Rebuilding Youth Ministry: Ten Practical Strategies for Catholic Parishes

Christopher Wesley, director of student ministry at Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland—the Catholic parish at the center of the bestselling book Rebuilt—has doubled teen participation in his programs and tripled the number of adult volunteers who work with youth. In Rebuilding Youth Ministry, Wesley presents ten crucial strategies for creating successful youth programs where teens feel connected, stay involved, and grow in faith.

In Rebuilding Youth Ministry, Christopher Wesley instructs fellow Catholic leaders on how to overcome common obstacles of ministering to young people. Wesley shares how he faced feelings of complacency, underestimated youth, and entertained rather than ministered in his own parish. Wesley built a distinctive program based on small group faith formation and sustained it with the assistance of more than sixty volunteer adult mentors. Adopting a tone and structure similar to the bestselling books Rebuilt and Tools for Rebuilding, Wesley lays out ten strategies that helped grow participation in his high school program from nine teens to ninety and the middle school program from forty teens to eighty-five.