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.

Why don’t our church kids invite their pre-Christian friends to come to these events? Is it a communication problem? Is it a vision issue? Is it a heart issue? Is it a value system? Or is it completely the wrong approach to evangelism? Maybe I’m making it too easy for them?

Somehow my approach to evangelism in our ministry needs to change. My natural inclination is to bypass my church kids altogether and just go straight to where the pre-saved kids are, but neither do I want to dismiss my church kids from the process of evangelism. My role is not to do it for them, but somehow to teach them and do it with them.

I know my ministry is not the only one that struggles with this. What insights can you all provide? How has evangelism been effective for your groups? What can you all recommend for me and others in my situation?

I read Ezekiel 33 this morning and was pretty convicted:

Once again a message came to me from the Lord: “Son of man, give your people this message: ‘When I bring an army against a country, the people of that land choose one of their own to be a watchman. When the watchman sees the enemy coming, he sounds the alarm to warn the people. Then if those who hear the alarm refuse to take action, it is their own fault if they die. They heard the alarm but ignored it, so the responsibility is theirs. If they had listened to the warning, they could have saved their lives. But if the watchman sees the enemy coming and doesn’t sound the alarm to warn the people, he is responsible for their captivity. They will die in their sins, but I will hold the watchman responsible for their deaths.’

“Now, son of man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me. If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent and they don’t repent, they will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself.” Ezekiel 33:1-8 (NLT)

I’m surrounded by Christian subculture! I can probably count on one hand the number of unsaved people I regularly spend time with. That’s pathetic. This needs to change…

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.

This week’s Freebie Friday contains teaching notes and handouts for two different 4 Spiritual Laws workshops I used to teach for Student Venture (the high school division of Campus Crusades for Christ). These workshops are great for students who want to share their faith but aren’t sure how to start an evangelistic conversation or what to say even after it’s started. It teaches students the following:

• How to use the 4 Spiritual Laws booklet
• How to start a conversation with an unbeliever
• How to ask questions that lead toward a gospel presentation
• How to take someone through “the prayer”
• How to answer different responses to the gospel message
• Follow-up information for after conversion

Even if you don’t use the 4 Spiritual Laws (I don’t anymore, mostly due to personal preference), there’s still a lot of good content and activity ideas here that can be tweaked toward evangelism training in general. If you need more information about how I used these tools and how the two workshops go together, feel free to contact me and ask.

DOWNLOAD HERE

CONTRIBUTE TO FREEBIE FRIDAY: If you’ve benefited from others who have freely shared their youth ministry resources online, consider giving back to the community by sharing your own materials here. Send me your donations for review and if I publish them in a Freebie Friday, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

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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):

• Three different lock-in schedules
• Over 40 game ideas
• Two outreach/evangelistic talks

Even if you don’t plan on holding a lock-in anytime soon, this resource is still helpful for the game ideas and evangelism lessons, which can be used for any event or youth group meeting.

Note: I originally put these materials together for my use only, so there may be gaps of information or things that aren’t explain too well. Sorry! If you have a question about something, you can always feel free to contact me.

DOWNLOAD HERE

CONTRIBUTE TO FREEBIE FRIDAY: If you’ve benefited from others who have freely shared their youth ministry resources online, consider giving back to the community by sharing your own materials here. Send me your donations for review and if I publish them in a Freebie Friday, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

[ Sign-up for FREE notifications of freebies and content added to this site! ]

Here’s a summary list of every issue in youth ministry that’s been mentioned by one of the series contributors. Whew! There certainly are a lot of issues that need to be addressed.

Discuss: Which of these issues apply specifically to your youth ministry? What changes can you make to address them in 2007?

What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is struggling with today?

