What is your youth ministry’s keyword?

Text messaging is the way to mass communicate with students for two reasons: 1) The message never gets missed (unlike a email inbox that doesn’t get checked or a social media post that didn’t get seen). 2) Text messages illicit the fastest response. Because text messages get pushed directly to their phone (that’s always on them) [...]

Using your iPad as a Jukebox

Music is such a huge part of our lives, especially for teenagers. I spend a stupid amount of time vetting and getting together playlists for our ministry events because I know that atmosphere is an important part of our gatherings. We run an after-school drop-in center for our community students every day of the week. [...]

Get a communication strategy for your ministry

With a new school year looming nearer and nearer it’s go time for us in the youth ministry world. If you’re anything like me you’re wondering where the summer went! We’re working on calendars, churning out promo materials, focusing on leader training, planning kickoffs, re-configuring small groups…etc, etc. One thing I’ve noticed that gets overlooked [...]

5 Tech Tips for Missions Trips

If there is one yearly event in youth ministry that requires extreme preparation it’s the summer mission’s trip. You can’t really wing one of those! I recently returned from leading a team of 18 to South Africa. It was a fantastic trip. Being prepared for the tech challenges and needs of the trip was of [...]

8 reasons why students stop showing up

There nothing more deflating then when students who used to frequent your youth ministry stop showing up. Sometimes it can be because they don’t buy the whole church/Jesus thing. Other times it’s because of the habits and patterns of your youth group. Here’s 8 9 reasons why I believe students stop showing up. 1. It’s [...]