EXCLUSIVE METRO YOUTH PASTOR COLLECTION

Therefore Go is an interactive, Gospel-centered, four-week devotional journal designed to help equip your students for a transformational missions experience.

I Can Only Imagine: A 4-Week Devotional for Students is inspired by the film I Can Only Imagine and developed by the team at YM360. This devotional book will take teenagers on a month-long journey through God's Word as they explore the major themes of the film: redemption, forgiveness, and salvation.

The story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is paramount to the Christian faith. In Scripture, we have four different accounts, all unique in their portrayal of God with us, Immanuel. These four witnesses are going to be our guide this Easter, as we look at who Jesus was to each of them, why our own view of Jesus is important, and how incredible the Gospel of Jesus Christ really is.

In the three weeks leading into Easter, students will have their viewpoint of Christ expanded with Witness: A 21-Day Easter Devotional. As they journey through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they will see that Jesus is far from one-dimensional. Don’t let your students miss out on this wonderful opportunity to have a better understanding of each of the Gospel writers, and also develop their own witness to the power of Jesus in their lives!

Easter Sunday should be one of the best celebrations of the year! But sometimes, it’s easy to get into a routine when it comes to Easter and forget what we're actually celebrating. We usually do a great job of celebrating Jesus coming back to life, but sometimes, we don’t spend too much time on what led up to that point. It’s easy to brush past the sadness that this joy comes from because it’s uncomfortable and upsetting. By going through Awaken: A 21-Day Kids & Family Devotional with your child, you can be sure they will be awakened to a fresh perspective on the gravity of all the Easter story holds. Even though the days leading up to Easter can be sad, heavy, and dark, you and your child will learn how to reflect on these things while still being able to rejoice that Easter Sunday always comes! 

Generation Z, is the youngest, most ethnically diverse, and largest generation in American history, comprising 27% of the US population. They are digital natives who have never known a time without cell phones, the internet, or interactive social media. This generation is often stereotyped as tech-addicted, anti-social, or “social justice warriors,” but they also currently make up at least 50% of your youth ministry. Do you know how they think, how they learn, or how to engage them? Let me walk you through how we approach it.

It's time for another big event, camp, retreat, or outreach, and you need a game that your students will be talking about for years to come. I got you! Let me share an epic messy game I play in my ministry that will make your next event "sizzle."

Discipleship is more than getting to know what the teacher knows. It is getting to be what he is. - Juan Carlos Ruiz

We are called to make disciples. The pursuit of making disciples who love, follow, and are completely sold out to Jesus is (or should be) at the very core of everything we do in youth ministry. But when the rubber that is the busyness of our students' and volunteer leaders' lives meets the road of their good intentions, creating discipleship groups that work proves easier to say than actually to accomplish. Let me show you some principles that I have found that have proven to be successful when creating a discipleship group that works.

It's time for another big event, camp, retreat, or outreach, and you need a game that your students will be talking about for years to come. I got you! Let me share an old favorite with a few new twists that I play in my ministry every year as a large outreach. Don't dodge this opportunity to provide your students with a way to involve their friends in an epic night of ducking, dipping, dodging, and diving.

There is nothing like the honor and blessing it is when, as youth pastors, we get a front-row seat to watch God moving and working in the life of a teenager. One of the best moments is talking with a student about their decision to follow Jesus and follow through with being baptized. It's amazing and humbling at the same time. But the logistics of it all can also be a little intimidating. How does that process work in your ministry? Are you intentional in this pre-baptism meeting to walk a student through what baptism is, what baptism isn't, how it works, why we do it, and even what needs to come after? Are you making an effort to involve the parents in this entire process? Allow me the opportunity to share with you how we do one-on-one baptism meetings with students at our church. There's even a downloadable baptism meeting guide and checklist for you to adjust to fit your ministry context.

All of us in youth ministry have upset a parent and had to deal with the ramifications of it. If you haven’t had the experience yet, trust me; it’s coming, and it’s not fun. So, what do you do when you have upset a parent? How do you approach making it right or even winning back any lost trust? There’s no need to make a mistake when dealing with angry parents when you can learn from mine! Let me share with you three things that I’ve learned over the years to do when you need to deal with an angry parent.

As the founder and director of GENERATE camp, I get questions all the time about the games we create and how others can do the same. So allow me the honor of sharing with you some methods that we use at GENERATE and how you can implement those methods to make the games at your next big event, DNOW Weekend, or camp/retreat absolutely amazing!

Youth ministry is a grinding mill of unreal expectations, often combined with a surprising lack of support or resources. When you couple that with a youth pastor who is trying to do too much and trying to be too much -- it's a recipe for disaster leading to stress, anxiety, and ultimately burnout. As a youth pastor, you don't have a lot of leverage to fix the church's attitudes toward ministry, but we can improve our own attitudes. Hopefully, the result will be men and women who lower their stress, anxiety, and burnout and stay in youth ministry for many years to come.

