On it’s face it sounds like a stupid question. “Of course we should be reaching sinners, that is what the church is for!” But I have had too much experience in reaching sinners to know that too many saints or too many sinners changes the programming of a youth ministry, gets us in trouble either…
T0days post is from the lovely Mrs. Turner, my wife. She is the VP and chief fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club of Central Alabama. Kim raises hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for kids to life changing opportunities. Sometimes it’s scary to ask for money from your congregation, but you know…
This whole week I’ve shared about dealing with wounds, hurts, and offenses. It’s been a very cathartic experience for me and I hope it’s been a helpful process for you. Yesterday I shared about creating a sell pile of hurts and offenses in order to redeem them and turn them into something useful that may…
In my last post I shared about about Peter Marsh’s system of creating three piles to help families deal with their junk. The three piles are Keep, Sell, and Throw Away. Yesterday I focused on the hurts we can keep that won’t hurt us in the long run. The hurts we keep are the ones…
It’s Thursday and maybe you had some drama in your youth program last night. Did I say maybe? There’s always something going, sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s small, and sometimes it’s nuclear, like an angry parent. I have had my share of conversations with parents who were not happy with me because of a…
Every youth ministry, not matter the size, denomination, or ethnicity, has a narrative. One year into serving at my current church, a tornado came a stole our church. We spent the next year rebuilding. Our youth ministry remembers that year. We met in other church youth rooms, we met in tiny tiny, restrictive room,…
Yes, teenagers should go to church, be in a community of faith, but sitting home and playing video games or doing homework sounds like a more practical idea. If our only answer to the question, “Why should I come?” is “You’ll have fun” there are a dozen other ways that kid can have fun.…
Our youth ministry recently sponsored a 5k run/walk for missions. We asked out local police to help out with the run by blocking off the roads as the runners ran. We did not have a huge contingency of runners, about 30. We had a few slower walkers in the back and the police blocked off…
The third STEPPS principle Jonah Berger shares in Contagious is : When People Care, People Share. How much do your kids care about the youth ministry? You could ask your teens, “How do you feel about the youth ministry?” but those can and do change daily based on …well… everything. One way you…
In the days of yore, people would tie strings around their fingers to remind themselves to do something. Today we have apps for that but reminding kids about their faith in Christ and their place in our community, called the church is a reminder we cannot afford to forget. Yesterday I shared about the importance…
