After spending five years serving as the youth pastor in a church that held its weekly youth service during “big church”, I knew I wanted my next congregation to be one in which families worshiped together, where worship and faith formation (or...

What I'm Reading:

Fiction: 

Between our trip to Africa and my mission trip to Haiti, June was a SLOW month for fiction reading. 

Book I couldn't put down: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I know, the...

As a youth pastor, as much as you might like to be the one who’s in charge of your church, you’re not. Whether it’s another person in the youth ministry or an associate or senior / lead pastor, you’ve got a boss who directly supervises you.

One of...

What the book's about: As the subtitle says, Hope Prevails shares "insights from a Doctor's Personal Journey through Depression." It emphasizes the spiritual nature of depression. 

Why I read this book:  As a youth worker, I always...

I've just returned from one mission trip and now my focus turns to the next one. This week is littered with several meetings related to our upcoming mission trip, one of which is our adult leader's meeting.

At this meeting, we'll cover logistics...

Worried first-time mission trip adult leaders often ask me, “What can I do to be a good adult leader?”

As someone who is not only a youth worker and a parent but also a former mission trip staffer, I have a unique perspective on this. I still...

My husband and I have traveled a LOT with our daughter, Hope. My in-laws joke that Hope has been on a plane more in her first two years than some people are in their entire lifetime. When people hear how much we've traveled with Hope, they often...

Before we had kids, my husband and I loved to travel together. As juniors in college, we studied abroad in Russia. Ever since then, whenever we've gotten the chance to go somewhere, we have.

One of my fears in becoming a parent was that we'd stop...

A few days after returning exhausted from a week-long mission trip, I woke up to the worst kind of e-mail, a nastygram from a parent chewing me out for a comment made on the mission trip.

Upon reading it, my first thought was “Seriously? I spent a...

What the book's about: Mack & Leeann's Guide to Short-Term Missions is just that: A guide to short-term missions, written by two InterVarsity Campus Fellowship staff workers who have directed numerous mission trips to Kenya, the Middle East...

At a recent event, I noticed a student sitting quietly off to the side, seemingly disengaged from her peers and the teaching. Her youth worker noticed too but chalked her disengagement up to the fact that she was an introvert and decided to just...

Today, I'm linking up with Kate Motaung's Five Minute Friday. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

This week's prompt: More. 

"More" signed my baby girl.

More was one of the first signs...

When I first entered youth ministry, I wanted to cultivate student leaders but I had no idea what I was doing. So I did what I always do: I turned to books.

Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of resources on cultivating student leaders.

So I began...

Today, I'm linking up with Kate Motaung's Five Minute Friday. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

This week's prompt: Sing.

One of the worst weeks in my professional life occurred when I...

The Yaconelli name is a familiar one to those in youth ministry. Mike Yaconelli was one of the founders of Youth Specialties and a legend in the youth ministry world. His son, Mark, is also a recognized figure in the youth ministry world.

One of...

Sometimes, life doesn't go as planned. In those moments, it can be tempting to question God's presence and purpose. In Choosing Real: An Invitation to Celebrate When Life Doesn't Go As Planned, author Bekah Jane Pogue uses personal stories and an...

My new book, Unleashing the Hidden Potential of Your Student Leaders, is out! I'm convinced that when done well, student leadership has the ability to transform your youth ministry. With that in mind, over the next few weeks, we're going to be...

My work as a youth pastor requires me to lead. Together with my colleagues, we provide leadership for our entire congregation. More specifically, I lead teams of adult and student leaders. Together, we lead our congregation's youth ministry.

...

My congregation is led by a team of lay-leaders called our Congregational Council, a group similar in function to a board of elders. When I was first hired nearly nine years ago, I was asked to write a monthly report to keep the council informed...

I'm a big believer in the power of experiential learning. To this end, instead of giving a talk about prayer, I'd much rather create a series of prayer stations designed to give students the opportunity to pray in a variety of ways.

Over the next...