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Recent Blog Posts
It’s Impossible to “Form Young People” In Two Hours a Week
I recently read through about 80 evaluations from a day of formation offered on discipleship. One of the questions on the participant evaluation asked about specific struggles people had experienced in their discipleship efforts thus
Why Parents Aren’t Involved in Your Ministry
I’ve read a lot of articles and resources from different people involved in youth ministry about how to engage parents within in a youth ministry program. Heck, one of our most-shared blog posts talks about
You Are Not the Only Youth Minister!
I found myself a bit frustrated in a meeting not long ago. Not because of anything anyone said, but because I began to realize how limited my vision of youth ministry really was. I served
Two Necessary Skills of a Strong Parish Leader in Discipleship
Forming disciples versus simply telling people what to do requires a different skill set than we are used to drawing upon in youth ministry. I have spoken with hundreds of different youth leaders who have, to certain degree, perfected the various models of youth ministry. I’m sure it’s been said
Should We Be Training or Forming Our Leaders?
For the past 10-15 years, I’ve been watching the evolution of youth ministry. During that time, people have been searching for the right resource that is going to respond to the needs of young people. Today, we have top notch resources that can be used in just about any setting,
My Dreams For Youth Ministry
After striving to “do what everyone else did” and arguably being successful at it, I still found myself desiring more.
Large Group or Discipleship Groups?
How does a parish youth ministry have time to manage both a large group program and discipleship groups? Utilizing the model of Discipleship Focused Youth Ministry, this is absolutely possible, and I would argue that parish youth ministers who adopt these simple mindsets actually find themselves with less anxiety and less “work.”
How Do We Engage the Other 90% of the Church?
If we “actually engage” the 5-10% effectively, it will mean that the other 90% receive the invitation to be engaged through them
Evangelization – Where Are We Going Wrong?
For some time now, I’ve been trying to put my finger on the “missing piece” in our current efforts at evangelization. I’ve written a post about how evangelization shouldn’t be so hard and shared my experience of watching evangelization happen through people not necessarily because THEY did something extreme. It’s
A CRAZY Youth Ministry Proposal
A couple of years ago, I spoke with a mom in a local parish who was interested in leading a small discipleship group. She was excited because the parish was encouraging discipleship groups to begin as naturally as possible, so she immediately saw her daughter, her daughter’s friends, and a
6 Youth Ministry “Anti-Programs” That Will Enhance Your Current Programming
In my last post, I was rather critical of programs. It’s not really programs that I struggle with but rather the inability of people to think outside of their programs. I struggle with this myself. It’s easy to fall into the falsehood that we will be able to meet all
Are Youth Leaders Ready to Think Outside of Programs?
When I was in high school, we had one “program” in our parish for youth: Religious Education. I was placed in a class based on my age and was run through a system that had been going long before I was ever even alive. I’m grateful for all of the
How I Have Seen Discipleship Changing the Church
I have been assisting parishes in moving towards a discipleship focused youth ministry approach for the last four years. It was really what I was seeing happen with FOCUS on our university campuses that first got my attention, and DFYM was the result. As it has taken shape, I have