Much like the entire world, we’re still staring dumb-faced at the last few months and wondering, “What just happened?” Truth? I don’t know if we’re “winning” at anything right now. I’m just grateful that I have toilet paper in my house.…
The online adventure game Fortnite is exploding in popularity among adolescents—no surprise there. But its popularity is even more stunning with adults—it’s the favorite addiction of celebrities, professional athletes, and cultural influencers of all stripes. Ninja, a famous Fortnite player and Twitch gamer (Twitch is a website dedicated to all things gaming, a YouTube-like service for streaming and viewing video games), reportedly makes $500,000 a month playing Fortnite.…
What if my little youth ministry ship was permanently stuck in a swirling vortex? Here are three “diagnostic” questions that I vowed to use as filters. Even though I had a decade of ministry under my belt, I was exhausted after months of trying to build a new youth ministry from the ground up.…
Patrick Mahomes is 23 years old, fresh off his first full year as a starting quarterback in the NFL, and is already considered the most feared player in the game. He’s just won the NFL’s 2018/19 Most Valuable Player Award, the youngest to do so since Dan Marino in 1984.…
Avengers: Endgame is a generational film—and I’m not talking about its record-setting opening-weekend box office haul. Your teenagers likely don’t remember a time when there wasn’t an Avengers film in the theater. After 11 years and 21 movies, they probably know the nuances of the Marvel universe better than the Old Testament.…
In the News Chicago—The dramatic end of the sports world’s longest drought was bittersweet for many baseball fans this week. When the Chicago Cubs clinched their first World Series title in 108 years, many people were thinking of loved ones who never got to see their team raise a trophy.…
Editor’s Note: The church-planting movement in America is growing exponentially, fueled and driven by an army of former youth pastors. Attend any church-planting conference and you’ll ram into a sea of youth workers who’ve migrated out of their niche and into the Wild, Wild West of broader church leadership.…
There are preconceived ideas of who “people in ministry” are supposed to be.This holds especially true in youth ministry. You can make the stereotypical list yourself, I don’t think I even need to name the traits. The problem is that not all of us are capable of becoming the resident IT person.…
Parenting my own children has helped me become a much better youth leader. Young, single, fun and crazy youth workers have the TIME to invest in teenagers, the ENERGY to go the distance with them, and the FRESH EYES to change things up.…
I could hear my heart beating in my ears. The oxygen in my lungs felt like concrete, dragging me down. I could barely breathe. Everything was riding on this, and I had only one shot. But I missed. Again. In the sun and sweat of the playground, it felt like the 40th time I’d whiffed at kickball (reality check—maybe it was really only the second or third time).…
