Supporting youth pastors and youth ministries.
Student Ministry Essentials exists to equip, strengthen, and support youth pastors and youth ministries for successful kingdom impact. We recognize the vital role that training and networking plays in the life of student ministry. SME is committed to serving you and takes seriously the opportunity to help you inspire, motivate and challenge the students and student leaders God has entrusted to your care.
Dr. Charles "Poker" Boyd has been in student ministry since 1982. He earned his BS degree in Criminal Justice from William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi on a baseball scholarship. During his senior year, he began sensing a call to ministry. After spending his summer in Europe playing baseball on team USA, he enrolled at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary where he earned his Masters degree in Religious Education. In addition to serving the local church, Poker has been an Adjunct Professor to The Baptist College of Florida since 1998 and most recently Samford University in Birmingham, AL where he additionally wrote all of Samford's Ministry Training Institute's Student Ministry courses. Dr. Boyd has served several churches over his career including FBC Panama City, FL and FBC Oviedo FL and FBC Tallahassee, FL. He joined the staff at Live the Life Ministries in Tallahassee November 2001 as a citywide director for strategic youth ministry initiatives and professor of Student Ministry. During this time he was able to develop many of the resources and concepts that gave birth to SME as a full time consulting ministry. By dedicating the balance of his ministry years to strengthening, encouraging, and equipping student ministries and youth pastors, it is his passion to see ministry to students become more effective, healthy, and mature.
