There are books. There are good books. Then there are those books that you can’t just read once. You read them, reread them, share them with others, read them again. Why? Sometimes it is the story, or the way the story is told. Other times it is the message the book contains and the passion it brings out in you.

Gospelize Your Youth Ministry by Greg Stier at Dare2Share is one of those books you can’t just read once. It quickly becomes a manual for your ministry and a foundational resource for the “why” of events.

One of the most difficult pieces of ministry is changing an event “we’ve always done” or even completing cancelling something on the calendar that has “always been there.” It is tough to push against tradition, especially when you’re coming into a new place and you didn’t build the tradition but inherited it. One of the best ways to change a tradition is to have a strong reason as to why. Gospelize helps with the why behind what we do.

Here are three reasons why I recommend you grab a copy of Gospelize Your Youth Ministry and read it through first yourself and then with your team:

This resource reminds us of why we are in ministry in the first place.

The office work, event planning, cleaning up after youth group, preparing lessons and social media graphics and student leadership content and volunteer leader training and so on can quickly become overwhelming.

We can easily get caught up in the doing of ministry that we forget about being; we get caught up in the what and forget about the why. Gospelize reminds us of the why and keeps our perspective in the right place. It lights a fire underneath us and doesn’t just remind but always encourages and challenges and pushes us toward action. 

This resource helps us to focus our time and resources on the right priorities

Again, we can spend so much time with lesson prep or coming up with a fun, clever game that everyone will certainly play this week (though this almost never happens) that we can lose sight of the bigger picture of youth ministry. This book can help you stay focused on the right things and will have you putting your limited resources toward the right things.

This resource leads us to do ministry on purpose

There are moments in ministry where we can do what we’ve always done because we’ve always done it. We get into a flow, a rhythm, and things can become natural or easy. We don’t change things up, keep things fresh, because they seem to be working. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? 

But just because it works now doesn’t mean it will work later and just because it works for one doesn’t mean it will work for all. We must be constantly doing everything on purpose, from the physical environment to the music and layout and leadership we use each ministry night. We should do social media and slides and videos and content on purpose.

Each week we meet and minister to students, we should show up on purpose with a purpose and a “why” behind every aspect of our program or ministry night. Dare2Share is publishing some great resources that help keep this focus and I would highly encourage you to read Gospelize Your Youth Ministry. 

Oh, and did I mention, Dare2Share is giving it away for free?