Publishing what?

“You work in publishing…what do you do?” That’s one of the questions that I get all the time. It’s not like you sit around in 1st grade telling your parents or teachers- “When I grow up, I want to be a publisher.” I’m guessing at that point, you’d be greeted with blank stares and nice pat on the top of your head. Yeah, I never thought that being a publisher was in my future…and I’m not sure that I would’ve known what that meant anyway. I was youth pastor. Working with Junior High students. Knuckleheaded, lovable, strange-noise loving jr. high students. And then I started working at a publishing company. Well, I’m not going to get into all the history here (it really isn’t all that interesting, somewhere on the scale of intense gas pains and hitting your finger with a hammer).

I lead a team of people at YS and we sit around looking at video ideas, book ideas, and curriculum ideas. All the while, keeping one eye on what is happening right now in youth ministry and one eye straining ahead to see if we can get any glimpses of what might be on the horizon. That’s the hard part. Reality is, we can’t see what’s on the horizon, but we can make some good guesses…and some not so good guesses!

The good guesses come when we sense something is happening and a youth worker comes to us with an idea and says “What about this…?” At that point, we all look at each other and try to figure out where to go next.

Hopefully, this blog might help us turn up ideas that will help you. At the end of the day, everything we do is for you. If the products and ideas we throw out there don’t work, if they’re not helpful then we shouldn’t be doing them.

If on the other hand, those products and ideas free up your time, give you some encouragement, and help teenagers see Jesus…well, that’s what we consider a good resource. That’s what we want to be about.

There’s also this mystery about publishing. We figured we might be able to dispel some of the rumors and mystique surrounding it. If you’ve got questions about how we do things, what a publisher does or any other cosmic questions feel free to shoot them my way- jay at ysopenbook dot com