The NFL has often been a microcosm of society, reflecting its triumphs and its challenges. Recently, the league has been grappling with issues of mental health, particularly among its young athletes. Tua Tagovailoa’s comments about his former coach, Brian Flores, offer a poignant perspective on the importance of coaching styles that foster growth, rather than…
I do my best to recycle. I cut up copier mistakes into note pads, I reuse left over wood, and I salvage trash and turn it into something useful. Recycling bins make it easy to sort your stuff; paper here, plastic here, cans here, trash here. If we had one of these sorters in our…
“How honest should I be with my students?”. This is the question I asked myself in my inner debate over whether I should share my disappointment with them concerning their lack of motivation in bringing guests to our youth meeting. My concern was that my words would deflate them and make me look weak; like…
I was a big comic book reader. In many of the comics I read I would see an ad for Tony Atlas body building, like this. In my view, the guy/girl usually getting sand kicked in their face, in the church, is the youth pastor. The “bully” could be anyone, the pastor, a board member,…
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 am going to guess that you have not reached point where you do not care about expectation. You do not have the clout or the cash to say, “I don’t care what you think”. Which means you’re middle management. You care about what the people above you think, what the people below you think…
One of your main jobs is building community, which is tough to do in this season. Social Media was the extra stuff you did to connect, now it’s the only thing you use to connect. If you’re an IRL people person, all these video screens may have you stressing and I want to encourage you…
I put together a newsletter every few weeks for my subscribers called The Youth Ministry Round Up. I fill this youth ministry newsletter with articles, videos, quotes, etc. and in the last Youth Ministry Round Up I featured a video called The New Great Depression by Moth and The Flame. The video, featured below, is…
I attended the TRIBE conference a few months ago and one of the speakers, Alli Worthington I believe, spoke about happiness and defining what happiness looks like to us. I would say that I’m, generally, a happy person, but traditionally unhappy when thinking about where I am in life. This is a running theme though…
