Articles for Youth Leaders

How do we motivate teenagers who are apathetic about their faith? For the last 24 years, I've been training teenagers to live and share the Gospel. The biggest challenge I've faced by far is spiritual apathy.

Having served in student ministry for over 25 years I have learned something about summer balance and time.

Are you prepared to be a true cross-cultural missionary in the unexplored context of digital natives?

Confrontational evangelism: "the kind of evangelism that communicates the Gospel in an abrasive, in-your-face way."

More often, I see relationships built in student ministry, and then a result is horrible and ugly break ups that affect the friendships, cause drama and, in a lot of cases, tend to be uncomfortable for other students surrounding these dating issues. I want to share some of our philosophy on how we deal with dating:

Do kids actually care if you attempt to use teen slang with them? What really matters?

Can weed kill you? Unlikely, but most studies reveal that smoking weed can really hurt the development of the brain. This is significant because the majority of teens think smoking weed is no big deal.

So much is written and said these days about following our passions. But how do you actually begin to attempt to "follow your heart," as it were, when it comes to your life goals?