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• Don’t Let Students Waste This Summer

  By Chris Maxwell By this point, you have many summers under your belt and you’re likely to encounter many more. But each summer only happens once. Don’t waste it. Help your students take advantage of these months so that when they look back they’ll say, “The decisions I made during the summer of 2021 changed…  Read More

• Great Ideas for Summer Self-Care

  By Chris Maxwell Youth pastors know the importance of summer. School is out. Weather is nice. Time, though packed with vacations and mission trips and ball games, is a little more relaxed. We want to inspire our students. We want them to invite their friends to the exciting summer events we’ve worked so hard to…  Read More

• 12 Topics Youth Ministries Avoid

  There are only so many weeks in a year, so we must select which topics to cover and which to leave off our teaching schedules. Inevitably, we pass over subjects we would love to cover but can’t. This dilemma presents a powerful temptation: do we schedule precious time to cover topics that make us nervous,…  Read More

• Moved by Compassion

  Today’s blog post is different from what we usually publish. It’s an excerpt from the newest book of our regular contributor, Chris Maxwell: Pause with Jesus: Entering His Story in Everyday Life. In this excerpt, Chris immerses us in wave after wave of images from the story of Jesus. He invites us to sit and…  Read More

• Trim the Fat from Your Schedule

  By Chris Maxwell One of the key—and most dreaded—responsibilities of leadership is to make plans. We’re the emperors of events, the sultans of scheduling, the overlords of organizing. That’s a lot of responsibility. We manage time, say yes and no, complete tasks, train leaders, thank workers, evaluate events; our list of duties goes on and…  Read More

• 9 People Every Youth Worker Should Know

  By Chris Maxwell You hurry to finish planning. You rush to another meeting. You strive to have more time with family. You love encounters with individual teens and you enjoy the large youth events and you work to budget time in order to use time more wisely—but all those things take time. Adding more people…  Read More