Plot

The story starts at the grave side of a high school student who committed suicide. A few of his family and friends are present, including Jake Taylor, the high school senior the movie shadows for the next two hours. For a number of reasons, Jake is devastated by the tragedy and, through his search for answers, he meets a youth pastor, Chris, who becomes a trusted friend. As Jake wrestles through issues like popularity, cutting, abortion, sex, divorce, drugs and relationships, his life eventually hits rock bottom. One might expect that this is the point when he turns to Christ, but the story is thankfully a bit more real than that. The truth is, Jake decided to give God a try early in the film and because of that, combined with the consequences of his past mistakes, he hits bottom, thinking that God was supposed to make everything better.

The plot is very heavy for two hours straight and has almost no comic relief. I was craving a break in the tension after about an hour or so, but none came, leaving me pretty emotionally worn out by the end, but fortunately it has a positive ending. A normal Christian film might try to wrap up all the teen issues with an over-simplistic and unbiblical, “Jesus can make your life happy and perfect!” but instead To Save A Life ends with the more realistic, “Life is hard, there are no simple answers, and a relationship with Christ is the only way to navigate it all.”

Quality

The film is surprisingly very well done. I was expecting a lot of cheesy moments from poor acting and churchiness, but the cheese-factor was kept to a minimum. In fact, there’s only one or two places that make you roll your eyes a bit, but even then it’s not big enough to make you laugh or grin.

Overall, the acting was a solid performance. They hired people who have experience in various other films and TV shows, which was probably a good move, regardless of if most of them are unbelievers. In my opinion, a movie that’s professionally done and credible trumps whether or not the actors on the screen actually know Christ or not. Hopefully this film is one that brings them one step closer in that direction!

My only gripe with the acting is that the main character, played by Randy Wayne, had this, “I’m deep in thought” look on his face for the first three-quarters of the movie. Granted, he was thinking through a lot of issues in the film, but a slightly different “deep in thought” face would’ve been nice. After a while, it kinda looked like his face was stuck like that.

His girlfriend in the movie, played by Deja Kreutzberg, did an outstanding job, though. I was thoroughly impressed with her performance despite her more limited film career.

Content

True to it’s marketing hype, the film discusses many teen issues like cutting, suicide, school shootings, abortion, divorce, cliques, drinking, peer pressure, dating, sex, and a lot more. Impressively, none of these issues feel forced into the story — they all feel like a natural part of Jake Taylor’s life and experiences.

However, I would opt to change some of the wording I read in other reviews and promotional pieces: the film doesn’t “deal” with all of these issues as much as it just highlights them and brings attention to how they’re often all integrated. That said, it does give more treatment to some of the issues than others, especially cliques and peer pressure, but I’m not sure I’d say it deals with every issue.

You should also be aware that, although it is a Christian film, it is not overtly so. My impression is that the producer wanted to demonstrate the power of a changed life through Christ without getting too churchy, which is good, but I would’ve liked to see the gospel communicated more clearly at the end. If there was ever a film to pull it off without being weird or tacky about it, this film could’ve done it very successfully. Instead, we just see a glimpse into what a changed life looks like.

The other thing about not being an overtly Christian film is that there is some swearing, an implied sex scene, and some of the normal graphic footage you might expect to see in a film that contains cutting and alcohol. It’s probably nothing “worse” than what you’d normally see on network TV, though. I wasn’t offended by it at all. In fact, it almost gave the film more credibility in the sense that we should never expect unbelievers to act like believers, and most of the characters in the film are definitely unbelievers. They’re just living the way they know how, and that transparency is communicated on the screen.

Bottom Line

So the million dollar question: Should you take your church’s youth group to see this film? For high school students, absolutely! For jr. high students, probably. The only reason I hesitate with jr. highers is because of the power of suggestion for them. Most, if not all, high school students have had first- or second-hand experience with the issues that are visually highlighted in the film. Some jr. highers, on the other hand, have a chance of still being a little more innocent (albiet, a small chance). They definitely need to be exposed to these issues around this age and doing it within the safety and wisdom of adults in a faith-based context is the best place to do it, but it is an emotionally taxing movie. I’d advise that you take a couple weeks to talk through these teen issues with jr. highers first, then go see the movie together. With sr. high, I’d probably do just the reverse: see the movie together first, then discuss it.

