Photo Credit Nerd On A Mission Update: I raised my first $100 last week right before my birthday thanks to my childhood friend John, who also is a fellow nerd. Thanks John. That means I only have $1500 more to go. You can check out my mission, my progress and give HERE Onward.…
Preaching is a life giving way to affirm and to challenge students. Preaching should not be our go to method for solving problems in our youth ministry. There are problems we face both personally and professionally that require more than a message. In building terms, if we have issues within our group such as dissension,…
I was at a campus bible club this morning and the speaker did not show up. One of the youth pastors, who is a decent speaker and a good guy, shared some thoughts from his message the night before. Nothing wrong with that, but how would True Believers have handled this differently? We Don’t Always…
I am unashamedly in favor of calling kids to commitment, but the altar call has been abused to the point where I think many youth workers second guess the Holy Spirit’s desire to call kids to commitment. Let me first say, kids can accept Christ without a physical coming up to an altar or to…
For the past couple of months I have been meditating on a “random” scripture from 2 Chronicles from 13. “Then worthless and wicked men gathered around him to resist Rehoboam son of Solomon when Rehoboam was young, inexperienced, and unable to assert himself agains them.” verse 7 I will trust that you will read the…
Back in the days of books and large libraries and offices for youth pastors, when I had a need, I would go to my “go to” books on games, lessons, etc. (See Ideas Library from YS) What I found out after the tornado stole our church and my library, I discovered something: I leaned on…
I was driving my 17 year old son to school the other day. There are two roads to his school. One involves a traffic light and the other involves a stop sign. I usually take him the way of the stop light. My route involves going straight and then making a left. The other…
I got a call the other day from a mega youth movement in our city. They were inviting me to an end of school rally. I appreciated the call and thanked him. A few days later I received another call inviting me to the same event. I had been thinking about mega-churches and…
I recently had to postpone 2 events in the past two months because the sign up was not good. These were traditional events. a lock-in and a D-Now (Disciple Now). Students had helped plan both, but did not sign up. It makes a youth worker shake his head and question everything. Don’t. It’s the…
I hate it when a kid leaves our group. When a kid leaves, depending on the kid, several bad things can happen: We lose momentum We lose other kids We lose leadership We lose workers We lose a friend We lose our job, if it’s a bunch of kids Kids can leave for any…
