in Mexico - by Dennis Poulette, a youth ministry professor in Mexico

If you use Google Reader and want to share RSS items with me, add rockinyp@gmail.com to your friends list. Or, for non-Google Reader users, grab my shared items here.

Youth Ministry Exchange

Although I’m not a very active participant at YMExchange.com anymore, they still have the best youth ministry forum on the Internet. There’s lot of great youth workers there who love discussing youth ministry and issues therein, so if you want an online community of youth workers all in one spot, that’s probably the site you’ll want to check out first.

Connect with me personally

Here’s a list of where you can connect with me personally through many different social media sites and services.

Connect with other youth workers personally

Do you want to find more youth ministry friends? Do you want to find other bloggers to follow and network with? If so, here’s an opportunity to do just that. In comments below, leave links to any of your social media profiles that you want to promote (Twitter, Facebook, blog, Skype, Google Chat, etc.). Once you’ve done so, add the other people who post their info in the comments. This will only work if you make connections rather than just promote yourself.

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