I like to think that I'm pretty good at communicating with the parents of teens in my youth ministry. I send out a weekly e-mail filled with details about upcoming events. I make sure to include announcements in our Sunday bulletin. I post updates...
Earlier this week, my youth ministry was asked to deliver a Welcome Pack to a newly arriving refugee family of three from Bhutan.
Even though I consider myself to be a refugee champion and even though we had the supplies on hand to do this...
A few weeks ago, my congregation held it's annual Youth Sunday, a tradition I have the ultimate love / hate relationship with.
For years, I've heard people describe this Sunday as the one in which our youth “take-over” worship. Even though I...
Several years ago, my Qualitative Analysis Professor, Dr. Terry Linhart, mentioned using photos in research. He said this as a comment made in passing, but I wrote it down, intrigued by the notion.
His comment percolated for the next month...
My husband and I were fortunate to have time off during the holidays this year. In addition to connecting with family and friends, traveling, skiing, and relaxing, I enjoyed using some of that time to reflect upon 2013. To that end, today, I'm...
One of my favorite pieces to play on the piano is Nocturne in C-sharp Minor by Frederic Chopin. One of the things I love about this piece is it's use of rubato, a technique in which certain notes are arbitrarily lengthened while others are...
Every year, my church holds Youth Sunday. One of the challenges of Youth Sunday is helping both students and parishioners alike to recognize it as worship, not a performance.
To help students understand Youth Sunday as worship, we intentionally...