These books aren't the usual required reading recommended to aspiring Catholic youth ministers. That's for another article. But looking back on the last seven years, these are books I wish I read my first year on the job as a Catholic youth minister. There are plenty of well-known books about youth ministry, and plenty of Catholic books youth ministers should read. But if you are interested in venturing off that well-worn path there are several books that helped me immensely.

I launched another thing. This thing is an audio experiment where I'll have conversations with people I find interesting, or make weird little audio projects like 003: 🎉 New Years, Limit, and Its Overcoming 🎉, or answer voicemails you can call in and leave me (just call 817-527-1423) 

Here's a few of the episodes we've released so far, with new episodes coming out once a week. (Right now you can listen in iTunes or Overcast, and probably a few other podcast players.)

We've set out at our parish to communicate and implement a parish vision and strategy from womb to tomb. Our mission: To build a Church of missionary disciples in Grapevine, Texas. Our strategy: to use a clear path of discipleship to walk people through the stages of Encounter, Grow, and Serve. (This is a simple articulation of the catechumenal model, or the evangelization process). 

I created a worksheet to help our ministry leaders plan and evaluate around a clear path of discipleship.

The dream of every artist is to accomplish both truth and bacon. But what happens when truth doesn't bring home bacon?

David Ramirez's new album Fables starts off like an extension on his hit sob "Stick around," and that's just fine by me. The song on this album that sticks out most is New Way of Living, in which David laments briefly about the old artist's dilemma: Why make art?

I've been taking high schoolers to Steubenville conferences for the last 6 years I've been in ministry. It's an amazing experience and really a huge surge of evangelistic momentum for any group of high school students. The problem a lot of us youth ministers have is following up intentionally on this event and using the momentum to bring youth into a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus as His disciple.

So my co-captain Tim and I came up with a plan to hack this evangelistic momentum. The intention is two-fold: to capitalize on teens committing/recommitting to a decision to follow Jesus and make changes in their life, and to continue to foster the Christian community created in our Steubenville conference small groups.

Our plan is to use commitment cards and a Discipleship 101 series as followup. Below is an explanation of our strategy as well as the files we're using. Feel free to download and use the resources we created! If you try something like this, let me know your thoughts.

We're living through the biggest revolution of making stuff since the industrial age thanks to one new "technological" advancement: the internet. And with the internet comes a whole new possibility for a way of life and work, especially for people who like to make stuff. That's the big opportunity. We can make stuff. And we can let lots of people see our stuff. 

So now, as always, there are two groups of people. People who make stuff and people who don't make stuff. Some people don't like making stuff, and that's okay. Some people just like watching stuff, and reading stuff, and consuming stuff. But me, I like making stuff. And I can't imagine a future where it won't be beneficial to have been making stuff.

And now, I'm recommitting to making stuff. There's no make-money-online master plan here. I just realize that this whole internet thing is one of the best retirement plans I can contribute to each month - even if its just because I know I will enjoy looking back on all the stuff I've made, the journey we've had, and the people who liked my stuff.

So here are my three new rules, pillars, phrases, and guidelines for what I'm doing as I make stuff, and how I plan to keep making stuff that matters.

“So…what is the Gospel message?” As the Director of Youth Evangelization and Catechesis at our parish we’ve been focusing on the basic Gospel message, or the kerygma, in all of our volunteer training. There are lots of ways to articulate the Gospel message in its entirety and plenty of places to learn it.

What I wanted to share is the best way to summarize and teach the basic Gospel message that I’ve come up with so far. I’ve used this structure to train catechists, evangelists, core members, parents, youth ministers, etc. Its not my own and has morphed slightly over the years.