When I first started working in youth minstry, I felt overwhelmed. I knew where I wanted to go, but I lacked the tools. I wanted the teens to do service projects ontheir own but it seemd that I always needed to be present. I watned them to do dynamic stuff not just read a Gospel passage and have something akin to a 15 minute class after. I asked around and got one list of service projects from one person, 5 activities from another, and then another 2 activities from a third. This was nice but this was a lot of work.
Then I realized something, there are several programs out their that had 2/3 of my work done for me. Some people spent their time thinking through these programs and giving me pre-made guides.
It suprises me today that many youth minsiters still try to make it up on their own. How much further each of them could go if they began with the material provided by any of the top few youth ministry programs. Even if you are great, why not get the first step done and be that much greater.
And if you are not the youth minister, help them out. If the parishes is paying $10,000 (part time) for a youth minister, but not $700 for a program that does half their work, that seems really inefficient.
For full disclosure, I ended up rewriting many of the different activities and service projects I found into one format for the Conquest program. But I don’t get paid for this. I really want to help you all out with what I write.