To Save A Life has youth group curriculum to accompany the movie, which you can purchase for $59.99 right now. I haven’t used it yet, but will probably pick it up soon for some of the high school small groups in my church after some further input from the adult and student leaders.

Trailer

Here’s the official trailer on YouTube.

More information

The movie is playing in theaters starting TODAY! Check out ToSaveALifeMovie.com for more information about the movie and to find a theater near you.

Win a free “To Save A Life” fan pack!

The people at To Save A Life have graciously given me 1 fan pack of schwag to give away for FREE to a lucky random person! The fan pack contains:

• Limited Edition Hoodie
• Printed novel
• A slap bracelet
• Pens
• and other fun movie stuff

All you have to do is use the Twitter or Facebook Share buttons at the top of this page to help spread the word about this film and review! Next Friday, January 29, I will select one person at random and award them with the fan pack. (Note: you may tweet and post this review multiple times if you want, but doing so will not increase your chances of winning.) Enjoy!

UPDATE: This contest is over. See a video of the drawing for the fan pack giveaway here. Did you win it?

Related posts:

• My review of The Simpsons Movie
• Review: Dave Ramsey’s “Generation Change” youth group curriculum
• Freebie Friday #150: 3-session Bible study for the movie, A Christmas Carol

The problem with youth ministries

Too many youth ministries are busy and crammed full with programs and calendars, as if having a lot of people involved in a lot of stuff somehow equals spiritual growth. We strive for the wrong goals, measure our ministries by the wrong standards and strive to give kids an overload of spiritual “opportunities.” Maybe these values are not explicitly stated as such, but they often lead and guide our ministries whether we realize it or not. The result is a youth ministry with a lot of independent programs all somewhat functioning in their own separate silos. How much more effective could our youth ministries be if every program helped teens move through a process of discipleship that was clearly defined and easy to understand?

A better solution

Simple Student Ministry presents a clear process for strategic youth discipleship that seems to coincide a lot with Andy Stanley’s book, 7 Practices of Effective Ministry. After pointing out the draining, frustrating and ineffective strategy most youth ministries take for growing disciples, Jeff and Eric proceed to lay out several principles that have the potential to change all that. It starts by bringing clarity to the discipleship process, focus to the programs, and placing those programs in alignment with each other in a way that helps students move through a discipleship process. In Andy Stanley’s book, it’s a little like “defining a win” and “thinking steps, not programs.”

Jeff and Eric also give a lot of practical examples of what this simplified student ministry looks like in many different church and para-church contexts around the country. Basically, the results are same: a simple student ministry increases life-change exponentially, not because there’s anything magical about the strategy, but because you’ll finally have a clear and focused ministry that’s aligned with itself and with the church that is moving people toward Christlikeness in a clear and focused manner.

My criticism and questions

However, my thoughts about the book are not without criticisms or questions. For example, most of the churches that are featured in the book see evangelism as part of the discipleship process, which I wholeheartedly agree, but their approach seems to be largely a “bring your unsaved friends to our church turf so a speaker can share the gospel with them.” (I’ve expressed reasons why I’ve abandoned this form of outreach in an earlier post.) Also, the assumption seems to be that spiritual growth is a straight-forward linear process. I struggle a bit with the idea that moving teenagers through a process of programs can make them a more devoted follower of Christ. We all know that the graph of spiritual growth over time is never a straight upward arrow. It’s ups, downs, setbacks, stumbles, growth spurts, and failures over and over and over again. So how do teens move through a linear strategy for discipleship when the growth process itself is not necessarily linear?

Talk with Jeff yourself!

These questions and more I’ll be asking Jeff Borton himself this Friday during our LIVE YM Talk when we talk more about Simple Student Ministry. If you’re free this Friday (June 5, 2009) at 2:00 PM eastern time, Jeff and I would love to have you join us. Bring your own questions and thoughts and share them with us during our open conversation. The conference phone call is open to anyone who wants to call in and join the conversation, or whoever wants to just listen in online and participate via the live chat room. Find the phone number and the chat room link on the LIVE YM Talk page.

