Youth Ministry Institute

“Welcome, pilgrim. Your search has ended.” It’s a phrase better suited to television commercials than to the restless, Spirit-driven quest at the center of every human life. The quest Augustine had in mind was the project of a lifetime – more journey than destination. Adolescents may never have read Augustine’s Confessions, and talk of a “quest for the holy grail” may summon up nothing more than trivia questions about a Monty Python or Indiana Jones movie, but youth know all about restlessness – and their hungry hearts are primed for the journey. Book sales and box office receipts set record after record as one youthful cohort after another surge to follow the archetypal quests traced by King Arthur, Prince Hal, Dorothy Gale, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, and countless others over the centuries.

The YMI Quest Program follows Augustine’s insight that the ultimate source of adolescent restlessness is the heart’s hunger for God, and that the true quest lying behind and beyond each of the quests limned by the popular culture is the quest for the “peace that passeth understanding” (Philippians 4:7), the “life abundant” offered by God in Christ (John 10:10), the flourishing life at the center of Paul’s exhortation to “take hold of the life that really is life.” (1 Timothy 6:19). To resource that quest, the YMI Quest Program offers youth workers everywhere free, online curricular materials and supporting online lectures, video clips, devotionals, program templates, vesper plans, essays monographs and sample sermons. Welcome, pilgrim. Your YMI Quest begins!

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 resources 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. These three different curricula are: a) The YMI Quest for the Spirit; b) The YMI Quest for Truth; and c) The YMI Quest for Life.