• Students are under a tremendous amount of stress and pressure.
• It is vital that we remind them constantly that Jesus needs to have first priority in their lives and that He holds their future in His hands. Students are so busy and God and church is not always the #1 priority.
• We need students to be global Christians.
• The idea of godly sexuality for all people needs to be put back on the agenda.
• Mental health.
• The whole question of “church” is becoming more and more of a struggle for youth ministry.
• Professional youth pastors and senior pastors looking for job security.
• This generation is facing identity issues, sexuality issues, authority issues, and vocation/purpose issues, but in a much more intense, aggressive, combative, pluralistic context.
• Discipleship and teaching students to grow on their own.
• Retention after graduation.
• Engaging parents.
• Cultural relevance. The Church is often reluctant to change sufficiently to genuinely include the young people.
• Defining Success.
• Recruiting and training adult volunteers to be effective.
• Presenting God as the right and better choice over pop culture.
• A lack of understanding of youth culture and no desire to learn it.
• We’re spending so much time trying to keep the ones we have that we are not reaching the lost.
• The church leadership believes there are only a couple of kids caught up in major issues and the rest of the kids are great, god fearing and perfect.
• Employed Christian youth workers are only deployed where there are churches with significant financial resources, meaning deployment is based on money not need.
• The “dumbing down” of programs because of the myth that junior high students cannot go “deep.”
• Connections between people and real community.
• We should be focusing more on is inner-city and “fringe” type of neighborhoods and young people.
• The issue of personal holiness, from youth ministers to parents to students. Our calling should be to BE children of God and pant after Him so that teens can see HIS power in our lives.
• Apathy of the “cradle-Christian” student.
• Not enough long term funding or funding in general.
• The church allows the youth to be isolated, and sometimes they want the youth isolated, which is anything but unifying for the church.
• Viewing youth ministry as a stepping-stone to becoming a Sr. Pastor, as if it’s important to practice ministry on “little people” before being qualified to work with “real people.”

What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is responding to effectively?

• Loving teens and connecting with them in their world.
• The call to missions.
• Youth ministry is attempting to address the same issues that the adult church may be after, but the amazing thing is that there is more of a willingness to experiment.
• Provides a safe place for hurting students. We are responding to the deep-seated hurts of teenagers in more effective ways than ever.
• Giving students time and space to be in community with each other.
• A desire to do ministry outside of the church and where kids are.
• Youth ministry allows young people to encounter adults (and young people) who seek to live a 24/7 faith and model a life that’s Christ centered and counter cultural.

In what ways does youth ministry need to change?

• We need to make sure we’re taking our young people deeper into their faith. But not just in Bible studies, but in their experience of mission, church, worship and so on.
• Students need to be IN ministry and not just the recipient of it. If students don’t lead they’ll leave. We need to believe in students and their ability to minister effectively to their peers.
• Relational-driven is more work and less to show…at first.
• Do your deal, follow Jesus, create this environment in the student ministry IF YOU CAN. If you can’t - shut up and leave and find a place where you can if it’s that important to you.
• Less reliance on programs.
• Less “next big thing” thinking.
• Less trendy, fad, youth workers.
• Longevity. Finding a way to keep youth pastors and leader in their positions for the long haul.
• Youth ministers need to adopt more of a “Family Ministry” rather than a “Youth Ministry.” Parents need to be central to the process of our teenagers’ spiritual formation and not disengaged bystanders.
• Emotional health.
• We need to have a plan for when the kids arrive in 6th grade they graduate high school knowing the fundamentals of scripture while at the same time encountering God rather than just being taught facts about Him.
• Plug students into the greater body of Christ.
• Church leaders need to understand what youth pastors are facing and stand with them in a major way.
• Giving opportunity to live faith not just hear about it.
• There is a pretty big void when it comes to Junior High Ministry Curriculum.
• Starting where young people are instead of where we want them to be.
• Student ministry needs to change first in the heart of Lead and Senior pastors across America.

[Read previous authors and posts in this series, “Issues in youth ministry.”]

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. DOWNLOAD HERE

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[tags]Campus Crusades, Student Venture, Four Spiritual Laws[/tags]

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.

What do you see as some of the main issues junior high youth ministry is struggling with today?

Junior High Ministry is really unique in that it faces its own unique challenges. The first issue is that young adolescents are experiencing life and culture way differently than they did even 10 years ago. We have had to be much more intentional about talking about sexuality, making wise choices, etc over the last five years than we had been in the previous 5.

The next area that I think the church as a whole (not all) still struggles with is not putting middle school ministries as a strategic front to reach young people with the gospel of Christ. Stats show that 85% of believers become Christians before the age of 14. I think much of the church has not understood this point. More churches need to see Junior High Ministry as a huge opportunity to reach people with the gospel and invest more resources towards it.

Often junior high ministry is either delegated to a layperson or given to an inexperienced intern to run. Churches need to be willing to invest in professional youth workers to take on the challenge of making disciples and reaching young teens for Christ. For the rest of this point I will refer to this open letter to the church that was put together by a group of middle school leaders a few years ago.

I also feel that many (not all) junior high ministries in the country are doing one of three things with their programs that could be hurting their programs.

1. Their Junior High program only consists of a Confirmation program, which involves the teaching of only “head” knowledge. This is a huge disservice to our middle school teens as they need to opportunity to process how there faith affects their real life.

