I don’t blog advertisements…
Anyone who’s been around Life in Student Ministry for a little while knows that I almost never write product reviews. Although I’m contacted almost every week by different companies asking me to write about their product or services, I very rarely do so because 1) I don’t want this to turn into a youth ministry marketing blog, and 2) the time you spend reading/skimming these posts is too valuable to waste on “glorified advertisements.” However, whenever I do mention a product or service, it’s only because I’ve actually used it myself and found it to be a resource that’s highly worth recommending for your ministry.
…but this is good!
Dare 2 Share’s Go Wide kit and The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey are two such tools that I’ve been dying to share with you. Both the Jr. High and the Sr. High students in my ministry have gone through these studies with amazing results: their understanding of the gospel is crystal clear and they are now articulating it just as clearly with their unsaved and unchurched friends. I’ve never seen Jr. High glued to teaching and instruction as they were during Greg’s DVD sessions. And some of the most deep and meaningful conversations we’ve ever had with high school students took place following the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey videos.
Go Wide Evangelism Training Kit
Greg takes a couple DVD sessions to teach the Go Wide strategy, that is, to spread the message of salvation to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19-20). He’s not only motivational, he gives practical training on how to actually share Christ with an old friend or a new acquaintance: Pray, Peruse, Persuade. The discussion guide then helps kids place faces and names to the strategy in their own lives.
The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey
The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey is an attempt to be a “reality show” where they put together an atheist, an agnostic, a Wiccan, a city girl, an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian and a minister’s kid to create some thought-provoking discussions on God, religion and faith. Although the concept is great, it wasn’t as much of a typical reality show as it was Greg teaching God’s plan of salvation through the entire Bible and getting feedback from those with opposing viewpoints. The idea still worked for my group anyway. The best part is that Greg covers the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, throughout the series, giving students a clear understanding of the central theme that ties all of scripture together.
The only downside to The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey is that the video sessions tend to be about 40 minutes long, which makes it tough to fit in decent discussions if you only have an hour and a half meeting with games and a time of worship. So, my youth group meetings slowly morphed from our typical 30 minutes of Bible study to 70 minutes of Bible study and the kids loved it! In fact, we’re going to stick with the 70 minute teaching times from now on at the high school large-group meetings. (Although, there’s more behind the shift than just this DVD series.)
How we used it
We took about 4 weeks to go through the Go Wide kit and then seven or eight weeks to go through the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey. The two work great hand-in-hand. Go Wide covers a strategy for personal evangelism and the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey follows-up nicely with other viewpoints of Christianity. It helps students know how to respond to the questions they’ll encounter or maybe questions they’re currently wrestling with. The discussion guide includes two different outlines for each DVD teaching session: one that focuses on training students who are already believers, and one that focuses on discussing salvation with pre-saved teenagers, making it a great outreach tool.
To find out more about these two products, check out these links for promo videos, downloadable leader guides, and more:
Go Wide: info | purchase $74.00
G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey: info | purchase $169.00


…is that they’re rarely an outreach. I plan something fun, exciting, promote it as an evangelistic event and encourage students to bring their pre-Christian and non-churched friends for an opportunity to get to know us and hear the gospel, but when the event actually takes place, how many non-youth group kids are actually present? Zero or one. Yeah ok, some may argue that “even if only one soul is won for Christ, then it’s worth it” and I don’t disagree with that, but the point is, out of 100-some students who attend, why don’t we see at least 50 pre-saved and non-churched kids being invited? When an outreach event idea is proposed, I often ask the students, “Is this something you’d feel comfortable inviting your pre-saved friends to?” Even when I get a resounding “YES!” the actual results seem to indicate otherwise.
Sorry for missing last week’s Freebie Friday. With the recent move to Minnesota, unpacking, settling in and all that good stuff, blogging has obviously taken a back burner. I’m hoping to become a little more regular again now that we’ve been here for a week and have unpacked most of the boxes. Soon I’ll take a chunk of time and work through the 1,500 unread articles in my RSS reader and be all caught up.
In the spirit of my youth group’s lock-in last weekend, here are all my planning materials from my last three years of lock-ins! The zip file includes pretty much everything you need to pull off a great all-nighter (except for the dedicated volunteers, food, game materials, and facility):
As a guy who got hooked on youth ministry through Student Venture (the high school division of Campus Crusades for Christ), I’ve done my fair share of 4 Spiritual Laws training. Here are my seminar notes, materials, handouts, games, everything that’s needed for teaching students how to use this tool in sharing the gospel. If evangelism is a weak area in your youth ministry, I strongly suggest checking this out.
I chose to take the whole Junior High route in answering my questions. Being that I primarily work with junior high students I am going to answer each question as it pertains to junior high ministry.
UPDATE: Please read the comments below. This is not a serious post. It’s satirical sarcasm and does not contain a hint of truth. It’s a joke written by the founder of Youth Specialties describing in exact opposite terms what NOT to do. Do NOT run your youth ministry this way! This is written to such an extreme in order to point out the absurdity of running a youth ministry this way. It’s only a joke. Please don’t take this seriously or think that this is my personal philosophy of ministry. It definitely is NOT.
What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is struggling with today?








