Paul Turner of TheDiscipleProject.net recently finished another youth devotional called, “God, What’s Your Status?” It’s a 21-day journey through the Book of John for teenagers. It includes interactive widgets for comments and creativity.

He usually charges $7.00 for it, but he’s providing it free of charge to Life In Student Ministry readers. Download it below.

Download “God, What’s Your Status?”

———————————————————————-
Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Brian Eberly joins us to talk about, “The importance of building a youth ministry team.” He’s been learning more and more about this in his own ministry and comes to share about it with us. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

Perhaps one of the most significant parts of my youth group’s missions trip to Belize last summer was the hour we all spent alone with God each morning. At the beginning of the trip some of the kids weren’t too sure about reading their Bibles and praying for an hour every day, but after 10 days of it, some kids said it was the highlight of the trip.

If you’re considering a missions trip this summer, be sure to make personal time in the Word and in prayer a central part of the trip. In our case, we didn’t give the kids a devotional book or anything — just God’s Word and some private quiet time. But if you would rather give your kids something to use, HCBJ Global has a FREE 30-day devotional ebook on missions called, Be the Voice and Hands of Jesus. It’s very well-done, professionally designed, and follows the traditional format of a verse or two with an explanation, story and application. Here’s a list of the devo titles:

• Day 1 – Jesus Reached Out to the Unexpected
• Day 2 – Jesus Mobilized Others to Reach Out
• Day 3 – Jesus Acknowledged Faith
• Day 4 – Jesus Prayed Before Choosing Partners
• Day 5 – Jesus Touched People with Power
• Day 6 – Jesus Welcomed Interruptions
• Day 7 – Jesus Recognized an Open Heart
• Day 8 – Jesus Didn’t Follow the World’s Priorities
• Day 9 – Jesus Felt Great Compassion
• Day 10 – Jesus’ Hands Looked for the Lost
• Day 11 – Jesus Allowed Affirmation of His Ministry
• Day 12 – Jesus’ Voice Spoke the Truth
• Day 13 – Jesus Accepted Persecution
• Day 14 – Jesus Loved Difficult People
• Day 15 – Jesus Was Confident in His Treasure
• Day 16 – Jesus Counted the Cost
• Day 17 – Jesus Prayed for Unity
• Day 18 – Jesus Demonstrated Authenticity
• Day 19 – Jesus Made Priorities
• Day 20 – Jesus Honored Sacrifice
• Day 21 – Jesus Asked People To Trust Him
• Day 22 – Jesus Engaged the Whole Person
• Day 23 – Jesus Encouraged Commitment
• Day 24 – Jesus Championed the Poor
• Day 25 – Jesus Is the Bread of Life
• Day 26 – Jesus Transformed People
• Day 27 – Jesus Saw Potential
• Day 28 – Jesus Asked for Courage
• Day 29 – Jesus Promised His Presence
• Day 30 – Jesus Did the Impossible

You’ll have to part with some personal information in order to download the ebook, but it’s worth it. You’ll also get:

• 30 Day Household Prayer Guide
• Worship Music (MP3, Sheet Music and Powerpoint Slides)
• A downloadable sheet that helps you to plan your next outreach project
• Voice and Hands Video: A downloadable video that shares about what it means to be the Voice and Hands of Jesus

Get “Voice and Hands of Jesus” devo book and more!

———————————————————————-
Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Our featured guest is Mike Kupferer and he’ll lead us in a discussion about finding the right youth ministry position. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

Paul Turner, a 15 year youth ministry veteran, emailed me this past week with an interesting projected called, The Cure for the Common Youth Ministry. Just shy of 100 pages long, his ebook begins by venting about his frustrations with youth ministry, many of which we all are very familiar with. He covers everything from church rivalry to families and apathetic kids. But, unlike most youth ministry blog rants, he actually gives some answers. Furthermore, almost half the ebook consists of worksheets for you and your youth staff to work through together to come to your own answers and conclusions. Personally, I’m not sure I agree with all his answers nor the direction of some of the worksheets, but at least he’s offering answers and helping us think through the issues. That’s more than a lot of people are doing right now, including myself. (I admit, I’m still in the “this is totally not working and I have almost no idea what to do about it” category.)

Paul will most likely publish his work, so download it while it’s still free.