2. To maximize time/resources/leaders ministries are putting their junior high and high school programs together. I really think this is a big mistake. Developmental middle school students are at a much different place than high school students. I think putting them together can hurt both ministries. However, I think from occasionally there is an appropriate time to bring them together. I would say when you have the resources to split, it needs to be done. Kurt Johnston had a great post this week about this very topic. He has some great insight at his blog.

3. The “dumbing down” of programs because of the myth that junior high students cannot go “deep”. Junior High ministry needs to be a blast. It needs to exist in the context of fun. However, sometimes I think ministries neglect the content for the fear that students really don’t want to go “deep”. Our small group leaders are constantly having deep conversations with our JH students. We have seen a hunger in our students to know God and a desire to learn how to be a Christian in our current culture.

What do you see as some of the main issues junior high ministry is responding to effectively?

Junior High Ministry is also doing a lot of things right.

1. Allowing Junior High Students to process their faith in small groups settings. Small groups can work in junior high. I believe those ministries that have implemented them have found success in that junior high students are having relational connections to other students and leaders, it has provided a safe place to question and doubt, and it provides a place for students to be supported in these transitional years.

2. More training available for junior high specialists and laypeople. This year I was pleased to see that there were more seminars offered at the National Youth Workers Convention for junior high leaders than ever before. This is very encouraging. It is also encouraging that these seminar rooms were packed with people hungry to be more effective ministers to young teens.

3. It seems like there are more people that are seeing junior high ministry as a life long calling than ever before. I am meeting more “just” junior high workers than I ever had before. The old stat that I have heard before is that there are only 400 “just” junior high pastors in the US. I am thinking that is changing.

In what ways does junior high ministry need to change?

There is a pretty big void when it comes to Junior High Ministry Curriculum. This seems to be an ongoing struggle year after year. At the [Youth Specialties] booth there was a very small table with very few junior high ministry books. In my opinion the best stuff out there right now is Simply Junior High’s Stuff and well as the Junior High Talksheets.

Students are so busy and God and church is not always the #1 priority. This doesn’t just pertain to Junior high Ministry but to all youth ministries. It can be so frustrating for the youth worker to get parents and students to commit to the church over, sports/drama/ or other school activities. What are we telling our students when week after week we spend our Sunday at soccer games?

Joshua is a junior high youth pastor at the Evangelical Covenant church in Mankato, MN where he has been serving for 9 years. Check out his blog here.

[Read previous authors and posts in this series, “Issues in youth 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.

Ten Easy Steps to Guarantee a Successful Youth Ministry!
by [tag]Mike Yaconelli[/tag]

1. Dumb Down the Gospel. Employ attractive phrases such as, “Since I’ve known Jesus I’m happier, getting better grades, and captain of the football team!” Even better, reduce the complexity of the gospel into group cheers (i.e., “Give me a J!”) or simple worship choruses like, “God is so good…blah blah blah.” (Try singing those words in Ethiopia.) Or even better, try out some hip slang (i.e., God is “phat”; Jesus is a “hottie”).

2. Count. Constantly make everyone aware of your group’s attendance figures and the increases in attendance. Make numbers an issue by setting attendance goals for each activity and reward the group for reaching those goals. Spend lots of time throwing pies at the leaders if goals are reached.

3. Put Your Students on Display. As soon as kids become Christians or rededicate their lives or show real growth, put them in front of the group and have them share their testimonies—especially if they’re physically attractive. Let young people talk about their faith as much as possible and don’t worry about the fact that most young people have no clue how complicated and rough the real world is with or without Jesus.

4. Don’t Allow Down Time. Hey, kids today are [tag]MTV[/tag] kids! They can’t sit still for any length of time. Silence, solitude, prayer, meditation, fasting? All totally lame in the eyes of this generation! Nope, keep ‘em busy, active, noisy, and shuttling from one Christian rock concert to another. Fill every moment of your program with something to do—otherwise you’ll lose their attention (which would be disastrous because then they’d have to pay attention to God and their souls).

5. Stay on the Technological Cutting Edge. What would Jesus do? Are you kidding? Jesus would have the best sound system you ever heard, along with a DVD player, the Internet, instant messaging, the coolest Web site, and of course a digital TV. Show your kids that when it comes to the latest technology, Christians are right there! I mean, who needs to read when you can watch?

6. Create Celebrities. Make sure your young people get an earful and eyeful of the latest Christian music stars, video stars, and NFL players who profess their faith in Jesus on national television. Encourage your young people to worship, idolize, and live under the illusion that these people are somehow better, deeper, more Christian, more together, and more dedicated than them. Let them believe that the marketed images of these celebrities are completely representative of them—even though you know it isn’t true.

