Shortly after my miscarriage, I made my most depressing Amazon purchase ever: A collection of books about miscarriage, loss, and grief. Among them was Mike Stavlund's A Force of Will: The Reshaping of Faith in a Year of Grief.
Despite having...
The point at which I realized this school year was going to be a challenging year of ministry came even before it officially began.
It happened last August at a music conference I attended with several of my colleagues. Despite considering myself...
Dear Senior -
For four years, you've graced our ministry with your presence. Now as your graduation approaches, I've found my thoughts drifting to you more and more frequently. I've used each thought I've had of you as a call to prayer.
As I've...
I have a t-shirt from Youth Enterprise that has the word, “Whatever” written on the front with this passage written on the back:
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—...
In Lent, as we discussed the story of Jesus' arrest, my students were intrigued by Jesus' command to Peter to put away his sword because “all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”
Immediately, students began asking about...
As a lover of memoir and an advocate for refugee ministry, Sarah Thebarge's The Invisible Girls quickly stole my heart.
In this book, Sarah weaves together her battle with breast cancer (which she was diagnosed with at the age of 27) with a...
As you know, I think it's incredibly important to discuss controversial topics like addictions, war, and gay marriage with high school students. What's more, the recent increase in the amount of resources (books, curricula, blog posts, and the...
Women.
Their stories litter the pages of Scripture, sometimes as main characters in the story of God and sometimes as more peripheral ones. Yet even in churches that affirm women in ministry, too often we overlook these women. We fail to...
If you look at the teaching schedule for the last month of my high school ministry's program year, you'll see the following topics listed: War, gay marriage, and the question, “Who's a child of God?”
What each of these topics have in common is...
Almost a decade ago, I was flipping through a youth worker magazine and came across an ad for a Welcome Pack. Unlike most ads, this one wasn't selling something. Instead, it was trying to convince youth workers to have their students complete a ...