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Christmas is an excellent time to refocus your students on the true meaning of the holiday season. Jake and Andy talk about why and how you should make sure not to miss the importance of Christmas in youth ministry.

It's conference season in youth ministry! Regardless of denomination, in the next few months, there are many youth ministry conferences that you will be apart of or be invited to. Here is some wisdom about how you can make the most of your time spent at a youth ministry conference.

As Youth Workers, we know it is important to communicate with our students' parents. I am challenging you to begin to do this weekly. Over the years as youth pastor and now as a parent of two children in the youth ministry at my church, I value good communication from the youth ministry. 

What started as 3 reasons turned into 4. Don't worry, you won't have to pay extra for the 4th one. 

Recruiting leaders to serve alongside you in your youth ministry is tough work. Once a volunteer says, "yes" and begins serving, I challenge you to help make them happy. It not only helps them stay serving in your ministry longer but also will help them serve more effectively. I bet when you are happy serving at your church, you do a better job then when you are unhappy. Right?

We have a problem! We understand there is power in the Bible, but our students aren’t spending time in it. 

I submit to you that while we might desire for our students to read the Bible and allow for it to change their lives… it never will unless we do it first!

The call to disciple teenagers is what drives us in youth ministry. But if we don't have adult volunteers to help us, most of us would find our discipleship efforts severely crippled. Identifying, recruiting, and keeping adult volunteers is one of the most vital tasks of any youth worker. And because this strikes fear into the hearts of many of us, I wanted to pass along three foolproof ways to recruit volunteers.

Whether you write your own curriculum, purchase your curriculum, or, like most churches, operate with some mixture of the two, your Bible study is only as strong as your teachers. It's essential that you train your adult leaders to be intentional about how they implement the curriculum you put in their hands. 

Andy Blanks and Jake Rasmussen share about part of the process YM360 goes through when we create a 52-week Bible Study Curriculum for youth ministry. We hope that this will help you understand a little more about the intentional process we go through to create a Bible Study for your youth ministry.

Terrance Jackson is all things creative at YM360 and GENERATE Camp. The easiest way to sum up his role is that he helps execute the creative vision for both GENERATE and YM360. We sat down with Terrance and wanted to get a closer look at all the things that he sees and how that affects YOU!

Recently, YM360's Amy Howell was able to sit down with Dr. Allen Jackson, Senior Pastor at Dunwoody Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Jackson helped guide Amy and many others through some difficult times in their lives and was an instrumental voice in shaping Amy's call to ministry. Amy and Dr. Jackson spent some time talking about a variety of subjects. But the one that seemed to really stand out was an important thought about the perspective we take when ministering to our students.

Everyone wants to be proficient at their job. But how do you you know if what you're doing is working? While there are different metrics you can use, encouraging feedback from students is a tool many people overlook. Our friend Jamie Mullen, youth minister at LaBelle Haven Baptist Church, regularly seeks feedback from his students. We recently chatted with Jamie about this and other topics.

Maybe you’re a young youth worker just getting started. Maybe you’re a veteran youth worker who, for whatever reason, hasn’t had children. Maybe you’re somewhere in between. Whatever the case, there is a youth ministry truth that few people address: It can be hard talking to parents about their children when you don't have children yourself.

Graduation is always an exciting time in your youth ministries. There are so many mixed emotions. You're excited for your students; you're happy because they're happy. There are, however, another set of emotions we may feel at graduation, ones we don’t often stop and talk about. So let's talk about the "What If's" of youth ministry.

No matter what your title is - youth pastor, student minister, etc. - you are a disciple-maker. That is your calling, your task. And one of the primary things we do as disciple-makers is to facilitate encounters with God.

We create environments and interactions where students are brought into proximity with God, with the intent that He transforms them.

Roger Davis, YM360 President, has always had a heart for missions. He takes his family on mission trips, he gives leadership to YM360, but also, he provides leadership to one of our partner organizations, Servant Life. As a long time participant in missions, Roger understands the power of mission trips. In our discussion, Roger and I mentioned a few reasons why short term missions are so vital in the spiritual formation of your students.

As you begin transitioning into the graduation season, what are you to do with your students who graduate? Your ministry with your graduating students does not have to stop just because they have transitioned out of your ministry. The relationship that you’ve built with these students, shouldn’t just disappear as soon as they walk across the stage. 

Jody recently sat down with YM360’s Jake Rasmussen at Southeast Conclave to talk a little about the book and the heart behind it. With incidents covering headlines for sexual misconduct and unreported issues in churches, Dr. Dean and Dr. Jackson had 16 different topics that kept rising to the surface in regards to risk management. Including things like Volunteers, Mandatory Reporting, and even things like Bullying and Making Money Matter.

Bubba Crowder, a long time friend of Roger Davis and YM360, is the founder and Director of Fund the Nations - 52 Threads, a company founded based on the Great Commission and with the intent of helping students and adopting parents to fundraise. Oh my does Bubba have a lot of experience with fundraising in youth ministry!

Andy Blanks, Co-Founder and Publisher for YM360, recently sat down with Angela and asked her how, in the midst of so much commitment, she and her husband managed to avoid burnout.

We wanted to suggest a few gift ideas to empower you to not only celebrate your graduating seniors as they transition out of your ministry but to create some meaning as you do so.