As I said in this post, I love Jesus and the church.

As a youth worker who loves Jesus and the church, I believe that one of the most important things I can instill in my students is a love for the church. To do this, I encourage my students to...

I am, without a doubt, a church geek.

As a kid, church felt like my second home. As a tween, I remember being upset when I was asked to serve on the worship committee rather than the staff-parish committee. As a college student, I loved to go...

One of my favorite questions to ask people at the end of the school year is, “As you think about this year of ministry, what are you particularly thankful for?”

This year, I used this question with both my students and my colleagues. In the...

At my first youth ministry job interview, I was asked, "How do you plan on fundraising the thousands of dollars required for our summer mission trip?" As a 21 year old, I'm sure I looked like a deer caught in the headlights as I fumbled to answer...

Recently, I heard a well-known Christian speaker give a sermon called, “What happens when the dream dies?”

The funny thing is I heard this speaker give the exact same sermon five years ago.

At that time, I remember sitting in the convention...

A quick search on Amazon using the words, “leaving church” reveals dozens of ominous sounding titles:

You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church
Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts
Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young...

“State colleges corrupt people's morals and weaken Christians' faith.”

Though, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm not sure I've ever actually heard someone utter these exact words, I suspect that this is the underlying belief that drives...

A few years ago, I met Steve, a high school kid and professed atheist. He and I spent a week together on a mission trip, visiting old people and leading a Vacation Bible School for kids. Without meaning to, in the midst of serving, Steve...

This Christmas Season, the Christmas story characters that have most captivated me have been the shepherds – the riffraff to whom the angels first announced the birth of Jesus in Luke 2. As part of their announcement to the shepherds, the angels...

A few weeks ago, my high school ministry hosted a Parent's Night Out at our church in order to raise money for our summer trip to my denomination's youth gathering. Over the course of 3.5 hours, 17 high school students and four adults watched nine...

"What kind of irresponsible parent would send his or her child to Africa on a mission trip?"

This was the question that echoed in my head this past fall as I lead my ministry's informational meeting about our summer mission trip, a meeting during...

A few weeks ago, in his blog, "Who Determines What Your Ministry Looks Like?", Kurt Johnston posted this quote by Steve Jobs, the recently retired CEO of Apple:

“It isn’t the job of the consumer to determine what they want.”

That quote was still...

This time of year, my work mailbox gets clogged with one thing: advertisements from mission trip organizations, all promising a "life-changing experience" for my kids. With so many organizations out there, how can you sift through all the...

Over the last week, several friends have sent me a link to this article from The Christian Post. Among other things, this article declares that youth ministry is a 50 year experiment that has failed and as such, suggests that youth ministries...

Three years ago, as I interviewed for a new youth ministry position, regardless of the size or type of church I was interviewing at, I always knew one question would be the same: “How important do you think short-term mission trips are for...

On Tuesday, one of my students walked into our Student Leadership Team Meeting and promptly informed me that she had to leave at 4:30, a full half hour before our meeting was slated to end.

As I’ve spent a great deal of time with this team...

I’m a big fan of the TV series, “The West Wing.” In fact, I own the whole series and watch it far more than I’d like to admit. In one of my favorite episodes, President Bartlett asks CJ Cregg to “jump off a cliff with him” and replace...

As part of a class that I took called “Christological Foundations”, I read Scot McKnight’s “The Jesus Creed.” As with other Scot McKnight books that I’ve read, I devoured it, finding it to be a fresh, thoughtful look at faith, and...

Last spring, I used Youth Specialties “3 Story” Curriculum with my youth ministry, largely because I was required to do so for a graduate course I was taking.

The subtitle of this curriculum is “Preparing for a lifestyle of evangelism” and for...

I’m often amazed at the way some Christians seem to despise all things Disney.

A few years ago, during a workout at Curves, I heard two moms discussing how Christians needed to boycott Disney because of its routine use of pagan and magical...