“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” I’m not sure who first coined that infamous saying, but it is somehow simultaneously genius and defeatist. Pragmatically speaking, it makes sense. Why fight against the inevitable? But few things seem as depressing as giving up and giving in when we know there’s a better way!…
Most people, and understandably so, spend a good portion of their time trying to avoid making mistakes. A mistake on the playing field might cost you the game. A mistake with your bank account can cost you some points on your credit score.…
Salvations, re-commitments, powerful worship, blood on the wall leading into the sanctuary, a busted eye leading to a parent picking up a student to go get stitches, and a trail of blood on the sanctuary carpet… Yes, each of those happened at my recent Back2School Lock-In.…
For years now I have worked with primarily “unchurched” students. Honestly, I’ve gotten used to a group of students with no Biblical foundation or pre-conceived ideas about Christianity.Yet, I guess I always thought if more of my students had grown up in the church then it would be different.…
The eyes of our students have shifted from camps and mission trips to the daily grind. If you are one of the lucky few who get to start post-Labor Day, that first day of school is looming right on the horizon.…
Being approachable to students seems almost impossible when you’re an adult. There are so many logical barriers like age, different cultures, and different experiences. Those are the things that make a connection between a student and adult almost impossible. It’s hard to trust someone you don’t feel can relate to you.…
Fall is the perfect time to build youth ministry hype. Fall is a prime-time outreach for students. It’s the time of the year where students are injected back into their mission field. And I’ve learned that as a youth minister, one of our many jobs is to create a place where it’s easy for students to invite their friends.…
Like it or not Fall is upon us. The weather might still be warm (alright boiling hot for some of us) and the sun thankfully is still setting well into the evening. Weekends can still be spent at the beach or cooking out. …
While I was on a coaching call with a volunteer youth director from a small rural church, she said: “I don’t think we’re meant to have a youth ministry at our church. We only have 10 teenagers on our church rolls and I’ve never been able to get more than seven of them to come to anything!”…
We all know that a cockroach is hard to kill… After the atomic-bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the military reported that the only living things to survive the blast zone were these disgusting little pests.…
