Blog – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

Meaningful Youth Ministry Trends for 2024

Youth ministry is a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape, shaped by the unique challenges and opportunities of each passing year. As we embark on the journey of 2024, here are the latest trends shaping the spiritual development of today's youth to give you ideas and inspiration for how to breathe new life into your youth ministry in the new year. Digital Discipleship. In an increasingly digital...

6 Inspiring Student Ministry Series Ideas for the Fall

Fall is an exciting time of transition in our ministries. Not only do the leaves start to change and the air turns crisp, but students are returning to school, moving up grade levels, and ready to get back to work. In youth ministry, we have the opportunity to ride the momentum of this back to school energy and invigorate an atmosphere where young hearts can encounter God in fresh and meaningful w...

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Keeping Summer Fun and Meaningful for Your Youth Ministry

Summer is a time when students get to relax, unwind, and have fun. But for youth pastors, the summer season can be challenging as it means changing schedules and programming for their student ministry. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming for youth pastors to decide what to do with their youth group over the summer months. As a youth leader, it’s important to balance fun with p...

6 Tips for Budgeting for Your Next Youth Group Retreat

Youth retreats are fun and formative experiences for the students in your youth group. They provide exciting opportunities to connect with their peers, grow in their faith, and explore activities that help them stretch their comfort zones. Planning for and pulling them off, however, can feel like an overwhelming assignment. One of the biggest challenges you may face is budgeting for the event. Wit...

Talking to Youth Leader Volunteers About Boundaries

Youth ministry is designed to be a safe and nurturing space for students to encounter God, discover themselves, and develop meaningful friendships. These years are formative, the environment is fun, wholesome, and sacred. One of the most important relationships young people have are with trusted, supportive adults. Data from the National Survey of Children’s Health shows that “having one o...

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Designing Your Youth Ministry Room to Match Your Series

The visual impact of the space your youth ministry meets in can make a subtle, but significant difference in the way your sermon series are received. The lighting, color, and arrangement of your room can be a big piece that influences whether your messages feel introspective or community-minded, energetic or subdued. We want to create atmospheres that are inviting and engaging, and the design of t...

Tips for Elevating Your Youth Ministry’s Set Design

Stage design is a powerful tool for creating atmosphere and setting the tone for your youth to connect with God and each other. When done well, set and stage design has the ability to elevate the impact of what you are sharing from the stage. When done poorly or without much consideration, it has the potential to distract and take away from your overall message. Most youth ministries have littl...

Facilitate Tough Conversations with Your Youth Group

Youth ministry, at its best, has long been a space where teenagers and adults can speak candidly about difficult topics. However, today, those topics extend beyond sexuality and our existential place in the world — racism, politics, and national tragedies all deserve a seat at the table. These days, students expect the adults in their lives to address difficult topics and big events as they ...

Recruiting Parents to Volunteer in Youth Ministry

In youth ministry, you usually want to take all the help you can get. A lot of times, those extra hands can be additional staff members or recent high school graduates, but it’s important to have parents involved in your youth ministry for several reasons. Parents have a unique perspective and place to be involved when it comes to youth ministry. They have a personal vested interest in seeing...

When and Why (or Why Not) to Split Up Your Middle and High School Ministries

Middle school and high school might be generally categorized as “youth” but anyone who works with students knows that there’s a big difference between an 11-year-old sixth grader and an 18-year-old high school senior. For youth pastors, one of the most pressing questions you face is whether or not to split up your youth ministry between middle and high school students or whether to keep them...

3 Tips for Making Your Students’ Parents Your Best Advocates

As a youth pastor, building relationships with parents is just as essential as building relationships with your youth. Parents play a huge role in the spiritual development of your students, so it’s important to develop trust and respect so you and parents can make an impact together. There’s always room to improve engagement, and these tips offer actionable ways to improve communications a...

4 Great Fall Activities for Youth Group

It’s always a bummer when summer comes to an end. Students are excited to be out of school and the season is always so great for outdoor events, missions trips and retreats, and it’s easy to pack a ton into those few summer months. But it all comes to an end at some point. Students head back to school and say goodbye to free weekday mornings/afternoons. Youth pastors often plan tons of s...

Tips for Encouraging Students to Take Ownership of Their Time With God

As a youth pastor, one of your greatest desires is to see your students taking ownership of their relationship with God. At youth group or bible study or on retreats, it’s easy for students to feel close to God. But what about when they go home, or they’re at school, or hanging out with their friends? Pursuing Jesus on your own time, in your own life, can sometimes feel paralyzing. Much of ...

3 Tips for Prioritizing Rest as a Youth Pastor

When you work in ministry, you’re never really “off”. For every crisis, every life change, every tragedy, you’re the person people know, even if they don’t really know you. While it comes with the calling, it doesn’t get less exhausting. With youth, emotions are even higher, angst is off the charts, and prefrontal cortexes aren’t yet fully formed. For a lot of your students, you migh...

Managing Younger and Older Leaders in Youth Ministry

It’s important to have a mix of ages of leaders involved in leading your youth ministry. Leaders of different ages contribute in different ways to youth ministry, and it’s often the case that a diverse set in the age of your leaders will lead to a healthier ministry overall. If you’re trying to figure out how to manage your current volunteer leaders in youth ministry when you have a mix o...

Getting Young People to Volunteer in the Youth Ministry

Properly balancing your volunteer-to-student ratio can be difficult. For smaller churches, it can be difficult to keep volunteers committed over the years to maintain a healthy leadership culture in your youth ministry, and for growing churches, it can be difficult to properly staff all youth events with enough leaders. This is especially the case as various different types of events come up: yout...

4 Tips for Making Youth Group an Inviting Space for New Students

When you’re a teenager (and heck, even an adult!), putting yourself out there and stepping into a new environment full of people you don’t know is a pretty big deal. A little bit of preparation goes a long way to create a space that is welcoming to newcomers from the moment they enter the door. Let Students Lead the Way Let’s be honest, no matter how awesome your adult volunteers, hav...

Best Places to Find Youth Ministry Countdown Videos

Finding church media can be really difficult – especially when you’re looking for quality stuff on a low budget. It seems like there’s a million different companies offering countdowns, motion backgrounds, and mini-movies, and it’s hard to know which one is right to go with. Some services are hundreds of dollars per year, while you can find free media in other places – but it all varies ...

3 Tips to Improve Your Church Screen Media in Youth Group

It seems that the youth room is often the most neglected when it comes to quality gear, sound systems, and stage setup. Obviously, most churches don’t have an infinite budget to spend on every single room in the building, so most attention is put towards enhancing the main worship center. However, improving the atmosphere, appearance, and experience in a room doesn’t need to cost a ton of mone...

3 Strategies: Get Youth Ministry Students to Bring Friends

Youth pastors want for nothing more than to have students develop community with each other, build genuine loving relationships with God, and grow in their faith with one another. And I’d argue that you would be hard pressed to find any youth pastor where “growing the youth ministry” isn’t one of their top 5 priorities. But growing a youth ministry is tough. Usually, a youth ministry is...