Youth Pastor Books

Serve: Investing Together In Student Ministry is a valuable resource for youth ministry leaders and their volunteers. With the built-in study guide and the chapter reflections, this book is designed to bring about conversation and discussion among a youth ministry leader and their volunteer team. No matter how long your volunteers have served, SERVE provides encouragement, research, and practical insight for a youth ministry team.

Buy 5 or more and Save 10% with code SERVE10

What would happen if you, your ministry leaders, and your students chose to live for God’s glory for 100 days? There’s really only one way to find out! 100 Days of Choosing God’s Glory: A Devotional Challenge is a must-have for anyone who wants to learn how to make God famous. This one-of-a-kind devotional will challenge readers, young and old, to glorify God, teach them what glorifying Him means, and help them figure out how to do it. God is going to glorify Himself one way or another because He deserves it, but you and everyone who is a part of your ministry have a chance to participate. 

Grab a copy of 100 Days of Choosing God’s Glory for every person in your ministry, take the challenge together, and experience what it feels like to let God work in and through you. You’ll be blessed! 

The 7 Best Practices for Teaching Teenagers the Bible is a resource for youth workers that teaches seven meaningful practices they can use to help teach the Bible in a transformative and dynamic way.

Disciple: The Ordinary Person’s Guide To Discipling Teenagers, written by one of the leading voices in youth ministry, Dr. Allen Jackson, is a practical, down-to-earth guide for leading teenagers to pursue Christ.

Protect: A Youth Worker's Guide to Navigating Risk (Revised & Updated Edition) is an indispensable resource for churches, para-church organizations, and anyone serving in youth ministry. Whether you are a full-time, part-time, volunteer, bi-vocational, rookie, or veteran youth worker, this revised and updated edition ensures you’ll be equipped to navigate the contemporary challenges, unique opportunities, and inherent risks in youth ministry today.

In Youth Ministry For The Longer Haul: A Field Guide For Longevity, youth ministry veteran and author Chris Trent passes along over three decades of hard-earned advice, knowledgeable insights, and practical wisdom. Chris knows firsthand the value of ministry mentors. And throughout the pages of this book, he mentors you, the reader, so that you too can experience success in navigating the pathway to longevity in youth ministry.

Wake Up: Rediscovering A Passion for God and the Bible is a 31-day devotional experience designed to unlock the Bible for Christ-followers. Every day in Wake Up teaches you a different way of meeting with God in the Bible. Some feed your head. Some feed your heart. Some lead you to reflect. Some lead you to act. But every moment is designed to help you rediscover your joy for God and for meeting Him in His Word.

4 Views on Talking to Teenagers About Sex reflects the thoughts, experiences, and practical advice of four in-the-trenches youth workers, who have spent years having these conversations with the teenagers in their ministries. Representing an array of viewpoints, these writers don’t agree on everything—but they all know that our conversations with teens about sex must speak to God’s design, avoid shame, and go far beyond any one instance of “the talk.

5 Views on Youth Ministry Short-Term Missions reflects the thoughts, personal stories, and real-life tips of five in-the-trenches youth workers who regularly lead short-term mission trips (STMs). Here you’ll find thoughtful but practical dialogue on the multiple views and approaches to STMs, from work camps to urban missions to long-term partnerships with Indigenous church leaders across the globe. Didn’t realize there were different views and approaches to STMs that thoughtful youth workers could disagree on? That’s part of the point of this book; to help youth workers have more insight into the issues and be more intentional in their responses. The five views of STMs found within this book are based on the contributors’ core commitments and worldviews (really, their missiology). Each of the contributors also offers a short response to one of the other views of STMs presented. Appendices tackle the important topics of junior high short-term missions and the incredible value of multigenerational trips.

In this edition of our “multi-views” series, the chapters are authored by a group of youth ministry thought leaders. We asked them two key questions: What are the problems youth ministry currently faces? And what is the pathway forward? Each chapter represents a thoughtful, practical, and challenging viewpoint. At the end of each chapter, there is a sidebar from an in-the-trenches youth worker whose ministry is currently living out the future the chapter’s writer foresees.

99 Thoughts for Parents of Teenagers is a parent resource designed to help guide parents, encourage them, and give them insights on fulfilling God's great call to raise teenagers who pursue a Jesus-centered life.

99 Thoughts for Small Group Leaders delivers insights, tips, and veteran advice for anyone leading a small group. Youth leaders will be better equipped and more confident with these bite-sized pieces of wisdom.

Marriage can be messy, and marriage while serving in ministry is extra messy. Whether your marriage needs just a little tuneup or a major overhaul, 99 Thoughts on Marriage & Ministry: Prioritizing the "Holy-mess" of Matrimony will encourage both you and your spouse and will empower you to pursue a strong, healthy marriage.

Youth live in the in-between: They’re no longer children but not exactly adults, growing through a God-designed season of life that is tumultuous, exciting, and essential. How can we best love, encourage, and challenge the young people in our lives, helping them live into their gifts and grow toward spiritual maturity? And where should we look for these answers?

