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.…
Your summer mission trip is on the launching pad—the countdown is on. Maybe you just completed your last leg on the fund-raising marathon (who knew teenagers could sell that many over-priced balls of cookie dough?). Your spreadsheet mapping the intricate details of the trip is filling up.…
Who are you “supposed” to call today? Which teenager “should” you hang out with this week? How many of your own family’s activities do you “need” to show up for this month? Look, we’re all busy—it doesn’t matter whether we’re full-time, part-time, or a volunteer.…
We all know how to maintain a health lifestyle—it’s common knowledge. Eat right. Sleep right. Exercise right. Sabbath right. So then why am I eating another slice of pizza on the go? Or going to bed later than my family? Or vowing to exercise “tomorrow?” Or taking church phone calls on my day off?…
Play a game with me… Imagine you weren’t allowed to have small groups of any kind in your youth ministry. We all know that creating relationship-rich spaces to grow community is important, but what if our go-to greenhouse for friendship-building wasn’t an option?…
My team was tired. And I couldn’t blame them, even though the fruits we saw from our ministry efforts were undeniably profound. We’d just marched through a packed calendar of amazing, bridge-building events that attracted new teenagers to our ministry and a Bible study series that deepened the faith of our student leaders.…
Aquaman is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Justice League—for decades, he’s earned no respect from the comic-book superhero world. Yes, he has the power to influence the undersea world, so why does he work a day job at the very land-based Hall of Justice?…
The phrase “Daily Quiet Time” can seem both quaint and impossible to most teenagers… But the genius of a daily Bible-study habit is the spiritual “muscle memory” it develops. Need a living illustration of the power of muscle memory? His name is Anthony Kelly, and he’s a modern-day ninja.…
As a teenager active in my church, I knew I “should” read the Bible. My youth workers often referenced their “morning quiet time”—I imagined them sitting in an overstuffed chair bathed in soft lighting, sipping fancy coffee, dissecting the original Greek meaning of “the” and “is.” On their knees.…
Somehow, it’s working… For the past 10 months we’ve been trying to nurture a “community within a community” inside our youth ministry. We call it Squad, and it’s changing how we do everything. It began a year ago, when a few adult leaders and I talked about getting more of our teenagers serving in leadership roles.…
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