Last week I traveled to Louisville to help host the first ever (to our knowledge) Global Youth Ministry Leadership Training Summit. Randy Smith, the president of Youth Ministry International, and Dann Spader of Global Youth Initiative, along with Colin Piper of the the World Evangelical Alliance, invited 14 youth ministry training organizations to participate in the Summit to see how we could better work together as we seek to train youth workers around the world.

We spent a good part of the Summit talking about what we are all doing around the world, and our time together served to exemplify what is taught in 1 Corinthians 12. We are one body, but we are many parts. Each part has its function to make the body work. If we were all the exact same part, there would be a problem in the body and nothing would ever get accomplished.

One of my favorite parts of the Summit was getting to know so many other people who have a passion to see young people around the globe come to know Jesus and be ministered to and cared for. The men and women in the room for those two days have sacrificed so much and worked so hard to see the advancement of God’s Kingdom through global youth ministry.

Now What?

We now have a pretty strong network of organizations and people who have the same heartbeat for young people throughout the world. We are going to be able to work better together than separately, and I am looking forward to seeing how we can better collaborate for the cause of Christ.

For Youth Ministry International, I can see us inviting other youth ministry professionals into our ministry, asking them to help with training in the places we are ministering. I can also see us helping promote what others are doing and distributing their training materials or resources with our own worldwide network of youth leaders.

I hope this isn’t the last time we get these ministries together to talk about collaboration. The work is too much for any one group to try to do it all. We need each other. We are all one body.