A Parent's Guide to Understanding Teenage Brains: Why They Act the Way They Do is a resource designed to help parents of teenagers understand and appreciate the amazing transformations students' brains undergo in adolescence to prepare for adulthood and its many responsibilities.

BAGS helps parents become aware of the specific bags kids tend to pack as they grow up, how these bags tend to get packed, and the long-lasting negative impacts they can have.

Best-Ever Games for Youth Ministry contains over 200 field-tested games that are easy to use in many settings and include classic games with new twists, indoor and outdoor, games that teach, and games that build community.

Building a Youth Ministry That Builds Disciples: A Small Book About a Big Idea offers a blueprint for building in teenagers the ultimate ministry goal—a lifelong love of Christ.

Three years into Kendall’s job as the youth pastor of Grace church, many things are going really well: Kids are connecting and growing. She’s built a solid team of adult leaders. She and her husband love their home, city, and friends. But when Kendall is blindsided by her unsupportive senior pastor, who once again takes the side of a wealthy parent over Kendall’s, it’s the impetus she needs to start reconsidering her future. Is it time for Kendall to move on? And if she does look for a role at a new church, how can she be sure it will be a better fit than this one? 

With this fiction debut, veteran youth worker Jen Bradbury’s novel explores the process of living in to your calling, listening to the voice of God, and continually asking the question, What does the right fit look like, and how do you know when you’ve found it?

Ministry comes with many weighty responsibilities. Ministry leaders are called to teach, serve, and lead. But in leading those under their care, there comes a moment when they recognize the future leaders under their leadership. With this recognition comes an all too familiar question: What comes next?

In Calling Out the Called, Scott Pace and Shane Pruitt answer this question by giving direction, encouragement, and a charge for ministry leaders to recognize the future leaders in their midst and do what needs to be done for the future of ministry: the calling out of the called.

Few areas of Christian ministry are as intense, unpredictable, and chaotic as junior high ministry. Read Controlled Chaos: Making Sense of Junior High Ministry to gain a little bit of hope and help so you can effectively serve the middle school students in your church.

Everybody's Urban: Understanding the Survival Mindset of the Next Generation helps youth workers in every setting—in the middle of a large city or rural small town—move beyond identifying the students in their ministry by where they live or their skin color into real-world strategies to minister to today's teenagers.

Veteran youth worker Kurt Johnston writes, "Getting better at youth ministry is worth the effort because teenagers are worth the effort." With that in mind, he put together this compact, practical, and approachable book for youth ministry volunteers, brimming with insights and wisdom from his decades in youth ministry—including some memorable and hilarious stories of the mistakes that taught him along the way.

Inside the pages of Jesus Centered Youth Ministry, you'll discover the foundation for a ministry that is Jesus-centered along with the bricks for building it. You'll discover that not only is it possible to create this kind of ministry, it's also essential that you pursue this path.

Hierarchical, coercive leadership should have no place in the church. But if we move away from those unbiblical (and ineffective) forms of power-based leadership, we still need to lead. In Leading Without Power, Mark Oestreicher explores—in very pragmatic ways—what it might look like for us to replace power-based leadership modalities with other approaches.

If you’re ready to become more confident, competent and consistent in sharing your faith, then Live Sent book is for you. You’ll receive simple, step-by-step guidance that will equip you to share Jesus effectively in everyday life.

On the Spot: No-Prep Games for Youth Ministry is a helpful resource including over 20 games not needing any preparation. Each 15-minute game is easy to use whenever your teenagers need to have some "fun in a flash."

Protecting Your Children from Internet Pornography exposes the many ways that pornography is menacing people, relationships, society, and—especially—our children. You will be disturbed, shocked, motivated, and empowered to make a difference after reading this book.

Purpose Driven Youth Ministry: 9 Essential Foundations for Healthy Growth will provide principles to help create and maintain healthy youth ministries for the long run, centered around the principles of evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and worship.

There is a difference between religion and faith. Religion tells stories. Faith has a story to tell. Redefining Normal is an invitation to reclaim the life of faith from inside the religion of Christianity. Dave Rhodes challenges readers to a journey of becoming extraordinary disciples.

Small-Group Leader's Quick Guide to (Almost) Everything is a practical resource for small-group leaders who want to make a big difference in the lives of teenagers and point them to Jesus.

Teaching for Change guides teachers to unravel the mystery of how students absorb and process information. This insight leads to better prepared lessons that will engage the hearts and minds of students. 

Teaching Teenagers in a Post-Christian World: Cultivating Exploration and Ownership will help youth workers shift from being content dispensers to conversation cultivators. Instead of treating teenagers like consumers—even when we really believe in what we're selling—let's create learning environments that lead to faith exploration and ownership.

Lissy Rienow shares the teenage point of view about the toughest issues families face today. Her heart for families shines through as she encourages and equips parents to fight for a stronger connection with their teen. 

When you think about the state of youth ministry today, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you cheer or fear? Is the glass half full or half empty? Mark Oestreicher offers a fresh take on what’s right in youth ministry—and discovers that perhaps things aren’t as broken as some of us might have thought.