Faith Beyond Youth Group

Faith Beyond Youth Group addresses the questions youth leaders ask themselves regarding their impact on the youth they love and willingly serve. The authors include interviews and stories from various youth leaders, highlighting their journey of discipling young people who attend youth group. The theological insights walk the reader through a process of understanding the benefits and barriers of character formation. This book is an informative, reflective, and practical approach for youth leaders to follow while they assess lifelong discipleship beyond youth group.

I genuinely want the teenagers I work with to develop Christlike character. (I desire this in my own life as well.) But that’s not because I want them to be good girls and boys who grow up to be well-behaved church members; my motivation is that I want teenagers to experience vitality and a glorious partnership with Jesus in his redemptive work in the world. Faith Beyond Youth Group provides rails to run on with research, theological insight, and plenty of practical ideas, bringing to life what some might wrongly think of as a rusty relic of the past.

This book had me at the title: Faith Beyond Youth Group. It’s what we all want, hope, and pray for—faith that matters long after our games, teaching, camps, and programs are over. Even better, the book delivers a clear and hopeful compass to reorient youth ministry toward what matters most.

Faith Beyond Youth Group is a must read for anyone invested in deepening Gen Z’s faith. Each chapter combines Fuller Youth Institute’s meticulous research with inspiring and thought-provoking stories about local youth workers in the trenches. These stories model a great deal of humility toward the next generation, and they offer so many practical tools to help us work within our various local church contexts. As someone coming from an Asian American youth ministry experience, I was impressed to see how much care and depth they put into making sure that we didn’t feel overwhelmed or excluded from the conversation around the state of the Gen Z’s faith; rather, I was encouraged to see how we could learn from many different cultural and socioeconomic perspectives.

Faith Beyond Youth Group is a game-changing resource for anyone in youth ministry. Kara Powell, Brad M. Griffin, and Jen Bradbury present new research along with stories from their ministry experiences to offer a practical tool for youth workers. The book provides effective ideas and insightful reflection questions to help readers chart their map forward, empowering them to help young people move beyond the traditional youth group experience with a rooted, sustainable life of faith. If you’re a youth worker who wants to significantly impact young people’s spiritual development, this book is a must-have resource.

The church is facing a crisis of disintegration. Too many Christians have been formed to dis-integrate their spiritual life with Christ from their life at work, school, and the public square. As a result, the way of Jesus may inform how they conduct their private relationships or manage their households but may not be carried into the more public or communal parts of their lives. Unfortunately, this has severely damaged the witness of the church and the reputation of the faith—particularly among the young. How can we avoid making the same mistake with a new generation? Rooted in research and data, Faith Beyond Youth Group reimagines what youth ministry can look like if our goal isn’t behavior management but rather character formation. It presents a vision of youth ministry that isn’t primarily about disintegrated events but rather teaching, practices, and relationships that occur throughout a young person’s life. There is wisdom here for every church that cares about the next generation.

I hope that every youth ministry leader reads Faith Beyond Youth Group. This book not only locates where young people are at but provides insightful, practical, and doable ways to truly cultivate lifelong discipleship. This book is for all youth ministry leaders regardless of the size or context of their ministry. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s an approach that values and esteems every young person entrusted to you by God. This book is hope-filled and provides a way forward for discipling young people in these rapidly changing times.