[ Buy "Simple Student Ministry: A Clear Process for Strategic Youth Discipleship" on Amazon ]

Related posts:

• Simple Student Ministry [podcast]
• Ebook Review: “How to build a Lasting Student Ministry”
• Forming ministry out of identity, not function

Not too long ago Lifeway did some extensive research on why 18 to 22 year olds drop out of church and their views on eternity. Generally speaking, they found that teens graduating from high school were pulling away from faith and church due to a host of reasons and influences, including life changes and biblical illiteracy.

So they started asking questions like, “What must a graduating high school student know, understand, or believe in order to take ownership of their faith and remain grounded in God and His Word after high school? How can we help that take place best?” What they came up with is a pretty holistic approach to student ministry that involves a couple key ingredients.

1. The example of Jesus’ life

Lifeway focused on the Sermon on the Mount and Luke 2:52, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” and broke it down into three main goals they want to see happen in the lives of teenagers.

1. Know: Upward Development. Jesus grew in favor with God. The Sermon on the Mount breaks this down into discipleship and Lordship.

2. Own: Inward Development. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature. The Sermon on the Mount breaks this down into character and discernment.

3. Known: Outward Development. Jesus grew in favor with man. The Sermon on the Mount breaks this down into relationships and influence.

2. Parents and the Home

Every study I’ve ever seen, both formal and informal, indicates that parents are easily the #1 spiritual influence in a teenager’s life, which makes sense because that’s the way God established the family to work in the first place. Lifeway found this to be true, as well, and wanted to capitalize on it. So as they worked on putting together a comprehensive approach to student ministry, they knew they had to integrate both the home and the church.

The Compilation: Known Curriculum

Once the goals and strategy were set in place, it took on flesh in the form of the Known curriculum. Lifeway has seriously done a tremendous job of packaging an entire six year Bible course for jr. high through high school that flows from their research and their vision for students to “grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” It pretty much includes a ready-to-go youth ministry, complete with Sunday morning lessons, Wednesday night lessons, games, options for creative ideas, planned events, parent meeting, student journals, worksheets, deeper theological training sheets, devotionals and more. I don’t think they’ve left a single thing out!

Known is split into quarterly packages for fall, winter, spring and summer of each year. Each package spends a month focusing on know, own or known aspects of the strategy that incorporates studies that’s a nice blend between topical and exegetical approaches.

My Criticism

The assumption is that teaching specific content from a stage or in a small group is the answer to all the teen dropouts from church and biblical illiteracy. I agree it’s critical to have solid content, but I guess I’m wondering if our delivery mechanism is part of the problem, not necessarily the content we teach. Maybe we need to teach more through real-life experiences than sitting under florescent lights in church classrooms. Yeah, we all try to help students talk through ways the key scripture passage applies to their life, and then we naively assume that they leave and actually do it. Maybe the way we are communicating the solid content just doesn’t connect with teens. I don’t really have many solutions, just thinking out loud, but I do believe that teaching should become more experiential because teaching through experiences is where real-life and faith can truly intersect. That could be a different topic for a later blog post, though.

Of course, the other thing to be careful of is that it doesn’t become a crutch as a canned “one size fits all” youth ministry. That’s true for any youth ministry curriculum, not just Known. Regardless of what curriculum you use, you must contextualize it for your kids and you must never use it as an excuse to shut off your vision casting and direction for the future. Otherwise, your ministry will definitely get stuck in a rut and become focused on its function rather than its identity. But again, another blog post for another time.

That said, I am seriously considering a switch to Known in the fall for our high school meetings on Sunday mornings. Of course I’m going to run it by some youth leaders and a couple teenagers first, but I do believe it has potential and is definitely worth the $149.95 for a quarterly digital download bundle at least to try it out. It seems to fit in our Deep and Wide strategy pretty well.

For more information

Check out Lifeway’s website for more information.