Written by Andy Blanks. The Bible is God's main way of making Himself and His ways known. Your effectiveness at leading students closer to God is tied to your ability to teach the Bible effectively. But teaching the Bible doesn't have to be intimidating!

Written by Dr. Jody Dean. Youth ministry has matured since the days of chubby bunny and the egg-and-armpit relay. On the one hand, there is an excellent opportunity to challenge an information-rich generation to consider the life-changing claims of Christ. But on the other, there are significant challenges to how we do ministry in an increasingly dangerous world.

By Dr. Ben Birdsong. Understanding the generations we serve can be a great tool for the youth worker. With this tool, we can understand the needs, struggles, and mindsets of each generation so we can faithfully point them to the truth of the gospel. With this tool, we can help parents to better understand their children and disciple them well. With this tool, we can help the older adults in the church better understand the generations who have come behind them. With this tool, we can listen to the heart cries of a generation, become a listening ear for them, and encourage them that Jesus will be with them and He never fails. In this module, we will dig into the latest information concerning Generation Z and Alpha in an effort to better understand who they are and how these insights should impact our approach to ministry to them.

By Dr. Noel Forlini Burt. Over the six lessons of this module, we’re going to explore what it means to abide in Christ in good times and in our seasons of spiritual dryness. These six lessons will cover many different topics: childlike reading of Scripture as a means of abiding in Christ, persistence in prayer, and even recalibrating how we teach our own students during dry ministerial seasons. Each of these elements is, I argue, a different way in which we can abide in the One who loves us so much that He gave His life for us.

Recruiting volunteers isn't seasonal; it's constant! Or, at least, it should be. Let me share with you three tips that our ministry uses to successfully recruit our volunteers.

By Nick Clason. We know a couple of things about Gen Z (and subsequently will be true about Gen Alpha close behind them)--1) They're the first generation to be on their mobile device more than other devices combined. 2) They say a hybrid version of church will suit their needs in a post-pandemic world. 3) Greater than 80% use at least one social media app regularly. What these statistics show us is what we already know in our guts, that digital ministry is not going anywhere. As a youth ministry leader, you're doing all you can to keep up with the latest social media platform, use it effectively, post regularly, and leverage it to engage students, parents, and leaders. But gnawing at you in the back of your mind--you're aware that a social media presence matters and that your students live on it, but you don't know how to best utilize each social platform. That's what we're going to explore here in this module. We're going to look at the top five social platforms and discover the most up-to-date best practices. Then we are going to create an entire social media strategy for you and your ministry.

By Corey Watson. School campus ministry is a great way to meet students right where they are, minister to the faculty, bless the school in practical ways, and meet other students in your community. The questions that come up most often, however, whenever we talk about building a campus ministry are— How do I locate and leverage open doors at the schools in my community? How can I connect with my students there without crossing any boundaries? How can I get the critical meetings that need to be had with the key leaders at a school, and how do I make a great impression when I do? These are common questions for many of us as youth pastors as we attempt to solve the campus ministry conundrum. Oftentimes, however, we go about answering these questions during the busiest times of the school year. What if I told you there was a time when school leaders would be more open to meeting and engaging with you on this topic? There is such a time, the summer break. 

By Team YM360. If you start with "The Bible says," or in some way assume they already know much about the Gospel, you are, in effect, asking them to understand a clear that you understand clearly, but they don't, and they have no picture giving them a framework to start with. Not having a big picture to help put the pieces of life in perspective can be frustrating. Thankfully, God never intended for us to be without a clear picture of our life's purpose and direction. Instead, God gave us a big picture of life in order that we could live according to His design. It's only when we live according to this bigger picture, God's story, that our individual piece of the story makes sense. That's why understanding the Gospel story is vital to our witness. But it's also vital to teach this to our students today. This learn module will walk you through how to do just that!

By Dr. Allen Jackson. You want to lead students to be more like Christ. In a word, you want them to become disciples. The question is, how do you go about doing it?

By Dr. Noel Forlini Burt. Within this 6-lesson module, we'll enter what we think to be familiar territory with the first few stories in Genesis. These are stories we believe we know well until we read them again and discover that there are places in the text we didn't notice before or that our Sunday School experiences were omitted due to the things that weren't palatable for us as children. There are some hard stories in this collection of texts. That's probably why we don't hear them preached very often. Nevertheless, these are important stories, so I want to dive into the things that I think we as ministers need to know about the book of Genesis: the world "behind" the text, the world "of" the text, and the world "in front of" the text.