There was a time when Bible-reading seemed, well, normal… No more. As a first-year college student, I quickly learned that all of the Christian upperclassmen I looked up to owned Bibles that looked like they’d been through a crop thresher. They were marked-up, flagged, underlined, highlighted, dog-eared, and encased in leather-like covers imprinted by swords and flowers and crosses.…
Medical malpractice is decided by a jury of peers, and in this series of posts I’ve acted as a jury of…one. I’m biased, of course, in my perspective—because I’ve been immersed in the youth ministry world for 30 years. So I have a “seasoned bias.”…
I watch the Grammy Awards show every year—all 3½ hours (excluding the Red Carpet pre-show, which strains my endurability). It’s a firehose of pop culture and a peek into the mostly narcissistic lives of celebrity performers. Humility is a scarce resource on the program, just as it is on Oscar night.…
It’s important, of course, to pay attention to the “best practices” of youth ministry. It’s equally important to discover and uproot the ministry habits that masquerade as effective but are more like malpractice. Here’s the third installment of my malpractice starter list—I’ll post the final installment next week… Malpractice #3—Treating Relevance As If It Outranks Intimacy Another buzzword in youth ministry that sounds slam-dunk crucial to our effectiveness is relevance.…
It’s helpful to look at things we already think we know well through a new filter. That’s how we jettison ourselves from ruts and cure ourselves of blindness. So, what if we sampled some standard youth ministry “givens” and looked at them through a doctor’s filter?…
Nobel laureate Professor Carl Wieman raised hackles recently by branding the college lecture—the world’s most popular (and notorious) teaching strategy—as “educational malpractice.” Wieman won his Noble for physics but has made a name for himself as an educational reformer. He’s the teaching equivalent of Don Quixote, tilting at the windmill of one-way communication as a learning strategy.…
Eugene Peterson is a lyrical writer, scholar, and skilled linguist whose day job for most of his life was pastoring a small church. In 1990, Peterson agreed to begin work on a Bible version that translated the ancient languages into something more vibrant for contemporary readers.…
Every December it’s the same hopeful mantra: This year, Christmas will be different. I’m going to find a way to slow down and focus on “the reason for the season.” I’ll find the time to really concentrate on Jesus and help the teenagers in my ministry do the same.”…
There’s a universal longing at the heart of every young girl’s soul, and it is, of course, to join the mythic society of pony-owners. Even The Simpsons’ Lisa pines for a pony—so much so that a disgraced and desperate Homer buys her Princess, a pony-gift of appeasement after he ruins her talent-show performance.…
Editor’s Note: Jonathan Acuff is a funny guy. He’s also a profound guy who’s transitioned his message from the hilarious Stuff Christians Like website and bestselling book to the message of Quitter, a book about leaving behind what we’ve settled for in life to enter into the dreams God has planted in us.…