Download “The Cure for the Common Youth Ministry” ebook

———————————————————————-
Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Matt McAlack, a youth ministry professor, will lead us in a discussion about academic youth ministry training. College, seminary, do you need it, where should you go, what happens afterwards, and more. We’ll also talk about the future of formal youth ministry training. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

Exponential Network is giving away a free ebook download called, “Leadership Learnings from Bloggers.” Featuring over 250 pages of leadership learnings from over 20 national bloggers like Perry Noble, Seth Godin, and Craig Groeschel, this project is a great collection of thoughts on church leadership from everything from staffing to vision casting.

Download “Leadership Learnings from Bloggers” ebook

[ht to @terracecrawford via Twitter]

———————————————————————-
Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Mark Oestreicher, President of Youth Specialties, will lead us in a discussion about his book, Youth Ministry 3.0, and many of the concepts he writes therein. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

The media is has really latched on to the Online Missions Trip over the past two weeks and given it more publicity than I ever imagined. In fact, last week I did 2-4 radio interviews per day, plus several magazine and written interviews. What started as a 2-week outreach campaign for my own youth group has really spread into something huge. Over 3,000 teenagers representing almost every continent will be actively sharing their faith using social media from February 1-14, 2009. Crazy! Sounds like the Lord is doing something here.

I’m continually adding resources to OnlineMissionsTrip.com, the most recent being a link to a free book download called, “Welcome to the Family,” by Youth for Christ. It’s 6 chapters long and would work perfectly for helping a new believer start the life-long journey of discipleship. It probably works best in a one-on-one format, but it could also be used in a small group setting. Thanks to Jonathan McKee for making this book freely available at TheSource4YM.com!

Download “Welcome to the Family” book

There are several other good options for new believer follow-up at OnlineMissionsTrip.com.

———————————————————————-
Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk! Jason Lamb of Dare 2 Share Ministries will lead our discussion about Deep & Wide Ministry. Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

———————————————————————-
Been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer? Apply for a FREE 10 week one-on-one Life In Student Ministry Mentorship with one of our 13 youth ministry veterans. Application closes on January 24, 2009. Mentorship is made available for free thanks to Lifeway Students, who are supplying all the resources and materials to each mentee. Thanks, Lifeway Students!

Why do so many young adults (18 to 22) leave the church, and what will it take to bring them back? This important question is examined and duly answered in Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts, a follow-up to Thom S. Rainer’s best-selling Simple Church cowritten this time with his son, research expert Sam Rainer.

The book is based on a study of one-thousand so-called “church dropouts” who were interviewed about why they left. Their answers are quite surprising, having less to do with “losing their religion” and more about the desire for a community that isn’t made stale by simply maintaining the status quo.

That’s a summary of the new book, Essential Church. Looks like a must-read for youth workers. Fortunately, you can download the book in it’s entirety for FREE right now if you’re willing to give away your email address. I’ve never read a 278-page book on a computer before and I’m not sure I will with this one either, but at least it was good to skim through the book and decide that I should probably buy a paper copy on Amazon sometime.

Download the book “Essential Church” for FREE!

[ ht Terrace Crawford ]

———————————————————————-
Join our LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation today at 2:00 PM EST! The topic is, “Building community with teens online to enhance community at youth group.” Adam McLane, the online community guy for Youth Specialties, will be our featured guest. He has a lot of good information prepared for our discussion. Join us using either your telephone or your computer microphone!

I’m not really sure where I came across this, but it’s been on my computer for a while. It’s an ebook called, “Beyond the Youth Group: Youth ministry and the whole church,” by the London Baptist Association. It’s an excellent piece of work that discusses “how youth ministry relates to and is part of the wider church body” (page 2). They attempt to answer three main questions:

1. What is the responsibility between youth ministry and the whole church?
2. Whose responsibility is youth work?
3. And how did we end up here?

If you’re trying to figure out how to integrate your youth ministry into the rest of the church body, this might be what you need to spark a discussion in your leadership and get it moving in the right direction.

Beyond the Youth Group: Youth ministry and the whole church

I see that the London Baptist Association website also has several other good downloads, such as, A Guide to Becoming a Volunteer Youth Leader and A Guide to Strategy & Vision for Youthwork in the Church. Might be worth checking out.

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.