Mike Haynes is a youth ministry veteran and the creator of G Shades. A vibrant contributor to the youth ministry landscape, Mike’s passion is to help students and youth pastors alike see life through the lens of the gospel. He and his wife Anna have five kids spanning elementary, middle, and high school, and he serves as the high school pastor at Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn, Virginia.
Do I even need to give the verse? I mean, we get it. 1 Peter 3:15. Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope within you (paraphrased). But sometimes I wonder if apologetics in youth ministry is less about students sharing and and less about them knowing. Sometimes I wonder if incorporating apologetics […]
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’ve sent six parent emails, three parent text blasts, and four handouts home to parents, and yet the day of the event, you have Jimmy’s mom calling you to ask where the event is and how much it costs and why you aren’t providing transportation from the church to […]
It’s camp season. Best time of the year. But as you start buying an absurd amount of pool noodles and beach balls and scour Amazon for a pineapple themed Bluetooth speaker, there’s likely a small, negative thought nagging at you in the back of your mind. If you’ve been in youth ministry for a few […]
I’m an incredibly imperfect student pastor, and the youth ministry environments I create are imperfect, too. One of the areas of weakness I’m working on right now in my youth ministry is creating a culture of diversity and inclusion. Students are naturally inclusive on all kinds of social issues, but when it comes to just […]
There are an endless supply of curriculums on the market. How do you evaluate which one is the best fit for your ministry? Check out this podcast episode from Student Ministry Conversations to learn some best practices for evaluating and utilizing youth ministry curriculum in your ministry! The entire podcast episode is fantastic, but in […]
I recently had a conversation with a teenager where I was asking them to explain a certain behavior pattern they’d been exhibiting recently. Their face went blank—almost dead-eyed—and they didn’t speak for a long time. After a painfully silent two minutes, I asked again, “What’s going on? What are you feeling that’s leading you to […]
Let’s talk for a few minutes about mentoring in youth ministry. I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Brent Aiken on the Student Ministry Conversations podcast the other day (the episode releases in a few weeks). The conversation was around evaluating curriculum in the world of youth ministry. It was a really amazing […]
I’m going to be honest. I hate fundraising. It’s probably my least favorite aspect of youth ministry. But I think that’s actually why my perspective on fundraising may be helpful for you—especially if you hate fundraising too. For a long time, I thought I hated fundraising because it’s a lot of work. Fundraising events are […]
This might feel like a weird starting place for a conversation about a healthy culture of worship for youth groups, but when was the last time you went to a concert? If you’re me, it’s been a while. I just don’t value the experience enough for the financial and time investment required. But I can […]
This time of year four years ago, we were just beginning to discover that what we initially thought would be a few weeks of the world shutting down was actually going to drag on for much, much longer. None of us had ever experienced anything like COVID, and the rate of innovation on how to […]
