Crash Courses in Youth Ministry, Coaching Now… | UMC YoungPeople
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March 2022

Crash Courses in Youth Ministry, Coaching Now Available

By Chris Wilterdink

Since our Crash Courses in Youth Ministry launched in late 2021, the downloads are in the thousands! We are super excited that these easy to read and use resources are making a difference for the church. We do have plans soon to offer a self-guided online course to expand on the Crash Courses with a Discipleship Ministries eLearning course.

As an additional option, Young People’s Ministries has partnered with Cultiv8, as their group offers a cohort and coaching model built upon the vital information from the Crash Courses. Read on for information and an invitation from their group to explore how to dig deeply into the Crash Courses in Youth Ministry materials alongside others, providing you the extra encouragement and support to start making a positive difference in your approach to ministry. Cultiv8 is organized by an excellent group of leaders from around the United Methodist Church.


Crash Courses in Youth Ministry were recently released by Discipleship Ministries as an excellent resource for youth workers of all varieties (volunteer, part-time, full-time) to offer practical insights into the hands-on world of youth ministry. By offering quick-hitting guides with practical wisdom, Crash Courses are a perfect guide to get youth workers headed down the right track to being effective in the local church. Sometimes, though, for many youth workers, simply reading information in a book or on a blog or hearing it in a podcast then trying to implement the content into their context can be overwhelming. So, too often, youth workers read great books with amazing concepts, but then fail to figure out a way to implement those ideas into their ministry.

One way to ease that anxiety is to work with a ministry coach to assist in moving the information, like that found in Crash Courses, from concept to practice in your ministry context. Cultiv8 Group has partnered with Discipleship Ministries to offer an affordable coaching cohort program for youth workers designed to assist any youth worker in implementing the content of Crash Course into their ministry context. Each coaching cohort participant is assigned a cohort group that meets virtually for five sessions to discuss general concepts and ideas within the Crash Course material but goes a step further by offering each participant a follow up individual coaching call with one of our veteran youth ministry coaches to help process a plan for implementing the concepts into your youth ministry.

Cultiv8 Group has identified its core values: collaboration, creativity, integrity, empowerment, constructive disruption, and fun. Each of these core values will be at the heart of the coaching cohort experience. Through our coaching cohort process participants will receive helpful coaching that will guide them to a plan that is clear, contextualized, and action oriented. To learn more about Cultiv8 Group’s Crash Courses Coaching Cohorts (try saying that five times fast), visit Cutliv8group.org.

Chris serves as Director of Young People’s Ministries for Discipleship Ministries of the United Methodist Church. Chris has a BA in English Education, and an MS in Project Management, and over 15 years of local-church youth ministry experience. He is passionate about leadership and faith development in young people and helping ministry leaders understand their value in the lives of young people. A Stephen Minister, Chris is a native of Colorado living in Franklin, TN with his wife Emily, 2 children, and sausage-shaped beagle.