Don't gamble on finding the right youth pastor for your church. Invest the time and energy in a deliberate, intentional plan for conducting the best search possible!Finding the right youth pastor for your congregation can be a daunting task. Where do you find the best applicants? How should you structure the search process? Which people from your church should interview the candidates?You'll find answers to those questions in Before You Hire a Youth Pastor, along with insights and strategies from Mark DeVries and Jeff Dunn-Rankin. These veteran youth workers and consultants know that the healthiest congregations take responsibility for their student ministries and hire youth pastors who can steward those ministries effectively.Avoid a "normal" search that produces predictable, normal results-a youth worker who isn't aligned to the church's vision, a youth pastor who doesn't stay around long, or any number of other outcomes that limit the vitality of your youth ministry. Instead, use this book as a guide for conducting an "abnormal" search that leads you to the right person for your congregation.

You're looking for a youth pastor. Again. What goes wrong? Why do youth ministries crumble? And what is the cost to students, parents, volunteers and church staff? Is a sustainable youth ministry possible, even after a youth pastor leaves? Youth ministry expert Mark DeVries knows the answer is yes, because he helps build sustainable youth minist...

In this practical book for church leaders, you ll discover how to develop a healthy and sustainable student ministry that includes encouraging your youth pastor, engaging teens, and involving parents. Whether you already have a youth pastor or are just beginning your search, this book will help you set up your student ministry and youth pastor for health and longevity."

Acclaimed church leader, blogger, founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan unpacks the lifecycle of a typical church, identifies characteristics of each phase, and provides practical next steps a church can take to move towards sustained health. Think about your church for a moment. Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it somewhere in between? Acclaimed church leader, blogger, and founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan has identified the seven stages of a church's lifecycle that range from the hopeful and optimistic days of launch, to the stagnating last stages of life support. Regardless of the stage in which you find your church, it carries with it the world's greatest mission—to "go and make disciples of all the nations . . ." With eternity at stake the Church should be doing most everything within its power to see lives changed forever. The Church should strive for the pinnacle of the lifecycle, where they are continually making new disciples and experiencing what Morgan refers to as "sustained health." In The Unstuck Church, Morgan unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find it's way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck. The Unstuck Church is a call for honest an assessment of where your church sits on the lifecycle, and a challenge to move beyond it.

Stand on the shoulders of giants!Have you ever wished you could have a mentor like the Apostle Paul—someone trustworthy to guide your spiritual development and ministry? Tony Cooke, author, teacher, and student of church history, has assembled a panel of the greatest Christian spiritual leaders of all time, curating a profound, yet...

What is youth ministry actually for? And does it have a future? Andrew Root, a leading scholar in youth ministry and practical theology, went on a one-year journey to answer these questions. In this book, Root weaves together an innovative first-person fictional narrative to diagnose the challenges facing the church today and to offer a new vision for youth ministry in the 21st century. Informed by interviews that Root conducted with parents, this book explores how parents' perspectives of what constitutes a good life are affecting youth ministry. In today's culture, youth ministry can't compete with sports, test prep, and the myriad other activities in which young people participate. Through a unique parable-style story, Root offers a new way to think about the purpose of youth ministry: not happiness, but joy. Joy is a sense of experiencing the good. For youth ministry to be about joy, it must move beyond the youth group model and rework the assumptions of how identity and happiness are imagined by parents in American society.

The teens in your church are impacting their world today and they’ll be the leaders of tomorrow. As a leader in your church, you understand the importance of an effective youth ministry. But it’s not as easy as simply putting a person in charge of the youth ministry in your church. Some of the most important steps in building a sustainable youth ministry happen even before you begin looking for a youth pastor. And once you have a person in place, there are several key things you can do to help develop a healthy student ministry that includes encouraging your youth pastor, engaging teens, and involving parents. In this practical book for church leaders, you’ll: • Set goals for your student ministry that inform your search for a youth pastor. • Facilitate communication with your entire church ministry staff by using the included discussion guide. • Discover how to implement a ministry that supports families and their involvement in the youth ministry. Whether you already have a youth pastor or are just beginning your search, this book will help you set up your student ministry and youth pastor for health and longevity. Make sure you understand what’s going on inside the mind of your youth pastor—whether he or she is a veteran, a volunteer, or an inexperienced new pastor—so that together, you can create a life-changing student ministry that reaches teens and draws them to Jesus.

Many pastors conceive of the church budget as primarily a financial tool, but in fact it is primarily a pastoral tool. A church's philosophy of ministry is locked into its budget, and so the budget will either stifle or accelerate any attempts to move a congregation toward a biblical model of church health. As such, the church budget is a far more potent pastoral tool than many church leaders realize. Budgeting for a Healthy Church examines each section of the budget in light of Biblical principles to show how a church budget can lock in healthy approaches to ministry. Whereas most books on church budgeting are "how" books, explaining how the budgeting process should work, this is a "what" book, helping church leaders determine the pastoral implications of what they choose to fund in their budgets.

"Employing real-life examples and thought provoking discussion questions, this lively book will challenge church leaders and people in the pews alike to seek out and maintain the spiritual balance that results from experiencing it in their lives." -- Inside cover