Youth Leaders' Podcast Series

The Youth Leaders' Crash Course equips youth leaders (and others working with young people) to help teenagers engage with Christian teaching on sexuality and gender. Episodes explore youth culture, teaching the Bible, pastoral support, transgender, and mental health. The series also features some interviews with special guests including Preston Sprinkle and Julie Maxwell.

You can find all the episodes on your usual podcast platform (including Spotify and Apple Podcasts) or via the links below.

We hope that youth teams find this series useful to learn from together and so we’ve provided discussion questions to accompany each episode, along with recommended resources. These can also be found below!

Episode 1 - Understanding Youth Culture

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

• Where are your teens in terms of sexuality? What are the specific ideas they hold to?
• What’s the impact of these ideas on individuals, gay or straight?
• How might you begin to respond to the messages of our culture?
  
  

Episode 2 - Responding to Culture

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

• Which of the ideas raised in this episode do you find most challenging to teach on? Why?
• Which of these ideas is most relevant for/prevalent among the teens in your group?
• How can you begin to teach on these ideas?

Episode 3 - Teaching the Bible

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

• Do you have a good understanding of what the Bible says about sexuality? If not, what’s your next step in learning?
• How can you teach this in a way that doesn’t compromise on truth, but also extends grace and sensitivity to your various listeners?
• How would you answer the common questions raised in this episode? (Perhaps practice on each other!)

Episode 4 - Pastoral Support: The Wider Community

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

• What do we need to do to prepare ourselves as youth leaders?
• What do we need to do to prepare our youth group?
• How can we engage well with parents and carers?
• How can we engage well with our church leaders?

Episode 5 - Pastoral Support: Caring for SSA Teens

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

• Has there been a time when you have had to share something deeply personal with someone else? Were you uncertain or afraid about how they might respond? What about those experiences might help us to respond well to teens who come out to us?
• How have we responded to teens who have come out to us in the past? What can we learn from these experiences?
• How are we discipling our teens on an ongoing basis? What else could we do?

Episode 6 - Thinking About Transgender

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

• Do we have a good understanding of sex, gender and transgender? If not, what’s our next step in learning?
• Do we have a good understanding of what the Bible says about sex, gender and identity? If not, what’s our next step in learning?
• Are we a welcoming, safe environment for teens who are trans-identifying, who have questions about gender generally or their own specifically? How can we become more so?
• What practical conversations (e.g. around names, pronouns, bathrooms, sleeping spaces) do we need to have?

Episode 7 - LGBT+ Youth and Mental Health

Listen here: Website. Spotify. Apple Podcasts.

Questions for youth team

For the episode:

• Do we have a good understanding of the main mental health issues our teens might be struggling with? (depression, anxiety, low self-esteem/self worth, self harm, eating disorders, suicidality, shame, addiction, etc.) If not, what’s our next step in learning?
• How can we provide a safe environment for teens to be honest about their pain/struggles?
• What practical things/resources should we put in place to equip us as a team and any youth who need help? (eg member of Ashleigh’s youth team did a bunch of research and created a brief document explaining various mental health problems and providing resources for helping with each)

For the series:

• What are your key takeaways?
• What should we continue to pray about?
• What’s your priority to do next?