Episode Archive & Blog

Read about the YMG community & catch up on past episodes

Question for the Community: Additional Income

I understand that youth ministry is in not about making lots of money but sometimes its hard to keep my family afloat. I'm curious about second sources of income that fit well for youth pastors. I'm still working on my undergrad and am a “broke” college student…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Dealing with Discontentment

Lately I have been dealing with daily discontentment. Not necessarily a MAJOR problem, but I’m just tired of my daily routine. Part of this could be because I am part-time in ministry and desire to be full-time. I take classes and work 32 hours a week at a doctor’s office to pay my bills…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Helping Teens Who Are Bored With Church

I am the small group leader for 7th-9th boys. I love these kids and most are very bright. I have one 7th grader who has been in church and private christian school his whole life. He is bored with church right now, also he feels he has heard all the stories…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Maintaining Personal Devotions

I'm a 24 year old Teen Pastor living in Sydney, Australia and I've just entered into my second year of ministry. When I first started I inherited a team that was lacking leadership and direction, so I read PDYM and formed a vision. I’ve have been working hard ever since and really experienced the joy of working with the High School students. However, my personal devotional life is suffering because I always seem to be so busy…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Starting Over

I have been at my current church for 2.5 years. There were about 10 students when I arrived, but now all of them are gone. Literally, all of them. The 10 students were extremely loyal to the youth pastor before me and left when I didn't do things the way that he did them. I am rebuilding. Where do I begin? It might be helpful to know that the average age of my congregation is 60. I feel lost at times…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Sex Education Resources

The counselor at our middle school has asked the local youth pastors to get involved teaching sex education every year…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Final Days of Youth Ministry?

There is this growing movement supporting the idea of doing away with "youth ministries" and replacing them with a "parent responsible discipleship" model. Of course, we would all be thrilled if parents were the primary force in discipling their own kids. My question: Have you run across this or know of any helpful readings, podcasts, resources on this topic, etc? I can give what I consider the “run of the mill” response... no problem. But I am not equipped with surveys, data, etc.

Read more →

Question for the Community: Bridging the Divide

I’m a volunteer in my church’s youth ministry. There are plenty of unchurched kids but our problem is that we don’t know how to get them connected into “big church” on Sundays. Plus the atmosphere in the midweek is too rough for some of our church parents, so they don’t want their kids coming to the midweek…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Starting Small Groups

I’ve only been in my position for about 3 months. The previous youth pastor had fallen out of love with student ministry. We have about 130 kids in our ministry and this is my first ministry job. The majority of these students haven’t had much spiritual growth. I want to implement small groups. What is the best way to do this? In college they never taught us how to do this..…

Read more →

Question for the Community: Growing Pains

Our youth group has grown by about 15 students over the past 3 month, taking us from 45 to 60 on a regular basis. The excitement our group has right now is awesome and it's been a blessing getting to know all of these new students. But with these new students, drama has been introduced to our group that wasn't there before…

Read more →
123456Next