Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry

This was one of the books I bought with my Google Opinion Rewards money. This app is pretty much a way to monetise your privacy. This book looked like it was something I should read as a Youth Minister. I do think we overuse the word "Gospel" in all sorts of circumstances, so I was interested to see how this book dealt linked the Gospel with different aspects of Youth Ministry.

If I'm honest, mostly the first half of this book wasn't anything new. This was saying the same things that Ken Moser, Tim Hawkins or Brian Cosby has said. Don't get me wrong, what they said is good. Making disciples is the ball game, if you don't do that in your Youth Ministry, you are just babysitting and doing that poorly, as you are competing with Playstations, movies and parties.

There was an emphasis on God's word, prayer and building relationships and community. Again this was a useful reminder but said many times before.

What I did appreciate in this book was the latter half, where it turned more practical. It dealt with small groups, singing, encouraging teens to be public in their faith and there were two good chapters on serving the poor and short term mission trips. While each chapter in the book had a getting practical section, I found these later half really helpful for me to see what this might look like.

Some random takeaways that I got from this book were

* you would be surprised how much parents of teens don't actually know each other
* in a small group, when it comes to prayer, don't jettison the passage you just looked at, but pray directly on the passage you looked at, and not just random things going on in your life that week
* when helping the poor, consider enabling and empowerment, realising that we are all poor sinners in need of salvation
* as a leader sing loudly, even if your not that guy who sings. It sets an example to others.

I found this book a little like Youth Ministry on the Front Foot, with different chapters on different topics with a push to turn it practical. Although this book is more American and doesn't cover as many topics, I still thought it was a pretty solid Youth Ministry book that can help shape or be a foundation for a solid Christian Youth group.