Purpose Driven Youth Ministry: 9 Essential Foundations for Healthy Growth

by Doug Fields, Rick Warren (Foreword)

If you long to reach kids and see their lives changed by God, this comprehensive guide shows you how. Purpose Driven® Youth Ministry will do for youth ministry what Rick Warren's Gold Medallion award-winning, The Purpose Driven® Church is doing for pastoral ministry. It's an indispensable guide to creating and maintaining youth ministry for the long run. It will help you create a solid spiritual team that builds the foundations of the Christian faith into the hearts and lives of young people. Forged around the fundamental purposes of evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and worship, Purpose Driven® Youth Ministry uses the experiences of Saddleback Church to illustrate what a healthy Youth ministry can be. Nine transferable principles help you - Connect with the power of God for passionate, committed leadership - Define the purpose of your ministry and communicate it effectively - Identify your potential audience - Create programs that reach your audience and fulfill God's purposes - Implement processes that move students to maturity - Enhance your ministry with clearly defined values - Team up with parents to involve the whole family - Find volunteers and develop them into participating leaders - Persevere through tough times and thrive in an ever-changing environment. Balancing both theory and practice, Purpose Driven® Youth Ministry can be applied to any church setting, regardless of size, denomination, facilities, resources, and existing leadership. Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry will help you develop a ministry that equips students rather than a ministry that coordinates events. Doug Fields says, "My goal for this book is to coach you through a plan to build a healthy youth ministry that isn't dependent on one great youth leader and won't be destroyed when the youth worker leaves the church. It's not a book on how to grow your youth ministry with six easy steps; it's about identifying, establishing, and building health into your church's youth ministry.

Genres: Young Adult, Church

451 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Daniel Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very practical guide to establishing a healthy youth ministry. It does not address the heart of the youth minister themselves as much as I would want, but that is somewhat expected given the title of the book.

[Kermet Key · Rating 2 out of 5]

Want to hook them young and make them like long cult members? Here's how! I must've studied this book relentlessly over 20 years ago when I was a cultist in an evangelical church and wanted to become a youth pastor. I got better.

[Rob Markley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sound sensible advise for youth leadership

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book

[Brandon Siwula · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had this book on my shelf and for some reason read it. Doug has some good ideas and I am using his concept of giving a resource to help my students develop spiritual habits. Ultimately this book encourages feeding the consumerism that is our American society and does not leave a lot of room for adapting to individual context. At the very least it was an entertaining read and will give you a good grasp of what modern day youth ministry philosophy is. If you can take the good things and spit out the rest it might be worth a read.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty dated, but some good material.

Quotes:
“Don’t allow doing the work of God to come at the expense of being God’s person.”

“The students in your youth ministry don’t need your clever ideas and great programming skills. They need a living model—a man or woman of God who is passionate about his or her faith.”

“Jesus made it clear that we bear fruit when we are connected to him.”

[Sándor Szabó]

A very practical and detailed, hands-on book for youth ministry. Maybe too much. When I used to be a youth leader I tried to adapt many things in it but I failed, it is not the book's fault, though. I had to realize the charachter of the believers and the connections between them count way too more than the methods. I still recommend this book. You have to learn the lessons in the hard way to really own them. :)

[Kimberly Herrington]

Purpose Driven Youth Ministry is a great inspirational tool. It helps readers to refocus and get back to basics of youth ministry. Reading about how to avoid the pitfalls of a small youth ministry encouraged me to keep going forward.

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceptional outline and strategies on developing a Youth Ministry. Very detailed. An absolute must read in youth ministry.