Christopher Wesley is on the front lines of youth ministry. He’s been in the parish trenches, refocusing an unpopular youth program and making it one where teens feel connected, stay involved, and grow in faith. In Rebuilding Youth Ministry, Wesley offers ten indispensable strategies to help you make your youth programs just as successful. Wesley coaches fellow Catholic ministry leaders on how to overcome common hurdles of ministering to young people. Wesley shares how he faced feelings of complacency, underestimated youth, and entertained rather than ministered in his own parish. Wesley built a distinctive program based on small group faith formation and sustained it with the assistance of more than sixty volunteer adult mentors. Wesley lays out ten strategies that helped grow participation in his high school program from nine teens to ninety and the middle school program from forty teens to eighty-five, including: Making your youth program about more than pizza; Pursuing authentic relationships between small groups and mentors; Shaping a dynamic youth ministry team; and Creating a space that’s welcoming to teens.

As I have studied the history of the church, I have found that the church has gone through periods of success and failure in carrying out its mission to reach the lost and make disciples. I have found that the periods of success have had several things in common, as have the periods of failure. I have tried to compile those things that have helped build the church down through history and which I have found successful in my own ministry in order to help pastors and church leaders build more successful churches.

All too often, the sacrament of Confirmation feels like a graduation from religious obligation, according to Christopher Wesley, former director of student ministry at Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland. In Rebuilding Confirmation, Wesley shares how to reimagine Confirmation preparation in new or existing programs so that teens will become active members of the Church. At Church of the Nativity, Christopher Wesley created a Confirmation program that uses parish-selected mentors and small faith-formation groups to provide teens with an intensely transformative encounter with Christ and the Church. Instead of teens seeing the sacrament as the end of faith formation and weekly Mass attendance, they are becoming engaged in the life of the Church. Wesley’s story, vision, and rock-solid advice will strengthen your existing program or help you create a strong framework upon which to build a new one. He will show you how to create a ministry of witness and support to accompany youth as they prepare for Confirmation. Rebuilding Confirmation is perfect for use with existing middle or high school Confirmation programs, including popular curriculum-based programs such as Chosen, Decision Point, and Called to Mercy. You will learn: How to create a Confirmation program that is anchored by small groups and parish-selected mentors; Practical solutions to systemic problems such as having an unclear purpose and treating preparation for the sacrament as just more schooling; How to recruit and train adult volunteers; How to work with parents and win their support; How to screen and select Confirmation candidates who are truly ready to commit; and How to advocate for your program and youth within the wider parish community. Wesley offers fixes for the structures and habits that fail youth in many Catholic parishes, shares his own successes and failures, and provides great ideas and practical tools to help the newly confirmed set a course for their future in the Church.

Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran know that the fundamental work of the Church is to evangelize—to introduce people to Christ and make them disciples. Still, they’re the first to admit: “the difficulty comes when we reach down into the details and get to work.” In their barn-burning first book, Rebuilt, White and Corcoran shared their story and vision of building better Catholic parishes. Now, in their eagerly anticipated second book, Tools for Rebuilding, they lay out seventy-five proven tactics for getting the job done. In Tools for Rebuilding: 75 Really, Really Practical Ways to Make Your Parish Better, White and Corcoran share seventy-five foundational tactics that helped to rejuvenate their parish. Their candid, hands-on advice gives a clear way forward—one that will make church matter to the people in the pews and that anyone working in parish ministry can implement. Principles/tactics include: Get the Right People on the Bus Christmas Is Over, So Throw Out the Dead Poinsettias Stop Advertising (Other People’s Stuff) in Your Bulletin Don’t Let the Insiders Take All the Good Seats Just Because It’s Slow Doesn’t Mean It’s Holy When It Comes to First Communion, Just Surrender Funerals Are Scud Missiles Preach the Announcements Start Getting Rid of Fundraisers Everything Takes Longer (Than You Think) Pastor, It’s Not All About You Stop Trying to Make People Go to Church and Make Church Matter

The Holy Spirit has become a stranger. Many long for a closer walk with God, but He seems far away. They go to church. They read the Bible. But they don’t experience His presence. Why? Because many have forsaken the altar—the place where God is found. When we truly encounter Him again, the light and power of God will flow to our homes, then to our houses of worship, then to the nation, and we will never be the same. In Rebuilding the Altar authors Pat and Karen Schatzline passionately challenge you to return to the altar. You see, the altar is not just a physical location or an instrument in a church or synagogue. Through Christ we can experience a daily encounter with Jesus, who became our altar. We must declare this truth to the deceived. We must raise a standard of holiness and no compromise. We must bring hope to the hurting. It’s time for change. It’s time to return to the altar...and encounter God.