• Know. Own. Known. Student Strategy
• Known Curriculum

Recording: Interview with Lifeway

Download this episode

Subscribe to Life In Student Ministry in iTunes

Related posts:

• Book Review: Simple Student Ministry
• Ebook Review: “How to build a Lasting Student Ministry”
• Why church is often a student’s last priority

It’s no secret that my wife and I are big Dave Ramsey fans. We spent 15 months paying off $21,521.66 of debt on a combined take-home pay of about $39,000/year, which doesn’t really work mathematically, but somehow it worked when we started keeping track of our money and living on an extremely tight written budget every month. God did amazing things to bring us to where we are today with a completely funded emergency fund and now savings for our kid’s birth in August. Soon we’ll start saving for a down-payment on a house, too. Because we no longer have any payments, we’re able to securely drop my wife’s income so she can be a stay-at-home mom when our child is born. Exciting! (A video of my wife and I sharing more details about our financial story can be found here.)

Since Dave Ramsey’s teaching has alleviated a lot of stress and pressure on me and Dana and our marriage, we thought it would be something important to teach high school kids as they start getting jobs, earning an income, and saving for the future. Me, Dana, and two other high school small group leaders have all made a lot of financial mistakes and wanted to help some teens avoid those same “normal” mistakes by having a biblical perspective on money and how it works. Naturally, we looked into Dave Ramsey’s Generation Change curriculum for youth groups and decided to try it out.

Generation Change

• At $169 for an 8-person start-up kit, it’s definitely pretty expensive. If they dropped the tshirts and charged half the price, I think the value would be more reflective of the kit’s contents.
• There’s 4 lessons total in the kit, each with an accompanying two-part DVD. Every lesson is supposed to take about an hour, but we found that with all the discussion, questions, stories, examples, and everything else that came up in the group time, each lesson really took about two hours. We ended up spreading it out over 8 weeks comfortably.
• At first our high school kids were a little leary of talking about such “grown-up” stuff, but after we got into the series, they really started appreciating it and were very thankful for it by the time we finished.
• Although the curriculum is laid out very clearly and is very easy to follow, it’s not something that could be given to just any youth leader and expected to go well. It definitely must be taught by leaders who agree with Dave Ramsey’s principles and are actively following them with their own personal finances. In fact, that’s where most of the value came for our group, as me, Dana and the other leaders put real-life flesh on the principles being taught with examples from our own mistakes, misconceptions, and even greed. All of us leaders were very transparent about our personal finances, which really helped the kids a lot. Without a passionate leader, the curriculum will probably have little to no affect.
• The DVD sessions are very well-done and professionally recorded. Most of it consists of Dave sitting with a group of teenagers, teaching one of the 4 major principles for about 7 to 10 minutes.
• The curriculum isn’t really as anti-debt as what you’d probably expect from something that comes from Dave Ramsey. Of course credit cards and school loans are addressed, but the emphasis is clearly on changing teens’ perspective of money. Themes like materialism, personal self-worth, giving to others, and saving are much bigger issues than debt.
• It would be easy for a curriculum like this to be really heavy on the nerdy stuff and really light on scripture, but fortunately it is not like that at all. Every lesson digs through scripture in addressing the financial principle and raises discussions from those passages. The curriculum does not really address the mechanics of money and how it works, but it is easy for the leader to include that kind of teaching if the kids are interested, like they were in our group.
• Generation Change is clearly geared toward high school students. I wouldn’t even attempt to do it with jr. highers.

Since it is over-priced, I recommend that you not purchase a student kit for every person going through it. Take the 8 student kits that are included with the leader’s kit, of course, but purchasing additional kits for each teen is not absolutely necessary. Give them a pen and legal pad instead if you really want them to write things down. The leader’s guide and DVDs are sufficient to teach the curriculum.

Oh, and remember, you can’t purchase Generation Change with a credit card. Debit cards only!

Summary

Generation Change is strong on helping communicate a biblical perspective of money to high school teens and it does so in a very practical and engaging way. It’s very well done, very professional, and very easy for any leader to follow and teach. However, it only gets three stars because it feels overpriced for the content, even when you stretch four sessions out to be eight.

Related posts:

• We are DEBT FREE! Thanks, Dave Ramsey!
• Freebie Friday #56: Vision Generation 1-year curriculum
• Q&A: What curriculum do you use with your teens?

Note: Since I only write reviews on products I’ve actually used, each of these product reviews comes from my personal and practical experience from actually using them in ministry with teenagers, not just by looking at a box or flipping through some pages of material.

Disclaimer: Every ministry has different values and works with kids who are coming from different backgrounds in different contexts at different levels of spiritual maturity. The following reviews are only based on my own values and experiences. Your experience(s) may be very different from mine.

