The one thing I don’t love about the Holidays is missing meetings with our students. Missing one meeting during Thanksgiving and two weeks during Christmas can create a momentum challenge to a youth group. I guess it’s all in the way you look at it. If you see September through December as a story…
I love this commercial. It tells me that we can completely misunderstand how something works. In this case Facebook, posting pictures and unfriending. When it come to youth meetings and youth ministry I feel like saying, to just about everyone, “This is not how any of this works”. Or better still “This is not how…
In the podcast, I mentioned something about out-growing your church and I was asked to explain what I meant. Here was my response “Let me first say that outgrowing a church does not mean that I have become more spiritual than others. I am speaking more to outgrowing the organization and maybe the culture of…
I know boring and youth ministry should not be in the same sentence but it was necessary. I think the perception for many years has been that the leader of a vibrant, growing, youth ministry has to be young, attractive, and talented. I am none of those things and it’s possible that many of you…
I just read an interesting article on mentoring from Mike Butcher (@mikebutcher) over on TechCrunch about finding mentors and thought the same advice can apply to young youth workers. Mike did a fast poll of some of his social media folks receiving their advice on finding mentors for their business start-ups and this is my…
We live in a content driven culture. We want new posts, new videos, and a site with a long tail of searchable content. Click bait on sites like BuzzFeed and Digg create titles that titillate and get us to click so we will stay on their sites longer. As youth workers, similarly, we want our…
You are not stupid, but the cycle of planning and programming we get stuck in sure feels that way. The cycle of stupid is when we sow an idea, hoping to produce great results only to wind up reaping a harvest of frustration. I have been there and, if I am not careful, I…
I just read a quote by Seth Godin that reminded me of how angry my wife makes me. Ok, let me clarify, my wife does not make me mad, I make myself mad because I ask her opinion and when her opinion does not jibe with mine I get mad. She will reiterate what Godin…
I can remember attending Youth Specialties NYWC and feeling like a failure. I looked around and saw these youth pastors who had large teams of people with them. I had normally gone to YS alone because my volunteers couldn’t afford it or didn’t have the flexible time to go. I was jealous of these teams.…
I am calling this Volunteer Week. If you work with a group of volunteers or are a volunteer yourself, this week is for you. Teams are better than loners. With teams, more work get’s done, more kids are reached, and we have a greater peace in ministry when we have a team. I find that…
