When I prepare a message, most of the time, I usually know where I’m going with it and I have an outline in my head. There are times though when I leave the prepared path and go muddin’ (as they say in the south). In preacher talk we call them rabbit trails. Talking and preaching…
Oil change places have a great selling point, they will check X amount of things on your car for one price. It sounds invasive. It sounds like they’ll take the whole thing apart and put it back together. We feel pretty safe because they will check x amount of things. The rub is, when they check…
One of my biggest headaches in youth ministry, was the sign up system for events. It is an exercise in futility. Names on sheets of paper feels archaic. At this point in history, it feels like you’re asking students to churn butter. How do you fix that? Let’s face it, It doesn’t matter how many…
I’ll say it again. I never believed in competing with my brothers and sisters in Christ. It was never my group vs theirs or my calling vs their calling. We are not called to be competitors but rather to be competitive. You have to ask yourself why you need to stay competitive in the youth…
“Where is everyone tonight?” “I think a lot of them went over at First Church to their outreach.” “Man, what is going on?!” Ever have this conversation before or after a youth meeting? I know youth workers like to say they are not in competition with their brothers and sisters in Christ, and they are…
I was eating today at a Japanese restaurant. I hadn’t planned on eating at the grill for one simple reason: I had seen all the chefs tricks before. It made me think, how often do students say the same thing about your program : “I’ve see this trick before”. It could be that you’ve beat…
This is Part II of my interview with Youth Pastor and Risk Taker Mark Cox. You can read part I here How did the students, leaders, parents, and pastor respond to your wanting to change things? Right off the bat, there were mixed reviews. Don’t get me wrong; a lot of people were supporters of…
Our gigantic youth ministry experiment commences tomorrow night. Can’t wait to see what happens!- Tweet from Mark Cox 9:11 PM Aug 24th via web This is the tweet that was that catalyst for the following interview. I love it when youth pastors take risks. I hate it when other youth pastors see other youth pastors take…
If I had a $1 for every failed event….well, lets just say, I would have a lot of dollars. Events are cool when we pull them off, but is that all there is to an event? Not the good ones. When the pre, actual, and post event pieces come together, it’s a beautiful thing. When…
