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Seven Practices of Healthy Youth Ministry This is not a short-term fix. This does not depend on you. LCMS Youth Ministry has spent considerable time listening, reading data, conducting research, and digging into Scripture around what is key for healthy congregational youth ministry. Our heart is to faithfully lead, serve, resource, and network youth and adults by working through LCMS districts and congregations with Christ at the center of everything. This is where we formed the Seven Practices of Healthy Youth Ministry. While the practices described here may not cover every facet of ministry or teaching of the Church, we do hope it provides support, direction, and inspiration. Before you dive into this material, we want to highlight a few things you will not see in our Seven Practices of Healthy Youth Ministry. This is not a program. We will not present you with a curriculum, schedule, or plan of events. There is no single right path to producing healthy youth ministry. Instead, the focus is on relationships—God's relationship with us, parents' relationships with their children, the congregational relationship with its youth, and the youth's relationship with key adults. We believe that when you seek to build and sustain Christ-centered relationships, the right programs for your congregation will become clear. Transitions and cultural shifts take time. There will be trial and error along the way. Do not be disheartened when your work does not immediately result in teens flocking to your ministry or when you receive pushback against new ideas. Trust that God will work in and through you over time to help young people live out their faith from Baptism through adulthood. It can be easy to believe that youth ministry succeeds or fails on the work of parents, pastors, commissioned ministers, church staff, or volunteers. This is simply not the case. It is God who works through the Word and Sacraments giving forgiveness and new life. It is God who is at work in and through each of us as we live out our daily vocations, including serving the youth of our congregation. We will sin, fail, overwork, and fall short. Yet in all this, God works His will and way in us and in our youth. Take heart, this responsibility is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. This is what we hope you will see. This does not have to be complicated. There is a lot to unpack in these seven practices, but they are not designed to be complicated or theoretical. We hope a lot of the things you read in the practices will seem obvious and natural. Other parts of the practices will seem familiar from other sources but are approached from a Lutheran framework. Keep in mind that some of the best pieces of youth ministry are the simplest. 4 Lutheran Life

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