Five years after she graduated from high school, teacher, youth minister, and sought-after speaker Katie Prejean McGrady returned to her alma mater in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to teach freshman theology. In the early years of her career, McGrady’s hormonal, sometimes grumpy, and often confused students taught her what it means to evangelize. Her frequently witty and always candid stories—and the ten lessons she offers—will inspire anyone who works with youth in the Church today. As she began her first year of teaching, McGrady was eager to impart the Catholic doctrine she loves to her class in room 24 at St. Louis Catholic high school, but she was quickly rattled by the magnitude of the task, especially when she was challenged by a teen who said he didn’t believe. In ten brief and compelling chapters, McGrady shares humorous and hopeful interactions she’s had with her students that helped her learn that teaching them about Jesus and his Church is not as important as knowing them, loving them, and inviting them to know and love Jesus as a personal friend and savior. Her frequent mistakes and occasional successes with her students taught McGrady how to evangelize young people by building relationships in joyful, humble, and prayerful ways. Likewise, McGrady determined that the power of inviting conversation, welcoming questions, and witnessing to faith through personal stories engages students and helps them fall in love with Jesus.

It’s more common in youth ministry than we want to admit—burnout and failure. Exhaustion, frustration, disappointment, and conflict bring many youth workers to a point where they either choose a new church, a new career, or someone makes that choice for them. After thirty years of youth ministry experience, Len Kageler wants to help youth workers avoid the pitfalls that are common to their calling, and give them the tools to not only survive, but also to thrive in youth ministry. Along with his own wisdom, Len offers insights gained from his 2006 survey of more than 300 burned out or fired youth workers who come from a variety of ministry contexts and denominations. If you’re new to youth ministry, or you’ve been at it for a while and feel like you may be on the verge of burnout, The Youth Ministry Survival Guide will help you: • deal with conflict and compromise • determine the causes of burnout (and how to avoid them!) • discover how your personality, and the personality of those you work with, affects the dynamics of your ministry experience • develop the best plan for working with senior pastors, church leadership, parents, and students, so you can… • do youth ministry in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond! Don’t let burnout force you out! Inside this book you’ll find steps you can take to help build fences against failure, and you’ll learn what it takes to survive and thrive in youth ministry.

Rebuilding is way harder than just starting something new. How do we rebuild in a healthy way despite living in a world of brokenness? Drawing on Nehemiah and his own church's experience, pastor and hip-hop artist Tommy Kyllonen shares stories that will encourage and inspire you to pursue God's rebuilding work in your own life, church and world.

Over the past several decades there have been three significant shifts in youth culture; each new shift brought with it different values and priorities in the lives of teens. Youth ministries adapted and responded to the first two shifts, but we’re missing the boat on the third. The result? Youth ministry isn’t addressing the realities and needs of today’s youth culture.After nearly three decades in youth ministry, Mark Oestreicher has lived through a lot of those shifts himself. In recent years, he’s found himself wondering what needs to change, especially since so much of what we’re doing in youth ministry today is not working.In Youth Ministry 3.0, youth workers will explore, along with Marko and the voices of other youth workers, why we need change in youth ministry, from a ministry moving away from a dependence on programs, to one that is focused on communion and mission. They’ll get a quick history of youth ministry over the last fifty years. And they’ll help dream about what changes need to take place in order to create the next phase of youth ministry—the future that needs to be created for effective ministry to students.

As the world's youth population continues to grow and interact globally in an instant through blogging, texting, and social networking, youth ministry is adapting in equal fashion. Authors Terry Linhart and David Livermore offer advice that's substantiated by more than twenty prominent worldwide youth leaders: be prepared. Global Youth Ministry is the first textbook to recognize the phenomenon of global youth ministry and to coordinate leading youth ministry voices in a discussion of the theological, theoretical, sociocultural, and historical issues that shape ministries around the world. Traditionally, students of international youth ministries have had to wade through a range of sources, perspectives, and agendas. This versatile text distills all that, and focuses on real-world experiences, challenges, and issues that are part of international ministries. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate-level students and youth ministry leaders who have a heart for missions, social awareness and spiritual empathy, and a desire to serve young people around the world.