Resources

When working with young people, building trust and maintaining connections are always essential components of youth ministry. Teenagers need those solid relational dynamics now more than ever, as the challenges of Covid-19 have in many ways forced separation from peers. It is essential to demonstrate genuine concern and to create a sense of encouraging warmth for students struggling in the turbulent uncertainty of daily life.

Psalm 96 is big and grandiose. It is filled with flowery, beautiful, poetic language. And yet it calls on us to tell of God’s salvation from day to day, to daily share what God has done for us. God is present in both the big and the small, in the grandiose and in the ordinary.

In this skit, we highlight how disconnection and loneliness can seem like a constant companion during difficult times like these. Yet, God’s Word brings us hope and reminds us that we are never alone. God is with us and ties us together through the Gospel.

“In Christ Alone … We Serve” is an important reminder to all of us, as servant event leaders and participants in faithful service, of the true work of Christ. All that we have, all that we believe and all that we are comes only through Christ alone. Because of God’s great love for us, He sent His Son Jesus to die for us. This precious gift inspires us to live each day through the love, power, grace, mercy and joy that come in Christ alone. These devotions and Bible studies are a series that can be used for service work or in other settings.

In Psalm 23, one of the most well-known psalms of our time, David wrote about both the good and the bad things of life. David trusted that God would take care of him, no matter what the circumstances may be.

Social media is both a blessing and a curse. It connects us and opens doors, but can create problems, quietly destroy people, and isolate us. As we seek to help young people navigate through the quagmire of social media, we must be mindful that perspective is key. We can use social media as a tool to connect us to each other and to the Gospel.

Circumstances around us can wake us up to realities of problems in our own lives that we might have previously ignored or to which we had previously been blind. God is the one who turns us back to Him and God is the one who turns to us in order to rescue us!

The theme "I Am An Echo" plays off one of the daily themes from the 2016 Youth Gathering. We are the echos of Jesus Christ, sharing His Gospel in what we say and do. These devotions (along with the Bible studies with this same theme) are designed to help young people focus on the source of their faith and to consider how in living out their faith they are an echo of Jesus. In our vocations and service, God is at work helping us to echo love, mercy, and joy to others.

Waiting on God’s timing is hard. Sometimes, we even wonder if He’ll answer our prayers at all. Yet Psalm 25 tells us that those who wait on the Lord are never put to shame.

These Bible Studies are designed for a five day servant event, but can be used for other events. In this Bible study series, we focus on characters in scripture that were called to echo the Gospel. Through these characters we are able to identify our own struggles and how God can empower us through the Holy Spirit to share the Good News of Jesus with others.