The Gospel Journey

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: $149 for 7 lessons.

To this day, The Gospel Journey has sparked the most spiritually significant discussions I have ever had with a group of high school teeangers. In fact, it was even an influential piece in shifting my own approach to youth ministry.

Set in mountains of Colorado, Greg Stier of Dare 2 Share Ministries takes a group of teens and young adults of various backgrounds (wiccan, atheist, agnostic, and others) on a journey through the Gospel. It attempts to be a reality show, but even Greg admits it’s not really a reality show as we typically think of. Rather, it is a show about reality.

The DVD sessions mostly consist of Greg teaching through the Gospel Journey acronym followed by very significant objections and questions by youth of other religions. Watch the trailer on YouTube to get an idea of what it’s like.

The included leader’s booklet includes two different guides: one for using with your churched kids and one for using with unchurched, unsaved kids. I personally started by using the guide for churched kids, but quickly had to supplement it with some of my theology books from seminary because the high school kids took the discussions very deep. In fact, there were some weeks we went almost 30 minutes over our meeting time and no one wanted to leave.

Check out my earlier post about The Gospel Journey for a more detailed review. Also see Dare 2 Share’s new Gospel Journey: Maui.

SUMMARY: The Gospel Journey definitely gets 5 stars for it’s depth in content, creativity, and unique approach to helping teens think through very critical theological issues. Best geared for high school students.

Goin’ All the Way

Published by LifeChurch.tv. Website. Price: FREE!

LifeChurch.tv has an amazing amount of resources available for free, but probably my favorite for use in youth group is Craig Groeschel’s 4-part sermon series called, Goin’ All the Way. (Watch it online here.) I downloaded the DVDs of his messages, showed them in their entirety to the small group, and then led a discussion afterwards. You may think that sitting kids in front of a TV to watch someone preach is kinda lame, but it’s definitely not when it comes to this series. I’ve used this series a couple times and every group has been completely glued to Pastor Craig Groeschel, listening intently, and even answering his rhetorical questions out loud to the TV!

Craig also has a book by the same title, Going All the Way: Preparing for a Marriage That Goes the Distance, which addresses this issue in more detail. Could be used as a good accompaniment to the video series.

SUMMARY: Goin’ All the Way is an excellent sermon DVD series that talks about dating, relationships, sex, how to find “the one,” and how to make marriages go the distance. I highly recommend it. Geared best for high school students.

YouthBtytes

Published by YouthBytes. Website. Price: $300 for 40 lessons (individual pricing available).

YouthBytes is a video-based curriculum with content that is very solid. It focuses on only a single point, and has a very fast-pasted, professional, MTV-style production. The format of the videos is to set the youth leader up to have a meaningful discussion with kids about the topic at hand. To help leaders do that best, each DVD includes of a version of the video in different lengths: a 1-minute, 3-minute, 7 to 12 minute, and even a 30-minute version. Of course, each video includes a lesson guide that includes key scripture verses, illustrations, ice-breakers, stories, and discussion questions.

Although the videos are excellent, the lesson guides are a bit lacking. Any lesson you buy from any vendor must be tweaked and tailored to the individual needs of your specific students, but these guides leave you tweaking a bit more than you might expect. For example, the ice-breakers are typically stories that introduce the topic in some way. However, I think experiential learning is always much more effective, so I like to engage the students in an activity of some sort to introduce the subject matter, which means I have to come up with more creative introductions for each lesson. The discussion questions also do not probe as deep as I like to go with my students, so I always re-write those, too.

Check out my earlier post about YouthBytes for a more detailed review.

SUMMARY: The videos are 5-star quality, but the lesson guides do not yet have quite the same value. However, in the near future YouthBytes will be updating their lessons to include many of my ideas, activities, and discussion questions. At that time, the whole package will definitely be 5 stars. *wink* Best geared for jr. high students.

Go Wide Kit

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: $74 for 3 training sessions.

If you’re looking for a tool to help train your kids in normal, every day, social evangelism, Dare 2 Share’s Go Wide Kit is definitely the way to go. The kit includes several things, but the core of it is a DVD containing three sessions where Greg Stier both trains and motivates teens to share their faith with their unsaved friends. He teaches them to first Pray for them, Pursue a relationship, and gently Persuade them into a relationship with Christ by taking opportunities to steer conversations toward spiritual matters.

