That's a GREAT question, and Doug and Josh have created YMU Start Here to help answer just that. Give us a few minutes and we'll get you up to speed. The inside joke at YMU is, "If Doug can figure it out, ANYONE can!" This is a great place to start

Simple! We want to help you train your volunteers to be more effective with their limited time and caring hearts. Finding adults to work with teenagers is only a small part of the overall volunteer strategy; an even bigger part is equipping these adults to succeed with teenagers. Like you, we believe every leader can benefit from some training and YMU makes your job a lot easier. You can follow our suggested courses (start with our introductory courses: Youth Ministry 101 - 401) or choose your own training route from our library of over 150 sessions. We've got you covered with some great, practical training by some of the most respected voices in youth ministry today.

There are two routes to go for YMU Access: purchasing individual course access or purchasing the ALL ACCESS site license. And unless you're an individual user, in almost all cases, the ALL ACCESS site license would be a better value for either a small or large ministry. With the All Access Site license you get a ministry-wide license for 1-year to share with every leader on your youth ministry team. Renewal is just $99/year. You just have more options with the ALL ACCESS site license. For example, you could require new or potential volunteers to go through Youth Ministry 101, or you could assign specific videos from multiple courses to a volunteer based on his/her need [e.g. "I'd love for you to log-in and watch the trainings on memorizing names (YM 101), understanding youth culture (YM 301), and the students you can reach (PDYM).”]

It allows you to have access to all 150+ of the training sessions in the YMU Library and share that access with all of your volunteers for an entire year. For about $21/month for the first year ($8/month for each renewal year), you and all of your leaders can access great training videos, reflection questions, and course resources.

It’s good for an entire year. After one year, the big news is that your renewal is only $99/year.

Why YES, yes you can! DYM Gold members can log into their account on DYM and discover a code that will give you $50 off your ALL ACCESS site license - members always get more! Yeah!

Unfortunately, no. That isn't possible. As of today, DYM's website and YMU are on completely separate platforms. If you are new to DYM or a long-term member, you will need a NEW, separate account to access YMU. Think of YMU as a separate website owned/operated by the same people. Once you create an account with YMU, you'll see that it's slick, quick and painless--we promise!

As soon as you purchase the ALL ACCESS site license or an individual course license, you'll immediately get a confirmation email with informative links on how everything works to make it easy for you to get started and add your volunteer team to the course(s).

To add volunteers, all you will need to do is log in to YMU, navigate to My Courses, select the course to add volunteers to, and enter in your volunteer's name and his/her email address. Really, it is that simple!

Absolutely! You’ll just need to follow the steps in the previous FAQ to add leaders as long as you have an up-to-date ALL ACCESS site license.

YES! That's the beauty of the site license; it's unlimited users for your church only. Every leader you add will get his/her own unique log-in and learning experience. 

Once you add them, your leaders will receive a welcome email providing them log-in support and access to the full course you selected. You can even add them to all 26 classes in YMU 101-401 at one time! Once they get their welcome email, they can begin taking the course(s) right away.

No, the videos in YMU are intended to be played on this specific platform only. The benefit of the YMU platform is that each user receives an individualized experience and can utilize the reflection questions, downloads, and resources of each video. If you have a training portal of your own (like a church website, etc), it’s best to simply point your leaders to the YMU platform directly to access their courses.

All of the YMU training videos can be watched on your smartphone or computer, as well as displayed through Apple TV and a myriad of other devices, screens and projectors. If it can access the internet, it will play the videos. Go hog wild with practically any setup!

Send an email to the Dean of Students and we'll get right to it!

There's not one definitive way. Some ministry leaders are requiring potential volunteers to take Youth Ministry 101 prior to their coming aboard to serve, while others are asking their new volunteers to complete YM101 within the first year of their ministry commitment. You can have volunteers complete a full course on their own, have regular training sessions and watch the videos together, or even assign volunteers to watch a training video at home and then be ready to discuss at your next volunteer meeting. Often, we recommend having volunteers work through the Youth Ministry 101 through 401 courses, but we encourage you to do what works for you! Oh! And let us know if you find anything particularly helpful. We’d love to feature your idea in our communication!

No way! At YMU, we encourage everyone to do two important things: Reflect and Engage. 

Every video session has both a downloadable PDF outline AND an online interactive/reflection experience that we're very excited about. The outline is for those who want something to look at and/or take handwritten notes while they're watching the videos. For deeper reflection, each course contains a 10-15 question follow-up reflection experience. The reflection experience isn't just a bunch of right/wrong quiz-type questions--instead they're more like reflection questions to help the leader/learner to process the information they've just experienced via video.

Along with a period of reflection, learners are encouraged to engage others who are taking the course by using the comments section under the video. Don’t be an online presence only though! Share what you’re learning with a friend or fellow youth worker!

When your volunteers watch sessions and click on the reflection questions link, they can send their reflection answers to someone via email. They can either enter in their own email address and then forward their answers to you, or you can ask them to enter in your email address before each series of reflection questions and their answers will go directly to you. Either way, you’ll know that they’re following through with their coursework.

While it almost seems too obvious to mention, our first suggestion is that you tell them before you add them to a YMU course. Have you ever had a friend sign you up for an email or newsletter just so they could get something for free and now you have a monthly newsletter from a rash cream company that you don’t know how to cancel? Yeah… don’t be that person to your volunteers. Here are some sample letters that you could use on the front end to let them know some good YMU content is coming their way. (Letters not your style? More of a texter? We’ve got you covered; here are some sample texts to use.)

We also think you cannot over-celebrate your volunteers. Make a big deal out of your volunteers and leaders when they finish a single course or a series of courses! Is it even possible to have too much cake? Download and print out one of these PDF Certificates or use the template to make your own.

"By asking all of my leaders to go through YM101 during a shadowing time, I can have intentional conversations with them while they take steps toward getting plugged into the ministry. This way, we're all on the same page and it's very simple to talk through the content. Also, I realized that some people were not getting any training, so they were guessing at what needed to be done, which was frustrating for them and not beneficial to the ministry. This isn't the end-all, but it gives me peace of mind to know that they're consistently hearing the same things about relational youth ministry with the opportunity to seek more if they desire to."

Both guys sent their volunteers letters about YMU. In those letters, they communicated that the training content had been purchased on their behalf and provided them links to sign up, and they made a big deal out of the training.

YES! Jump on Download Youth Ministry's Facebook community group for youth workers only and ask these questions to the community. There's a TON of stuff already on there you can just copy/paste/use now!

We hope so! We love learning from one another. Please send your best practices to the Dean of Students so we can include your idea right here!