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."

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...

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.

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.