The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because in a separate section of the DVD, Greg talks about his idea for starting an e-team (evangelism team) in your youth group. I resist the idea that sharing Christ should be expected primarily of whoever joins an e-team, and fortunately, from my own conversations with Greg, he agrees with me. If he had the choice, he’d remove references to an e-team idea, but what’s published is published.

Check out my earlier post about the Go Wide Kit for a more detailed review.

SUMMARY: The Go Wide Kit is an excellent tool for training teenagers to share their faith. It gives them confidence to “bring God up” in normal conversations with their unsaved friends. Just ignore that e-team parts. Best geared for jr. high and high school students.

The Journey

Published by the Evangelical Covenant. Website. Price: $12.95/student journal; $39.95/leaders guide

The word “confirmation” carries a lot of different meetings for different people in different denominations, but if you’re willing to strip away all that baggage, my denomination’s discipleship (confirmation) material really is quite excellent. It’s a small group discipleship experience for 7th and 8th graders that takes them through the entire Bible in 2 years — Old Testament one year, New Testament the next. Students are expected to complete journal work each day during the week where they interact with scripture and answer questions about how it connects with their daily life. In their weekly small groups, the jr. highers discuss their journal work and learn more about the next major event or theological issue in the Bible.

I am honestly quite impressed with how thorough the material is, how practical it is for a jr. higher’s every day life, and how well the leader’s guides are put together. The best part is that by the time every jr. higher moves into high school, they have a solid grasp on the message of the entire Bible as a whole. What a great foundation for high school!

My personal ties to any one denomination are very weak, but I’d still recommend this material for any church’s jr. high ministry.

SUMMARY: An excellent overview of the entire Bible in 2 years that encourages jr. highers to reflect on it’s practical implications in their personal life on a daily basis while having accountability and relationships in a small group. Geared best for jr. high students.

Girls and Guys Curriculum Pack

Published by Youth Specialties. Guys Website. Price: $11.24 | Girls website. Price: $10.94

This curriculum pack is actually two books for small groups that are gender specific.

• Guys: 10 Fearless Faith-Focused Sessions on Issues That Matter to Guys
• Girls: 10 Gutsy, God-Centered Sessions on Issues that Matter to Girls

My wife and I have found them to be well balanced in addressing critical issues of manhood and womanhood. Each of the 10 lessons includes several different options so you can tailor the lesson according to your needs and time restraints. The activities are fun, break the ice, and illustrate the issues very well. Interactive handouts are included to ensure that the teens are tracking with you through the whole lesson. Unfortunately, it also serves up too much text to just read to the kids, so you’ll need to feel comfortable enough with the content so you can share it in your own words.

SUMMARY: Great books for addressing gender specific issues with teenagers. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I’d like to see them probe a bit deeper, but if you have comfortable relationships already built with the kids, I’m sure you may end up asking those hard questions anyway. Geared best for jr. high and high school students.

Design for Discipleship

Published by The Navigators. Website. Price: $6.99 each

Design for Discipleship is the series I use for one-on-one discipleship with new believers. It consists of a 6 workbooks that walk a new believer through the core foundations of Christianity. Although a leaders guide is available, I don’t use it. I just complete the workbook assignments on the same schedule as the guy I’m discipling and meet with him once a week to discuss our answers together. It lends itself well to very meaningful discussions and questions.

The workbooks include passages to read, a bit of explanation, and many questions to answer about the scripture text that was read. What I like best is that the questions are not asking you to list the obvious — they require some engagement with the passage, thinking, and processing through observation, it’s meaning (interpretation), and application, which is great because that leads to self-discovery, the most significant way to learn and take ownership of something.

SUMMARY: I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I would prefer that there was a bit more teaching in the workbooks to balance all of the questions. Otherwise, it’s great for one-on-one discipleship. Geared best for jr. high and high school students.

TeenLifeMinistries.com

Published online at TeenLifeMinistries.com. Price: $9.95/month for unlimited access.

