In reflecting on the success of the TV show, Friends, it's producers have said, "Our best episodes became the ones with just the six of them in the room.” To the show's producers, the heart of Friends was not it's flash. It wasn't special...

For years, my husband and I have joked he should crash one of the workshops offered for youth worker's wives that are held at various youth ministry conferences we've attended. We've always said this partly in jest, but partly in truth, wishing...

As a young girl, my favorite Christmas presents were always books. I looked forward to Friday nights because it meant I could stay up and read as late as I wanted to.

Not surprisingly, I still love to read today. On my day off, you can usually...

My all-time favorite sitcom is Friends. Though I was a bit late to the party initially, I've now seen every single episode.

Let's be honest: I've seen every episode way more than once. I can recite most of them word for word.

Yet, I return to...

The Christian life demands service. It requires faith to be more than just theological musings that are blogged about or even debated with others. Without action faith is, after all, dead. (James 2:26)

For this reason, throughout my career in...

I participated in mission trips as a kid and then worked for a mission trip organization in college. Both ends of the spectrum had a profound impact on my faith. Neither equipped me to plan a trip from start to finish.

My first year in ministry, I...

What do you want to be when you grow up?

As a kid, it seemed like someone was always asking me this question.

For a long time, my answer was teacher... Until it was architect and then later, writer.

Never once was it engineer, which is what my...

Let's do a quick word association.

If I said the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, what would you say?

Perhaps you would say words like mainline, traditional, denomination, bishops, synods, liturgical, baptism, Paul, or grace. These are...

The idea of Rachel Held Evans' book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, is simple. For a year, Rachel took the Bible literally, focusing on one specific command (targeted at women) each month. It's not an entirely new idea. A.J. Jacobs did it in The...

In her address to the Democratic National Convention, First Lady Michelle Obama said, “We are playing a long-game here." Though the First Lady was, of course, talking about the long-term political agenda of the Democratic party, I believe she...

In our culture, everyone wants to be great.

Students do. Their parents do. And if we're honest, we do too.

For this reason alone, Steven Furtick's new book, Greater, will gain an audience. After all, how awesome would it be if our faith in Jesus...

A year ago, I visited Kiziba Refugee Camp in western Rwanda.

This camp is home to more than 20,000 refugees from the Congo, where an on-going civil war has resulted in the death of more than 3 million people. It is a conflict rarely talked about...

About a month or two after returning from a summer mission trip, I typically hear mission trip participants say these things:

"I don't feel God here like I did there."

"I'm forgetting things."

"It's starting to fade."

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A member of my church council recently asked me, “What do you feel is the key to our church keeping you as our youth worker?”

To me, this is an interesting question, one I believe is often overlooked in favor of it's close relative, “When and why...

While on vacation, I saw this sign, an advertisement attempting to lure passerby's into a shop because of it's “cool stuff”. Each time I passed this shop, I was struck by how much this shop's advertisement mirrors the way we so often do youth...

On a recent mission trip, I interacted with adult leaders from across the country.

One was permanently attached to her phone. She called her office every 10 minutes to see if a crisis had developed she alone could solve—from 800 miles away....

The most important element of a mission trip is not worship, fun or service. Instead, the most important part of a mission trip is processing or debriefing your day with your team in order to help students wrestle with what they see, hear and do....

These days, there are few leadership roles I'm not willing to give students.

This is a significant change from my early days in youth ministry, when there were few leadership roles I was willing to give students. In those days, my student leaders...

For about a year, I've been captivated by an image that for whatever reason, I have not been able to forget.

The image comes from the final day I spent serving at an Easter Seals camp for special needs kids and adults. For three days prior, I...

As the election approaches, I continue to wrestle with what it means to follow Jesus politically. Walk into an evangelical church and many people will suggest this means voting republican. Walk into a mainline church and you'll hear the opposite:...