Top 5 Fun and Easy Meals for Your Youth Group
Pizza is as much a part of youth ministry as the Bible and a smelly van. We love pizza as much as the next guy/girl, but we all reach a certain limit. As New Orleanians, food is a big deal to us.…
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Multiply Your Impact With Volunteers
Multiply Your Impact With Volunteers Youth workers aren’t very good at math. Let’s do a little simple math from my “Skinny” book about recruiting volunteers. If you look at the time you spend each week with teenagers, you could go out there and spend 20 hours a week with students by yourself.…
When You Want to Quit Youth Ministry
One of the most frustrating conversations I have with friends is the “You should quit ministry” conversation. Sure, there are days when I want to quit, more than I care to admit. You know those days. They are filled with church politics, angry parents, mess-ups, complacent students, bad youth nights, and heartache.…
Lessons From Ministry Mistakes
Messes, I have made them in ministry. I have made incorrect choices that would make you break into a cold sweat and hives. I have made mistakes, and some big ones along the way. I have not thought out plans, and paid the price.…
Moving Past Christmas Distractions
It’s almost that time of year again—yep, Christmas. And oh, there are so many distractions to look forward to. The new iPhone is out, and my contract is up. I don’t really need a remote-controlled drone, but man that looks fun.…
Lessons Learned from Eighth Grade
I watched Bo Burnham’s comedy special Make Happy on Netflix for the first time in the fall of my freshman year of college. In the final song, Burnham emulates Kanye’s famously long and rambling rants from the Yeezus tour. It focuses on performance—and the joys, anxieties, and resulting pain of making your living on-stage.…
To Fall Retreat or Not To Fall Retreat?
Summer is over, students are back in school, and weekends are filled with football. Oh, how I love the fall. Having been in my current role less than two years, I am still in the early stages of the “figuring out the culture of our group” learning curve.…
A Surprising Obituary
It was front-page news on a recent issue of USA Today. The headline read “Obituary Takes a Turn,” and that was enough to lure me into the article. The story was about 80-year-old Kathleen Dehmlow, whose obituary started with the standard stuff—date of birth, husband’s name, children, and so on.…
From ‘Shoulding’ to ‘Coulding’ the Bible
As a teenager active in my church, I knew I “should” read the Bible. My youth workers often referenced their “morning quiet time”—I imagined them sitting in an overstuffed chair bathed in soft lighting, sipping fancy coffee, dissecting the original Greek meaning of “the” and “is.”…
Oh No! Where Did Everyone Go?
This has never happened to me before in ministry… It’s summer, and at least half of the adult leaders I serve with are unplugging from their roles until the fall. And a large chunk of our youth group also won’t be around because they’ll be “at the cabin” for most of the summer.…