Review of “Sticky Faith Innovation: How Your Compassion, Creativity, and Courage Can Support Teenagers’ Lasting Faith”
I’ve been a youth pastor for a little while, and it can sometimes feel like I’m in a rut. Year after year goes by, and things more-or-less stay the same. For me, this is sometimes discouraging, but it can feel overwhelming to think about how we might change things up. How can we be sure that something new will actually work? How can we know our changes will do what we hope they will?
Sticky Faith Innovation guides youth ministry leaders through a holistic process to implement meaningful change to our programs to create the outcomes we desire. The book is set up to read more like a workbook with a short chapter and then space to reflect on some key questions and lots of practical tools on how to lead through various aspects of change. It is easy to read and would be great for a full-time pastor or a team of volunteers.
Sticky Faith Innovation: How Your Compassion, Creativity, and Courage Can Support Teenagers’ Lasting Faith, by Steven Argue and Caleb Roose (Fuller Youth Institute, 2021). 270 pp.
If you sense that your ministry culture needs to change but are unsure how to go about making it happen, then I would recommend reading this book! I would also recommend it for anyone in a ministry leadership role because the principles in this book can easily be adapted to various aspects of the church (not just youth ministry). Here are a few more specific things I loved about it:
Listen-first approach. The authors strongly encourage leaders to listen to the people we serve first before trying to make too many changes. By asking thoughtful and intentional questions, you show that you care, and you bring others into the process of change even before you know what changes you’ll be making. This is an important emphasis on humility and empathy that we as leaders sometimes bypass when we envision change.
Team-oriented visioning process. I love working in a team. But, as a youth pastor, I sometimes feel like program decisions are my job. As I read this book, I really felt challenged to be more intentional in inviting other people into important leadership conversations. I’m most definitely not a superhero, and odds are you aren’t either, so we don’t need to do it alone! It is worth the effort of coordinating people to join you in the visioning and planning process.
Lots of practical tools and conversation guides. Even if you don’t feel like you want to commit to going through their entire process and how they lay it out, there are still so many good tools and leadership conversation guides. The book is worth having simply for these helpful charts and creative activities. These kinds of things actually make me excited to try this in a group setting to see what kinds of creative solutions we can come up with as a team!
All in all, I would highly recommend this book for ministry leaders of all sorts. Yes, this book has a youth ministry emphasis, but it is a great practical guide for leading the culture change that you’ve been longing for.