Teens are going to use Ai for plenty of things, mostly research an doing their book reports for them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use it to help grow their spiritual life. We are working through Proverbs right now, in Sunday...
I spend my days writing for and training youth workers JUST LIKE YOU.
How I’m teaching my students to use Ai for spiritual growth
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The Elite 8: Message Seeds For March Madness
I love me some sports and though, “How can I pair up March Madness and my speaking calendar?” I hope these message seeds will give you a quick “What am I going to talk about tonight?” message or, and even better, sparks your...
Altar Calls Are Not Proof Of Anything, Except This
I feel like I am about to talk to you about 8 track tapes, those boxy clunky pieces of plastic that held music inside and you would pop them into your 8 track player in your car or home stereo. Like the 8 track tape, the altar call feel like an...
16 Sweet Youth Group Ideas For March Madness
It’s that time of year. It happens every March. Some students in your youth groups are excited for it and others could care less. Here’s the good news, your group doesn’t have to have a lot athletes for you to use March Madness as...
Youth Pastor, Here’s How To Plan Your Perfect Week
At the beginning of the year I designated each day of the week (M-F) to focus on one thing because Practical PKM suggested it would change how I work. So, here is how I allotted my days, Monday is Writing Day where I blog or post on social...
The New Youth Pastors Guide To Getting Things Done
If you’ve been in youth ministry a while, think about to when you first started working in a church, did you discover some resistance to your new ideas? How long did it take you before you figured out you were working in system that...
6 Work Principles That Could Save Your Job
You could call this Surviving A Quarterly Review Part 2. In part one I shared a critical tip and 3 important reasons you should embrace the quarterly review. In this post I want to help you prepare, all year long, for what some youth pastors...
Surviving The Quarterly Review
I sat in an office with the head of the youth ministry committee, 2 youth ministry volunteers and my pastor and if you think Leonardo DiCaprio got mauled in The Revenant, you haven’t seen anything. I sat there for an hour as a list of my...
Action Figures Not Funko Pops
One of the hardest things to do is get a teenager to go from apathy to action. Usually somewhere in between there, we’re trying all kinds of methodology. Parents, teachers, youth pastors, try everything, right? And I’ve done it. I have...
How To Get Students To Show Up, Consistently
I asked some youth pastors what their current needs were and this was one of their questions: How can I get a more consistent groups of kids coming to youth group? The answer is in the question. You get more consistent students when you are a more...
Notre Dame Coach, Marcus Freeman Says “Choosing Hard” Is The Only Way To Win In Football and Life
I have been a Notre Dame fan for 40 years. I can hear some of you saying, “Oh, you poor thing”. The last time I saw them play in a National Championship was 1988, 37 years ago. Head coach Marcus Freeman said something a few weeks ago...
Youth Pastor, This Is The First Book You Should Read This Year
Let me ask you, how many excuses did you make last year? Probably a lot, as did I, Let me narrow it down, how many excuses did you make last year that kept you and your youth ministry from being successful? I bet you can narrow it...
Creator Mindset: Curing Cancer vs Making Bubble Gum
In March, this blog will be 15 years old and, with over 1400 posts, is an absolute failure and I’m, finally, ok with that. Let me be clear, this blog is a failure by many standards, one of which is that it is, to my knowledge, no ones...
My 15 Unacceptables
I have a lot of time on my hands. I deliver for Grubhub and sit in my car as I wait for an order to deliver. This is not the professional place I wanted to be at age 50, but it is the place I must pass through to get to where I am going. Part of...
The Youth Pastor’s 2025 Wellness Guide
Paul: Carl, we have you today, not to talk about paper games, although maybe we’ll bring you back for an entire episode about paper games, but we do want to talk about something that’s super important. And we were discussing a little...
The Disciple Project OUTREACH MANUAL
HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR DECAYING YOUTH MEETING INTO A FLOURISHING CITY-WIDE MOVEMENT