TeenLifeMinistries.com isn’t a curriculum as much as it is a youth ministry resource site that includes almost 15 years worth of Bible lessons (with accompanying PowerPoint presentations) for youth groups. If there’s a topic or passage you want to talk about, I can almost guarantee that TeenLifeMinistries.com has something for you. The lessons are easy to use, simple to modify, and include all the handouts you could ever want. If you want to use the lesson as a small group discussion, there’s a sheet for that. Or, if you’re an up-front-and-preach kinda person, there’s an outline version for “preaching,” too. Of course, you could easily combine the two options together in a sort of “I preach, then we discuss” fashion, too.

The weakness of TeenLifeMinistries is that the lessons all start to feel a bit similar pretty quickly. After a couple months of the outlines, format, and questions, my teens were saying, “I can tell exactly where this is heading” and would somewhat check out mentally due to the repetitious nature of the structure. Fortunately, it’s a subscription-based site so you can cancel whenever you want.

SUMMARY: TeenLifeMinistry.com’s real value is in having a goldmine of very flexible resources and ideas to kick-start your own lesson planning. As stated earlier, you should never use anyone’s lesson “as is,” but be especially intentional about not doing that here.

You’re Next

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: $29 for leader’s guide

This is Dare 2 Share’s response for the “go deep” part of their Deep & Wide ministry strategy. Greg Stier goes through the 30 Core Truths (found in the Deep & Wide thesis downloadable from here) and shares youth group lessons that are intended to take kids deep into God’s Word in a systematic approach to theology. While the concept is great, especially because the lessons are highly practical and heavy on application to real life, it really doesn’t go as deep as I think it has the potential to go. I found myself using it for ideas on how to introduce one of the 30 Core Truths, but took most of my “depth” from one of my systematic theology books and integrated that into my lessons instead.

I gave it 3 stars because, even though much of the content is based on stories from Greg’s life, if you substitute his stories with ones from your own life and mix in some deeper theology from another source, it has the potential to be pretty powerful. I know that sounds like I’m saying you basically need to re-write Greg’s lessons, but it’s not quite like that. He lays a solid framework for which to work when taking kids deep into God’s Word.

SUMMARY: This “go deep” tool doesn’t go as deep as the Go Wide Kit goes wide, but it still provides a decent framework for addressing the 30 Core Truths with the youth group. Geared best for high school students.

Soul Fuel

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: FREE!

You sure can’t beat the price of this weekly curriculum from Dare 2 Share Ministries — FREE! Every week it shows up in your email Inbox and includes a devotional sheet for teens, a youth group lesson plan, and a parent sheet. They each loosely address one of the 30 Core Truths in some way.

Although each lesson follows an outline, most of the content is written as a transcript. I know some people prefer reading something word for word, but it doesn’t seem to work too well in this context because the lessons are intended primarily for small groups, not preaching from a pulpit. It just doesn’t feel right to discuss some questions as a group and then make students sit and listen to you read the next paragraph to them, ya know? If you can memorize it, that’s great, but I mostly just shared it in normal conversational English using my own words to keep the dialog going.

The length of the material is also fairly short — probably enough for a 15-20 minute discussion. Most of my teaching in my youth group goes for 30-60 minutes, so this is a bit short for us.

SUMMARY: Soul Fuel gets 3 stars mostly because it’s free and consistent every week. It’s probably better suited for quick devotionals with kids than it is for youth group meetings.

Talking the Walk: 31 sessions for new small groups

Published by Youth Specialties. Website. Price: $13.59

This book is probably one of the best books I’ve seen for solidifying a new small group of teenagers together. It’s cram-packed with ideas and activities that will grow new friendships, build trust, and create an environment that feels safe for everyone. If you have a new group of teens in a small group who don’t know each other very well, this book is perfect for you.

However, I find it odd that it seriously lacks a spiritual influence. There are scripture passages in each lesson, but both myself and my leaders had difficulty figuring out how it connected with the rest of the lesson, as weak as the lessons already were. The focus of this book is definitely on building community in your new small group, not really on Bible study.

SUMMARY: If this book had stronger Biblical content, it would be an excellent resource for new small groups of teens who don’t know each other very well, but without it, the group-building games and activities need to be combined with an actual Bible study from elsewhere.

Jr. High Grapple

Published by Group Publishing. Website. Price: $89.99 for 16 lessons.

