Many youth ministries are in decline and dying. Yes, there are cycles, ups and downs and seasons, but there are some youth ministries that are just plain dying. If you’re one of these youth pastors whose youth group is in decline, I feel for you. I’ve been there. A declining youth ministry is hard on…
Teenagers, by nature, are inappropriate. Their immature brains, sometimes, come up with terrible things to say and do without any guardrails or filters. I’ve never had to create a formal code of conduct, mostly because I’ve never needed one. The students who came to my youth group were mostly well behaved, I had a good…
A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls – Proverbs 25:28 A city without wall is like a house without doors, open to everyone and everything. You can’t keep anyone out or anything in. Cities, houses and countries all need boundaries to be able to function. We, as humans,…
Do you need a youth group lesson on prayer? Do you like tacos? Why not put these two things together? I saw this post from rnrstudents on Instagram and decided to create my own free youth ministry lesson on prayer using T.A.C.O.S. and includes a prayer station and social media graphics. Here’s the youth group…
I just watched the new video/song from 90’s band Disturbed. They’re not a Christian band or even a religious one but they are spiritual. The lead singer David Draiman grew up an Orthodox Jew but pushed back against its strict methodology. The new song is called Hey You and is meant as a “wake up”…
There are weeks where I struggled with pre-youth group anxiety. I was anxious with questions like would the service go well? was I prepared? was the sermon good enough? would the students like the game? These questions were all part of my need to make sure things were perfect. Why? Why did I need to…
I’m reading Stephen King’s book on writing and it is inspiring. King, like all good writers who submit their work for publication, received multiple rejection letters for the stories he submitted to magazines. He started to receive so many rejection letters he put a nail in the wall and hung his letters of rejections, like…
I have a new series out called Live.Breathe.Be and it based on the Apostle Paul’s conversation with the philosophers at Athen’s Aeropagus, where Paul said, For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17:28 If you want this first…
I had the pleasure of speaking with one of my middle school musical heroes, Glenn Kaiser. Glens was/is the lead singer of Resurrection Band, a hard rock band formed in the late seventies, who really helped me deepen my passion for the lost and for knowing Jesus. Glenn, and his wife Wendi, live in an…
The pursuit of celebrity, in youth ministry and church, is killing our Christian influence with teens and the rest of the world. Students don’t want another rock star, they want a servant who shows them how to be like Jesus. Let’s start undoing this by looking at how to integrate more humility into our lives…
