The only question that really matters in life is this… Is God good? A week ago, on my way home from work, the clutch in my 1995 Volvo failed in the middle of rush-hour traffic on a busy highway. Then my phone died while I was on hold for AAA.…
Last night we introduced our 15-year-old daughter Lucy to Best In Show, the third of four films created by an improvisational acting company led by Christopher Guest. The first of the four, This Is Spinal Tap, is a wildly popular mock-documentary about an “iconic” hard-rock band that reunites for a one-time blowout performance.…
When it comes to impacting teenagers for Christ, who’s the superhero and who’s the sidekick? Well, both Christian and secular researchers say you’re Robin and your students’ parents are Batman. I mean that parents who are only doing a mediocre job of impacting their kids’ faith journey can still out-impact the best youth minister in the world.…
This article by Rick Lawrence is taken from the upcoming July/August issue of Group Magazine. In our home, for the last six months, my wife and I have been leading a small group of senior highers in a Sunday afternoon pursuit of Jesus.…
Full Disclosure: Because today’s technologies have a forming influence on our spiritual, emotional, and psychological “shape,” I’ve stubbornly resisted getting a smartphone, preferring instead my now-ancient flip phone. We’ve decided to not have cable TV in our home, “screen time” in general is limited, and I have a teenage daughter who saw such profound impact on her friendships when cell phones entered the picture that she refuses to use one.…
Lasting influence and transformation in youth ministry all flow through a relational “funnel”—and that means everyday ministry to teenagers is fraught with risk, because redemptive influence in relationships is a dicey proposition. I love what my friend Justin Mayo has learned about the power of risk as leader of RedEye (redeye.org),…
I’ve made a list of resolutions for the youth ministry nation—the New Year is three months in the rear view mirror, and our ideal resolves never “work” anyway, so why bother? Well, the real power in our resolutions has more to do with the process that produces them than our dogged ability to deliver on them.…
So, celebrity interviews aren’t a regular staple on my Outlook calendar, but a few weeks ago I interviewed Roma Downey and Mark Burnett in the backseat of their limo when they were on their way to… somewhere in Los Angeles. I wasn’t exactly in the back of the limo with them—we talked in machine-gun bursts dictated by terrible cell-phone reception.…
Bookshelves line the walls of our home—I’ll never be a Kindle guy, because I love the physical presence of printed books looming over my everyday spaces. Books have never been a commodity to consume; they’re more like the building blocks of my soul… And I like to be surrounded by them.…
Over the last decade there’s been A LOT of smack-talk about short-term mission trips (STMT’s)—in the youth ministry community. It’s intellectually fashionable to question their purpose, long-term impact, and even their moral foundation. The problem with short-term mission trips or service projects, according to critics, is that they function like a vaccine.…
