Youth Ministry Maverick: Hosted by Jeff Harding

Big youth retreats, summer camps and mission organizations often have multiple churches together, but what would it look like for local churches to combine on their own for reasons beyond convenience or meeting a capacity quota? Jeff discusses networking and ministry collaboration with three of his youth ministry cohorts, and they use their own multi-year partnership as a possible template for others to follow.

A good youth ministry can be a great youth ministry when it's within a healthy and unified family ministry. Kari Jane Smith joins Jeff to discuss how discipleship should progress as a child grows older, and what they have to done to streamline their church's family ministry.

This special off-week episode was produced so as to not wait one week longer to start another source of dialogue regarding the teaching and discussing of racism and prejudice with our students. Jeff was honored to have Mikiala Tennie and Karli Loving join him in an enlightening conversation composed of three family ministry workers in the local church. 

Mikiala has served at First United Methodist Church of Stuart, FL for six years and currently has the role of Director of Discipleship and Student Ministries. Karli serves as the Youth and Children's Pastor at Zoe Christian Center in Lawton, OK. 

Here is a short but powerful article Mikiala wrote a few years ago as a supplement to our discussion: https://wordsbetweenpunctuation.com/2016/03/21/the-din/

We're all tired of Zoom and online-only interaction, but burnout is a real threat that has seen a spike among those in ministry during the last decade. Jeff discusses this crucial topic with Scott Savage, and they identify some misnomers and unhealthy approaches to dealing with leadership exhaustion. Also, Scott provided three of his resources that are pertinent to our conversation:

Article on burnout - https://www.scottsavagelive.com/burnout/

Article on cynicism - https://www.scottsavagelive.com/cynicism-to-hope/

My Hope Manifesto - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R998dvJeVYAIJ2U_EphUfqF6NCvDcHA0/view

For this episode, Jeff interviews a church youth ministry volunteer about how the concept of apologetics plays an important role in the development of authentic faith during adolescence. That volunteer just happens to be his brother, Ryan!

Jeff brings in his long-time friend, Josh Daniels, to discuss the importance of youth leaders teaching and modeling how Christians and non-Christians can interact well for their students.

For this episode, Jeff brings in his good friend and partner in ministry, Mike Heinz, to discuss how to do youth ministry in the midst of quarantines and empty church buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the inaugural episode, Jeff talks about the story of how the podcast was named from his experience as a junior high student through being done with seminary for almost a decade.