Book Highlight: Lead Them to Jesus
Youth ministry is theological ministry. Students ask hard questions and being a youth worker can be overwhelming. Lead Them to Jesus was written to help volunteer youth workers to navigate these significant conversations and to equip them with the practical skills that benefit every fruitful youth worker.
Everything about youth ministry flows from the gospel. From the games we play to the events we plan to the way we handle discipline when students get caught vaping in the bathroom. It’s obvious to apply the gospel to our evangelistic events. Thankfully, due to a growing number of resources about biblical theology, more youth workers are learning how to teach gospel-centered messages.
And yet, my own experience has shown me something: A youth ministry can only be as gospel centered as the volunteers. The youth pastor is only one person and the Elders don’t usually serve as youth workers (but that would be awesome!). So that raises the question, “How can gospel-centered youth workers train their volunteers?”
This was my question when I was transitioning from one church (where I had served for 14 years) to my current ministry. It’s a great church with faithful volunteers, but I wanted to make sure we could all get on the same page as soon as possible. So I started making a list of topics for us to discuss in our team meetings in my first year. As I reviewed the list, I kept adding to it until I realized this was more than we could cover in twelve monthly meetings, but it could be converted into a handbook for them to read. In a very literal sense, I wrote Lead Them to Jesus for my own team and everyone else is looking over our shoulders.
Lead Them to Jesus is a handbook for volunteer youth workers that’s divided in two sections: Biblical Truths for Youth Workers and Practical Help for Youth Workers. And that’s the heartbeat of this website… to bring theology and practical skills together in order to lead students to Jesus. There are 40 chapters, but each chapter is written similar to a blog post so they’re tight and accessible for your volunteers to actually read - even better if you choose one chapter per team meeting to read and discuss together! The Table of Contents below will give you a good picture about what to expect from the book.
