Ben Trueblood is the director of Student Ministry for Lifeway Christian Resources. What does that mean? It means he oversees a team that functions across the country ministering to hundreds of thousands of middle and high school students and leaders. The ministry has bases in both Nashville and Birmingham, publishes numerous Bible studies and lines of curriculum. Add all this up and you have one of the most significant gospel ministries reaching students in the world. We talked with Ben about the challenges of leading a team remotely, learning to organize and manage time well, and the advice he would give to a young youth pastor like he used to be. Enjoy the conversation!

Best Quotes

“Calendaring and management of time will creep up and destroy you if you don’t constantly keep your thumb on it.”

“Email begets email. You send an email it will come back three-fold.”

“In the local church context we would call developing people ‘discipleship’, so those two concepts – leadership development and discipleship – go hand in hand.”

“Good leaders get imitated by the ones they lead.”

“You’re moving people from just character development to skills and competency development.”

“You build on character.”

“You start with character, and that’s the foundation.”

“You go on the volunteer mill instead of developing people who then become disciplers of other people.”

“Hire correctly up front.”

“There’s a lot we can learn [in the ministry] from dispersed work environments because we’re in one.”

“I want my kids to know that I was with them and that I was tuned in to them.”

“As a young guy I thought I knew all there was to know. And it’s really just not true.”

Recommended Resources

Lifeway Student Ministry

The Gospel Project for Students

Bible Studies for Life for Students

Explore the Bible for Students

Leadership Engine by Noel Tichy

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

The Matheny Manifesto by Mike Matheny

Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work – Jason Fried’s TED Talk