Purpose: The Methodist Youth Ministry Alliance is a collaborative community for adult youth workers worshiping and serving God in Methodist congregations around the world.

Mission: The Methodist Youth Ministry Alliance believes that young disciples are essential members of Christ’s body and therefore merit leaders and mentors who are trained, equipped, and supported to walk alongside them on their faith journey. The MYMA invests in the professional and spiritual development of adult youth workers to prepare and support them to be in ministry with young disciples.

Vision: The Methodist Youth Ministry Alliance will build bridges among the islands of youth ministry in order to form transformational relationships with all called to help young disciples learn to love God, love each other and themselves.

Core Values:

Diversity

Openness / Accessibility

Supportive Relationships

Ongoing Spiritual Growth

A Little More About Us

We are over the divisions in our culture and the church. We are choosing to rise above the rhetoric, ignore the division, and connect with each other because youth ministry has always transcended division. Enter into a room of fellow youth workers and you are in an instant community of people because you are all in the trenches with teens trying to help them learn to love God and love each other. We are launching an alliance to offer a structure that will foster that community and collaboration regardless of whatever issue is dividing people in other places.

We are body built for community with our young people. We all know the loneliness and isolation that youth workers feel as they are often the only adult focusing primarily on the spiritual care of teens. The responsibility we carry sneaks up on us in the most unexpected ways, when we sit down to work on a lesson, or meet with a distraught teen over coffee. In those crucial moments we can often and feel like we are doing it ourselves. We know that this solitude is not healthy for us ourselves or our churches. We exist to help form and foster relationships that can alleviate the dangerous loneliness that causes so many problems. We live into relationships that allow us to reach out and get support from fellow youth workers for support when we need more insight than we possess.

We are an alliance of collaborators. We believe that community is bigger. Our community offers more than support, we believe that an association works best when it fosters collaboration. We believe in the idea power of connection, the idea truth that we can do far more good together than we can on our own. That is why we host events that not only offer support, but offer a chance to collaborate on something bigger.

We are an alliance of grace-loving Methodists. We truly believe that our particular, grace-filled understanding of Christianity is the perfect perspective for this uniquely poised to address the challenges we all face at this moment in time. We believe that helping students understand the prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace of God is perfectly suited for helping them live out their faith as followers of Jesus Christ. We are excited to embody that Methodist perspective in our ministries.

We are the Methodist Youth Ministry Alliance.