Episode Archive & Blog

Read about the YMG community & catch up on past episodes

Question for the Community: Managing Your Time

I know that all ministries are different and thus have different job descriptions but what does a normal/typical week look like? How much time is designated to study, vision, meeting with students at school, volunteer training/empowerment and whatever else may come along during the course of a week? - Chad

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Episode 171 - Red Light Means Recording

We make it a whole show with the red light on and actually recording. Matt purchased 15 new memory cards from the back of someone's trunk at a swap meet and it looks like 1 of them finally worked! This week Doug Fields' and Friends talk about using Facebook for parents, coaching your volunteers and social drinking as a volunteer. They also cover the frequent topic of tension with the senior pastor and what to do when a senior pastor resigns. Doug casually brings up his new www.YouthSphere…

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Question for the Community: Baptism

I have been in youth ministry for 9 years here in Alabama and last night after our midweek I had a "first" in ministry that I need help with. Last night, I spoke on baptism and the importance of it in a Christians lives. After the service, I had 6 teens respond, wanting to get baptized. Here is my dilemma...one of the them is a 17 year old who is pregnant…

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Question for the Community: Encouraging Students to Finish School

I wanted to see if you all have some suggestions on how to encourage teens in our community to stay in school. A high school diploma is really viewed as something that would be cool to receive, but the chances of that happening are probably quite slim. I want to somehow reward students for finishing each year of school beyond the 8th grade. I want to make it a big deal, and something that, year in and year out, students will know that if they finish this year, this reward will be there…

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Episode 170 - Jumping Right In

(SNAFU ALERT! Due to technical difficulties, we lost the entire first half of our show. So that's why this episode starts so abruptly. While we haven't found the cause of this yet, we're fairly certain the "Y2K bug" had something to do with it…

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Question for the Community: Tenure in Youth Ministry

I just started at my church this past August after 4 straight interims. In the last 10 years, the church has had 8 different guys serve the youth. A common thought is that I'll be gone within a year and it seems like all the kids come to youth with no intentions of anything spiritual which I know is common in a lot of groups, but besides time, is there something else that I can do right now to make it clear to the students and the church that I'm here until the Holy Spirit calls me somewhere else…

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Question for the Community: Avoiding Burnout

I am a student pastor and worship (music) is a high priority on our values as a student ministry. The guy that used to lead worship is now in college and I have been leading worship then turning around right after worship and teaching/preaching. It is draining on me and burning me out QUICKLY!!! No one has stepped up to take this over and quite honestly I don't feel like I have the time to invest in someone to take the lead…

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Question for the Community: Older Special Needs Students

In the past few months we have had several mentally disabled students attend our mid week program (mostly autistic kids). The problem is that one of these “kids” that visited is 26 years old. He is autistic and his parents say he functions like a 14 year old…

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Question for the Community: Small Church with Large Outreach

I am working in a small church with a 120 attendance on Sundays with basically 1 youth group family. However, we have a great community outreach with an average of 65 kids a week on Wednesday nights. Here are a few questions: 1. We don't have the staffing to support separate JH/SH ministries, so how can we do split stuff in our 1:45 minute Wednesday nights? 2. How do you get the attention of 65 kids for giving game instructions? 3…

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Question for the Community: Teenage Pregnancy in Your Ministry

I have just started in paid youth ministry and have a situation that they don't teach you in Bible college dealing with teenage pregnancy. I have a new student that has had a baby 2 months ago and she brings the baby into the youth ministry. I have several students that play “pass the baby” and “peek-a-boo” with the baby. I have one student (not the parent) who is using the baby to draw attention to herself…

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