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…
One of my friends posted: Plugging youth into jobs in your youth program is not student-led ministry. Far from it. We’re hearing from God but falling short of understanding. Time to equip youth to lead ministries of their own, not ours. Let me first say that I think the quote is true. Plugging kids into…
In a world overflowing with information, our attention spans are shrinking faster than ever. Our students are overwhelmed with emails, social media posts, texts and advertisements – all vying for a sliver of their precious time. This begs the question: how do we get students to notice our events and care about what we have…
I was in the kitchen working on my podcast when I head the t.v talk about students and leadership. Like a magnet, it drew my ears and my eyes to the t.v. where 60 minutes was talking about a boys prep school in Newark , N.J., St. Benedicts Growing up Catholic and watching old James Cagney…
Although we call them spiritual disciplines or habits, we can’t let the “check list mentality” creep into our walk with God by becoming legalistic about it. I think we can agree that the goal of starting spiritual disciplines in the first place is to create a deeper intimacy with God, not keeping a list like…
“Need a youth pastor with vision to grow a youth group to over 100 engaged youth. Church in upper Midwest. If interested, contact me. Full time position.” – Facebook Post I read this and thought to myself, “This is ridiculous”. And many others in the group felt the same way and said so but after…
I was scrolling through Instagram and I stopped on video of a youth pastor making a big announcement. What he said made me cringe and it is the very thing you should never say to your youth group. “we built this for you” The youth pastor was announcing a new youth room for their students.…
It’s taken a little while, but you have arrived at the final post in this series. If you’re finding this for the first time, you can start the series here. The last quality students said they appreciated about my time with them was that I did not sugar coat the truth. I told them the…
If I brought anything to the table over the past 30 years, it’s my God given gift of gab. I love sharing interesting and relevant messages with students. Many of my messages focus on growing in Christ, but I always include the gospel and what it means to follow Jesus. This is part seven in…
