Kara Powell:
Providing Tools for Youth Leaders

Kara E. Powell is passionate about her work as executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI)—where the mission is to translate research into practical resources for youth workers and others who serve students and their families. Dr. Powell writes frequently for these audiences—in FYI’s blog, articles for the FYI website, books, curriculum, and other resources—addressing the real-life issues facing those who work with today’s youth.

Essential Leadership: Ministry Team Meetings That Work (Youth Specialties/Zondervan, 2010) is one of those resources: a new curriculum guide from Powell and FYI, which—along with a companion participant’s guide—provides youth leaders with the tools to help their volunteer leaders take their ministry and students to a deeper level.

“We’ve taken some of FYI’s best research and turned it into a school year’s worth of training lessons that youth workers can use with their whole team,” says Powell. “We’re wrestling with some of their toughest questions—mentoring kids, partnering with parents, helping hurting students, experiencing the rest that God intends.”

Powell is sensitive to the needs of youth workers because she’s been there herself. A student staff member with Young Life during college, she then served as a youth minister at one church, college pastor at another, and consultant for Youth Specialties prior to joining Fuller. “Kara Powell isn’t just a terrific thinker and writer about youth ministry—she knows what it’s like in the trenches. [Essential Leadership] is ‘deep impact’ material,” says pastor, popular author and Fuller trustee John Ortberg.

The leader’s and participant’s guides for Essential Leadership: Ministry Team Meetings That Work are both available at the Fuller Bookstore.