Youth Ministry Blog
Our collection of youth ministry blog posts will encourage and equip you as you navigate the challenges of life and ministry. Because we know ministry life can be difficult on a heart level, many of our youth ministry blog posts are aimed to help you see through a gospel lens. Sure, the X’s and O’s of youth ministry are important. But, at G Shades, our primary goal is to equip you for gospel centered youth ministry. Oftentimes, that requires more than just tips and tricks.
Addressing Faith and Doubt In Youth Ministry
We’ve all been there in youth ministry where a student asks a question or poses a doubt to Christianity that we’re not totally prepared to answer off the top of the dome. That’s a hard place to be because, let’s face it, none of us likes to look stumped in
Avoiding Volunteer Burnout
If you’ve been doing occupational youth ministry for longer than five minutes, you understand that we have no shot at doing this well without a team of amazing volunteers. It’s just too much. It involves too many details. It’s too many students—even for those of us with ministries that don’t
Fostering Authentic Faith In Teenagers
Before we jump into fostering authentic faith in teenagers, let me share why this topic is top of mind for me. My wife and I recently went from parenting three kids to parenting five. No, we didn’t have twin babies! We brought in two teenage siblings we already knew and
Navigating Digital Youth Ministry
If it wasn’t the new normal before, COVID ensured it had to be: Digital Youth Ministry. With technology continuing to rapidly progress and shift the world we live in, it becomes even more important that we have a lens for navigating youth ministry in the digital world. To that end,
Life Is Long
Can we just be honest and admit something really quick? As youth workers, we love all of our students equally, but we love some more than others. It’s okay. No one’s looking. You can just admit it. Sometimes God puts certain students in our pathway and puts it on our
ChatBot GPT
My Prompt: “Write a blog post on the following idea: ChatBotGPT is going to elevate the efficiency with which students complete tasks and create content, but new tools aren’t new, and AI will demonstrate itself to be a poor substitute for the Holy Spirit at work in God’s people.” AI
Deconstruction
When college students come back, we get the scary privilege of checking in with them as youth pastors. If you haven’t had this experience yet, you will. Sometimes we discover that our former students have fallen off a bit faith wise as they’ve begun their official transition toward adulthood. Disillusionment.
Burnout Buffer
If you’re reading this blog post the day it comes out, and your Christmas tree is already up in your living room, I want you to know that you are/live with an insane person. It’s way too early! But in the same breath, thank goodness we’re knocking on the door
Too Much Change
Up until recently, I had worked with the same person side-by-side in full time youth ministry for the past five years. She and I developed a vision for our youth ministry, a framework, and a culture. We decided together what aspects of youth ministry we were going to pay most
No More Excuses
I caught COVID. It took until July 29, 2022 for me to actually catch it, and in true youth pastor fashion, I caught it from being at summer camp. As you’re probably very aware, the effect COVID-19 has on any given person or family ranges from medically devastating to mildly
Don’t Put Work Over Worship
It’s fall. Fall is busy. Fall is crazy. Fall is when you put in the work. Because fall is when you’ve got events and curriculum and leader trainings, and this fall will be the season where you figure out how to finally win the war against sports. And in the
What Ads Teach About Teaching
Have you ever seen those annoying YouTube ads? What the ads are selling probably depends on what you’ve been searching on the Internet lately. Whenever I go on a health and fitness kick, I’ll typically start seeing ads for workout programs or dietary supplements. And the thing I’ve noticed about