7. Let Youth Group Take the Place of [tag]Church[/tag]. Oh sure, encourage your kids to attend the contemporary service—even though you know most of them never will because church is “boring,” filled with “dull, old people,” and the music “sucks.” Whatever you do, though, don’t suggest that worshiping with people they don’t like and connecting with people who are older and wiser just might save them when their adolescent view of the world is shattered. Just keep convincing your students that youth group is a good substitute for church.

8. Tow the Parental Line. Whatever you do, don’t cause friction with parents by suggesting to their kids that grades, SAT scores, financial security, college degrees, and athletic scholarships really don’t matter. Just accept the fact that most parents want their children to attend youth group as long as it doesn’t interfere with hockey, football, ice skating, tennis, ballet, or baseball practice. And don’t encourage young people to resist their parents’ attempts to smother the call of God on their lives, either. After all, you could get fired!

9. Ignore the Arts. Never encourage painting, dance, sculpture, writing, poetry, ballet, or trips to the museum, symphony, and opera. Stick with activities that rock! The WWF rules!

10. Live in the Now! Verify the success of your ministry by visible, measurable, observable results you see now. Don’t waste your time worrying about lasting results. Who can wait?! Go for the instant return. Hey, once your kids leave youth group, you aren’t responsible for what happens to them anyway, right?

11. “Us” Versus “Them.” (Yeah, yeah, I know I said “Ten Steps”—sue me.) Convince your kids that the only way Christians can make a difference is through public, physical confrontation with the “world.” Explain that this “world” is “them,” and Christians—the good guys—are “us.” And since it’s us against them, we have to “stand up for our faith.” Encourage them to march in rallies, wear slogan-filled T-shirts, hang banners, and do whatever it takes to get in the world’s face. Convince them that the Devil and his demons are running around, wreaking havoc—and the only way to deal with the Devil is to confront and “bind him.” Don’t let them believe that evil is much more seductive, much more camouflaged and tricky than they could ever imagine. And whatever you do, don’t start getting into Jesus’ strategy of powerlessness.

Now go get ‘em!

(ht jacob)

What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is struggling with today?

In my opinion so often I see that youth ministry is struggling with being relevant. For the past few weeks I have been talking with some of our top leaders about how we can draw in a high school crowd. In time past it was often said that winning teens to Christ by the time they were 18 was the goal cause after that the chances of them coming to God drops dramatically. From my perspective now back in ministry after a 5 year hiatus, it is as if you better win them before 8th grade. But I see so many youth ministries that aren’t relevant to today’s unsaved teens. So many are spending so much time trying to keep the ones they have that they are not reaching the lost. There are 32,000 teens from 6th grade to 12th grade within 30 miles of our church. So for us, even though our [volunteer] team has doubled our youth [group] attendance since April, we are not satisfied cause there are so many teens out there that have not heard the gospel.

What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is responding to effectively?

I really have to think about this one [because, since] coming back [to youth ministry], I have such a focus on the unsaved teenager. Sometimes I wonder if youth ministry is responding effectively. Are we making a true difference? If the statistics are true, and some people don’t want to believe them, then we are failing. And one thing I am not ever going to do is say “that as long as I am there for the few that come I feel I am doing my part.” If the statistics say the only 4% of this generation is saved, then we are not responding effectively. And I am not even going to say that our ministry is being effective as well. Until the status quo changes we won’t know. Every week what drives me is whether we have created an environment that teens can bring their unsaved friends to.

Here is the thing: God has charged us with equipping our teens to reach their generation. So often we are equipping them with who “we” are as Christians and not equipping them to truly be effective. Then we send them out to do goofy Christian things and when there is no response or our teens are ridiculed we say things like, “Sometimes we are going to be persecuted for our faith.” Come on, man. God has called us to be more creative and relevant than that. Jesus changed water into “wine” (now I’m all about not drinking) and I believe it totally baffles the church but to the unbelievers of His time it was so on point. Jesus spent so much time being relevant to a lost generation that He wasn’t relevant to the church (Pharisees & Sadducees).

In what ways does youth ministry need to change?

It goes back to the whole relevant thing. If a group of unsaved teens walked in to our youth ministry, would we be speaking their language? Too often we are speaking so much “Christianese” and our “services” are designed for Christians. We are striving hard to change that in our meetings. Even changing the terms that we call everything. Sermons are messages, services are meetings, etc.

Jason Curlee is a youth pastor in Corpus Christi, TX. Check out his blog at Making Difference Makers.

[Read previous authors and posts in this series, “Issues in youth ministry.”]