Grapple is one of the few curriculums I’ve ditched mid-way through. In fact, I only used it for about 4 weeks before I stopped wasting my jr. higher’s time with it. The format is to introduce a topic to your teens, watch a short video that illustrates it, and then continue with the discussion. Sounds good in theory, but videos were very weak in both content and production value. For example, the video that introduces the topic of salvation was based on a visit to a pet shelter where animals were asked if all dogs go to heaven, and it looks like it was produced in iMovie.

Furthermore, my adult leaders found the discussion sheets to be very difficult to understand and follow, partly because the sheets tried to communicate too many points in one lesson or that the points didn’t seem to connect very well with the main idea of the lesson. Anyone who works with jr. high knows that they need only one solid point driven home in a variety of ways, not multiple points that are weakly connected to the main idea.

However, the one thing that Grapple offers that I absolutely love are the parent sheets included with each lesson. These sheets are designed to send home with parents after the jr. high meeting to inform them on what was discussed. The parent sheets include a couple discussion starters for parents to use with their kids and take the topic deeper at home, which is a great way to help families have spiritual conversations at home.

The other thing I really appreciated about Grapple was that all of their lessons, parent sheets, videos, and discussion sheets were available for download from their site, which meant that I could easily embed the video illustrations in PowerPoint presentations, email discussion sheets to adult leaders in advance, and make parent sheets available for download on our website.

SUMMARY: I would’ve given it 0 stars, but it’s availability in digital format and parent sheets are definitely worth at least 1 star. Best geared for jr. high students.

Add your own review

If you’ve used a curriculum you’d like to recommend or would like to warn people to way away from, please write about it in the comments below. I just ask that you only review it if you’ve actually tried using it in a youth ministry context.

Thanks for helping youth workers around the world make an informed decision about the material they use at youth group!

NOTE: Reviews and links from publishers and advertisers will be deleted.

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When I first heard about YouthBytes.org I thought, “Oh no, not another video curriculum of shallow content and lame production. The youth ministry video curriculum market is already saturated with products that enable youth leaders to outsource the teaching of scripture.”

But what I appreciate about the videos from YouthBytes.org is that, not only are they MTV quality videos, but the host, Chad Daniel, actually communicates the Word. The videos are not intended to be a surrogate teacher for your kids — they’re created to spark discussion and engage teenagers’ minds on Biblical truths that you, their youth leader, can (and should) follow-up on. That’s why each episode includes a 1-minute version, a 3-minute version, a 6-minute version, even up to a 30-minute version so you can pick which works best for your group. The included leader’s guide contains ideas for icebreakers, a lesson, discussion questions, key scripture passages, and more to help you teach your kids on the subject matter covered in the video. They really do a professional and quality job with everything they produce.

When you get a chance, check out some of the video clips at YouthBytes.org. The first time I went to their site, I only intended to check out a couple clips, but I actually ended up watching all of them! They’re engaging, funny, and thought provoking. And the longer DVD versions are even better! I actually watched the episodes on the YouthBytes DVD I have twice!

I actually had no faults with YouthBytes until the second time I watched the DVD: I realized that I was so engaged with what Chad Daniel was doing the first time around that sometimes I stopped paying attention to what he was actually teaching. Instead my mind focused on things like, “Oh wow, flares strapped to tennis shoes! I so wanna try that!” or how I need to tell my wife about a funny clip that made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, I missed some of the valuable gems of wisdom that Chad Daniel shared the first time I watched it. However, this could actually be a positive thing because it makes the replay value of the DVDs pretty high. You could watch it several times and pick up something new each time. I’ll probably use YouthBytes as discussion starters for my own Sunday morning Jr. High ministry starting in 2009.

Tips from Chad Daniel: How to improve your teaching

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk with Chad Daniel. Of course, YouthBytes entered the discussion and how to communicate with teens in a media-based culture, but he gave me some great tips on how to improve my teaching and communication with teenagers. Listen to this interview with him to hear his advice.

Hear it in iTunes

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A HUGE thank you to YouthBytes for being the official sponsor of our Youth Ministry Mentorship program! Because of their support, every mentee received the required books for free and every mentor was blessed with a gift. Thank you, YouthBytes, for your investment into the training of new youth workers across the country!

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