Youth Ministry Management Tools

Youth ministry only looks like it revolves around the youth room. You know better: a successful youth ministry involves a myriad of administrative and operational details. So what do you need today? A sample budget, then a form for creating one of your own? Release forms for trips? Clear direction on screening applicants for volunteer positions? Checklists, reminders, and tips for writing agendas, event flyers, and calendars?Whatever hits you when you walk into your office each morning, just pull Youth Ministry Management Tools for quick and accessible answers to your management, administrative, and supervisory questions and needs. Sprinkled throughout the manual are brief personal anecdotes by actual, in-the-trenches youth workers just like you―case studies of church-office debacles, small but pivotal lessons learned, nightmare scenarios to avoid, and glorious successes to emulate.

Ginny Olson abides in Minneapolis, MN where she is the Director of Youth Ministry for the Northwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church as well as a writer, speaker and consultant. Previously, she was one of two directors of the Center for Youth Ministry Studies at North Park University in Chicago, Illinois.  She also served on the youth ministry staffs at Willow Creek Community Church and Grace Church, Edina, Minnesota. She is the author of “Teenage Girls” and co-editor and contributor to “Breaking the Gender Barrier in Youth Ministry.”

Diane Elliot is an experienced writer, editor, teacher of adults and teenagers, and is director of operations at the Northwest Suburban Christian Academy in Wauconda, Illinois.

Mike Work is the Vice President of Operations at Youth Specialties. His previous management  experience includes six years as an executive pastor and five years of business management consulting.  A veteran youth worker who has served more than 25 years in local and parachurch student ministry,  Mike has also served as the executive director of YFC’s DCLA Conferences and the executive producer for the PlanetWisdom Student Conference and the National Youth Workers Convention. He and his family make their home in Phoenix, Arizona.