Yesterday I talked about the idea of being strategic in our entry points for students into our ministry. It’s not a new concept or groundbreaking, and I don’t feel the need to go into great depth about it. It’s a simple thought, be strategic in what we are doing to get kids plugged into the youth ministry and coming back.

Today is sort of the same thing.

Your church, hopefully, has at least a few adults that come on Sunday mornings. You can find a great deal of writing about how to recruit volunteers, but once you’ve talked to them about coming and helping them out, then what do you do? Continue Reading…

When was the last time you considered entry points in your ministry?

There are a number of things that have entry points and a number of points of entry to any number of things. That sounds confusing, but here is what I mean.

How does a student go from just attending a school in your ministries reach to being an engaged member of the youth ministry? What can their friends invite them to as their first entry into the youth ministry? Continue Reading…

I got a call the other day from someone about to starting helping lead a youth group and I was so glad that the voice at the other end understood he needed help. I think I very real threat to effective youth ministry is the notion that we don’t need help, that we can get by on our own.

So I’ve been more than happy to agree to walk through this phase with this friend, and hope to get some feedback on here to help give him more opinions than just mine.

So for the next few days I’m going to be posting some of the things I’ll be telling him and could use your help. If someone asked you what the first thing they should do is, what would you tell them?

For me, other than relationships with the students, which should be a given, I would say direction would be the most important. If you don’t know where you are leading students, you aren’t really leading students. There’s many aspects to this, but I’ll save those for later.

So what’s your starting point?