The YMI Flourishing Life Project
A Movement to Re-Center, Re-Charge, and Re-Equip Youth Ministry
The Twin Calamities: Declining Churches, Struggling Young
Too many of our churches and our young are struggling. Too many of our denominations and congregations are struggling because they are failing to transmit the faith to a rising generation, and too many of our young are struggling because they lack the foundations that were traditionally supplied by communities of the faith. What’s crucial here is that these two dynamics, the trajectory of struggling churches and the trend of struggling youth, are related – and neither of them will be resolved until we re-center, re-charge, and re-equip our ministries with and for our young.
Our Solution: The YMI Quest Program
The YMI Quest Program offers three different curricula with scores of program modules or lesson plans. These curricula are, in turn, supported by over 100 full lectures, over 1,000 video interview clips, and suites of enriching devotionals, essays, monographs, program templates, vesper plans, and sample sermons contributed by the leading practical theologians and youth workers in the world. Each curriculum supports the individual and group quest by focusing on a different dimension of Christian formation: three different dimensions of the practices, attitudes, habits, understandings, orientations and virtues that our Christian tradition has nurtured over the centuries as foundations of flourishing lives of meaning, wholeness, and joy.
The YMI Quest
Join Us
The resources curated by YMI reflect the fruits of more than twenty years of dreams and labors and the work of over 100 practical theologians and youth workers. We offer them for free, in part, because Yale Divinity School Dean Greg Sterling has made clear that the Yale Divinity School’s mission calls for the free sharing of its intellectual capital wherever practicable. There is, however, an even more compelling reason: the desire to contribute to, participate in, and reap the shared benefits of a growing conversation around nurturing joyful flourishing lives in the youth we minister with and for.
Resources for Life
This is a lesson that emphasizes community building and is appropriate for middle or high school students.
If you have a large youth group and need to divide into teams, this lesson provides a guideline for how to make the team reveal fun and community building.
This lesson is designed to be small group discussion(s) based on scripture.
This lesson provides an outline for a meeting with parents-guardians at the beginning of a youth group program year.
This lesson is designed to support team building. This is particularly helpful in creating bonds before a mission trip.
This is a an example of an all church service project for adults, families and youth.
This is a lesson for a first gathering of the year, with a fun, carnival theme.