Today I'm linking up with Amongst Lovely Things to share some of my favorite posts from 2013. 

Post with the most clicks: Why I Submit,  a post I wrote for Rachel Held Evan's one-to-another link-up. This was a fun post for me to...

Our American culture does not handle death well. We don’t know how to grieve or how to be with people in their despair. Uncomfortable with silence, we attempt to fill it. When we do, we often say something dumb that only heightens everyone’s...

I've made several trips to the post office in the past few days, mailing support letters from members of our mission trip team to their family and friends, asking them to support their trip prayerfully and/or financially.

While standard in many...

I am 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...

I'm currently knee-deep in mission trip preparations for my team's 2014 trip to Rwanda. As part of this mission trip preparation, I'm working hard to shatter any Messiah complexes my team members might have.

That Messiah complexes exist in teens...

I spent five years working at a multi-ethnic, multi-site congregation.

There was much I loved about this church and my role there. During my time there, I discovered who I was as a youth worker. More importantly, though, serving in a context...

On Wednesday, I saw two of the women from my congregation who my students recently visited during my youth ministry’s interviews with the saints. Both spoke enthusiastically about how much they enjoyed their conversation with our young people....

Last summer, my student leaders & I read and discussed the book, Help! I'm a Student Leader by Doug Fields. Using the questions below, we had some incredibly powerful discussions about leadership and faith.

Questions about Ch. 9 of Help! I'm...

Today, I'm linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker‘s Five Minute Friday. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

This week's prompt: Reflect. 

19 years ago yesterday, my Grandma died.

I still remember...

Yesterday, worship was more crowded than usual. As a result, by the time I finished getting ready for Sunday school and then snuck into our sanctuary, my usual seat was taken, leaving me with no choice but to sit somewhere new.

Doing so meant...

I do not generally enjoy books on prayer.

Oh believe me, I've read my fair share – for small groups, class, and work.

But there tends to be something about these books that rub me the wrong way. Perhaps that's why even though I received Anne...

What the book's about: In Daring Greatly , shame and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown explores what it means to show up and let ourselves be seen. In it, she distills her research into practices designed to help people be more vulnerable,...

A few weeks ago, a dozen or so high school students sat in my living room and discussed Looking for Alaska by John Greene. This book chronicles the relationships between a group of teenagers living away from home at a boarding school. In many...

Most in the youth ministry world are aware of both research and anecdotes suggesting millennials are leaving the church.

As a youth worker, this breaks my heart. I wholeheartedly believe you cannot be a solo Christian. The church is vital to our...

Last summer, my student leaders & I read and discussed the book, Help! I'm a Student Leader by Doug Fields. Using the questions below, we had some incredibly powerful discussions about leadership and faith.

Questions about Ch. 8 of Help! I'm a...

After a tumultuous first half of the year, at the end of the summer, I found myself craving Scripture like I hadn't in a long time. So I strong-armed my husband into joining me in participating in Margaret Feinberg's Wonderstruck by Scripture...

Today, I'm linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker‘s Five Minute Friday. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. 

 This week's prompt: Fly.

The first youth ministry I served was called FLY – an...

Two years ago, a young man named Jefferson Bethke released a spoken word video on YouTube called “Why I hate religion, but love Jesus.” Within a day, this video went viral. Person after person shared it, seeming to agree with Bethke's underlying...

When The Five Love Languages was all the rage, I bought a copy, thinking it would be a great book for my husband and I to read together.

True confession: We never did.

A decade later I can tell you – even without ever having read the book – that...

In the last two weeks, an important conversation has been happening in the virtual world about women in the church. 

The conversation erupted when popular evangelical blogger Rachel Held Evans tweeted: 

More than 100 speakers and only...