Youth Ministry Life
Kurt Johnston and Josh Griffin
Group Publishing, 2012, 96 pp., $8.99
More than Dodgeball
Josh Griffin
Group Publishing, 2012, 93 pp., $8.99
Two Sides
Darren Sutton
Group Publishing, 2012, 144 pp., $8.99
Everyday Youth Ministry (EMY) is a brand new line of books from Simply Youth Ministry that seeks to be a collection of highly practical resources for youth workers, by youth workers that can be read from cover to cover in about 90 minutes. If the three following preliminary releases in the line indicate what is to come, there’s lots more good stuff to come.
In Youth Ministry Life, Kurt Johnston and Josh Griffin of Saddleback Church take the best of the best from their Simply Youth Ministry Today enewsletters and compile them in this great book. They provide great insights on philosophy of ministry, dealing with the other people we relate with in ministry, the practice and programmatic side of ministry and the personal areas that need to be addressed as youth workers in order for us to last in ministry.
Josh Griffin also contributes to the EYM line with More than Dodgeball, in which he address three important aspects of youth ministry. In section one, Griffin addresses heart and calling, providing thoughts on getting into the field of vocational youth ministry, the purpose once you’re there, and how to stay in ministry for the long haul. In section two, he provides some great thoughts about leadership. In section three, he gives a collection of very helpful insights about recruiting, training and equipping our volunteers. He then wraps everything up with a fourth section to provide encouragement and some general wisdom about ministry life.
In Two Sides, Darren Sutton, accompanied by a number of other youth workers in the trenches, provides a look at a collection of ministry questions that could go one way or the other. Should you write your own curriculum or buy one? Should we separate junior high and high school or combine the group? Should our small groups be gender-based or mixed? Sutton and crew tackle these and many more, presenting both sides to the argument to help you make a decision about what works best for your group.
