A youth leader forum was hosted by Awana YM in Chicago, IL with Josh Griffin, Sean McDowell, Larry Acosta, Elizabeth Bjorling Poest, and Ryan Guard. Moderated by Awana Youth Ministries Director Steve Kozak, the panel answered questions from youth workers in the room on some of the greatest challenges in youth ministry. This is the full recording of that roundtable discussion.
For more youth ministry resources visit: awanaym.org
Questions answered by the panel include:
- What are the greatest challenges in youth ministry?
- Students are going through so much that as leaders we didn't have to deal with, how are we to help those students?
- How can suburban youth ministries connect and work with urban youth ministries?
- How do we engage LGBTQ students to feel included in the church family and to have a relationship with Christ?
- How to handle burnout?
- How do we reach out to non-beliving students in a post-Christian world, especially atheists?
- How to engage students with all the distractions?
- How to involve parents in helping student engagement?
- How do we partner with parents, especially when most students come from broken parent homes?