Purpose-Driven? Youth Ministry Training Kit Facilitator's Guide : 5 Strategic Team-Building Sessions for Healthy Ministry

by Based on the best-selling book by Doug Fields

• ISBN13: 9780310231080
• ISBN10: 0310231086
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Harpercollins Christian Pub

Summary

The Purpose-Driven® Youth Ministry Training Kit is here to help you and your leadership team (both adults and student leaders) build a purpose-driven ministry. Designed to prompt group interaction with you as facilitator this kit contains five sessions for your team. If you're starting a youth ministry, look here for firm foundations. If you want to take your existing youth ministry to the next level, turn here for insights and applications that can take your team a quantum leap forward. This clear and easy-to-follow facilitator's guide walks you through each session so you can escort your team into discussion, discovery, and ministry-transforming decisions. Get ready to cover more ground, reap more rewards, and have more fun building a truly purpose-driven youth ministry than you ever dreamed! Build a vigorous, purpose-driven youth ministry with these key concepts: Tap into the power of God - the foundation for any effective ministry. Chart the course of your ministry - clearly with a carefully conceived statement of purpose. Identify your target audience - know your students' various spiritual levels and needs. Develop purpose-driven programs that reflect the biblical goals of evangelism, worship, fellowship, discipleship, and ministry. Build a healthy leadership team whose members love each other as they love students.

Table of Contents

Contents

Welcome to Purpose-Driven® Youth Ministry Training

Making the Most of Purpose-Driven® Youth Ministry Training

Session 1: The Youth Leader’s Spiritual Life

How is your heart?

Session 2: Why Your Ministry Exists

5 biblical purposes for youth ministry

Session 3: The Students You Can Reach

Targeting different audiences

Session 4: Matching the Right Purpose with the Right Audience

Developing programs with purpose

Session 5: Growing Together

Excerpts

What you need to know about how the sessions are organized:
The training is in five sessions, of about 90 minutes each—although the duration of each session depends on your personal style of facilitating, the team members’ levels of interest, actual time available, etc.
- All five sessions were designed to be led by a facilitator (that would be you), with minimal preparation time prior to leading each session. (Although if you choose to read the book Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry as you prepare—which is recommended—allow extra time. Or read the book before you start preparing to teach this training.)
- Within each session, you’ll find a variety of teaching methods to help keep your adult and student leaders’ attention and to communicate the material in the best way. For example, Session 1 begins with a brief introduction and teaching by the facilitator, followed by a group discussion, a video segment, personal reflection, another video clip, and a group discussion.
- Each participant should have a copy of the Participant’s Guide to this Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry Training Kit. You can see all the Participant’s Guide pages in reduced form on the pages of this Facilitator’s Guide. (They even have the correct answers written into the blanks!)
Before the session
Here’s where you’ll find the appropriate chapters or pages to read in Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry, if you’re reading that as you prepare to facilitate the sessions. You’ll also find an overview of the main points and the objectives for the session. The session outline gives you a timeline to help you stay on track.
Unwrap the Session
Here’s where you explain the objectives for the session and walk through any other material you feel is necessary to set up the session for your leaders. (And do it with enthusiasm, if you want your leaders to share your enthusiasm for this training.)
Discovery
You dive into the session here, equipped with key ideas and principles to explain to your leaders, as well as discussion questions. During your explanation your leaders will be listening for key words to write in the blanks in their Participant’s Guides. Work through the statements and discuss any or all of the questions.
- The main points are specific enough to offer direction but general enough so you can make applications to your ministry. So stress what’s important to you and your youth ministry, and add whatever information or illustrations help your team understand the point. After all, you’re the one who knows best what’s appropriate for your team and its circumstances.
Video
View the video segments yourself before you show them to your leaders. Familiarity with the video segment makes a huge difference when you introduce the clip to your leaders. Each video segment’s length is listed in the session.
Connection
Get your leaders talking with each other to help them process what they’re learning, but also to create some new ideas for your ministry, too. Directions in this Facilitator’s Guide will help you through each discussion.
- And text with this kind of background means you can read it to your leaders verbatim, or simply use it as a guideline in your facilitating.
- If your group of leaders is on the large side—like ten or more—you’ll occasionally want to break into smaller groups to talk and share. (Even two-person groups aren’t too small for these discussions.) Instructions to participants are provided in their Participant’s Guides, although you still need to introduce the discussions. If you do divide into smaller groups, wander around between groups to listen in, see how they’re grasping the material, and adjust the rest of your facilitating accordingly.
Reflection
Every session has at least one period for participants to individually, silently respond to questions, reflect on Scripture, or otherwise process the material by themselves.
Out the Door
Wrap up your time by summarizing key points and answering questions. Close the session by praying for some specific areas of your ministry (suggestions for directed prayer are included in each session).
Making It Personal
This section is designed for participants to read, ponder, chew on, and possibly journal during the days following the meeting (or during the hours following the meeting, if you teach the entirety of this course during a weekend or a week). It’s best if your leaders work through this section before they gather again for the next session.
On the other hand…
These questions appear only in the Participant’s Guides, not your Facilitator’s Guide. Their purpose is not to get answered, but to provoke, to turn some of the issues inside-out for a different perspective. These questions are more likely to appeal to the right-brained among your leaders—those whose creativity takes more innovative forms, those who prefer out-of-the-box thinking to linear, fill-in-the-blank responses. Because these questions are not part of the training per se, participants can take ’em or leave ’em.
How to Prepare for Each Session
You are, after all, the facilitator—so you’ll have to do at least some preparation before leading the sessions. Your job is to direct the group through the material, clarify the concepts, segue between segments, answer questions, and redirect questions you can’t answer back to your leaders to explore together. Your fundamental goals: 1) to help your team apply the principles of Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry to your own youth ministry and circumstances, and 2) to nudge your team into understanding their role as leaders.
- So here’s how to start:
1. Well before you start teaching this training course to your leaders, read the book behind the course, Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry.
2. Read through the entire training session in this Facilitator’s Guide. Watch the corresponding video segments (they’re all pretty short), and make what notes you need to help you facilitate the lesson.
3. Also before each session, mark those questions and discussion items in this Guide that are the most appropriate and relevant to your team—and pencil out those that don’t suit your team. Be selective, reword—do whatever it takes to convey the essential principles of Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry.
4. Finally, before each session cue the video to the proper location, gather necessary materials (extra pens, participant guides, whiteboard, markers, VCR, TV, handouts, whatever).

---

Excerpted from Purpose-Driven? Youth Ministry Training Kit Facilitator's Guide: 5 Strategic Team-Building Sessions for Healthy Ministry by Doug Fields
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.