Seizing Your Red-Light Moments
We were at a red light when my life changed forever. I was on my way to Walmart with my youth pastor—he’d invited me to tag along on a shopping trip for an upcoming lock-in. We needed to buy chips and Hula-Hoops.…
Tag: discipleship
Serving Graduates for the Long Haul
Eventually, you’re going to see how it all plays out. Right now, they’re teenagers. Tomorrow they’ll be in in college or starting a job… then growing into their early twenties, and so on. You’ll watch from afar as all of the time you’ve poured into helping them know Jesus personally either gets scrapped or gets owned.…
Don’t Give Up…The Cost Is Too Great!!
I had an interesting conversation not too long ago with a fellow youth worker who was feeling overwhelmed. Our conversation kind of centered around this statement, “The world is getting crazier and crazier, and it almost seems like what we’re doing isn’t working.”…
How Your Emotional Health May Be Killing Your Ministry…
Nine years ago, I was on the path to success in ministry, but I was in danger of losing my fiancé. I was gaining the knowledge needed to pastor through seminary, but I was ill equipped in the art of relationships and did not have the emotional health to fix it.…
Sharpen Your Axe
Truth be told, many of us are discipling our teenagers with unsharpened axes. We’re dull inside, because we’ve refused to take a break and invest in our long-term relationship with Jesus. We just keep swinging, through season after season in ministry, surprised that our work seems harder and harder.…
Lonely Kids and the Church
What’s wrong with young people today? We’ve all heard about the symptomatic things that may characterize today’s teenagers, such as lower church attendance. But what’s underneath these trends? For many young people, it’s a suffocating sense of loneliness and isolation. A Generation Defined By Loneliness “This is the most lonely generation,” said Josh Packard, sociologist and author of Church Refugees.…
Junior High Discipleship: Always and Everywhere
Put 20 youth pastors in a room and tell them they can’t come out until the agree on a definition of discipleship and it’s possible their friends and families will never see them again! And IF they can agree, the odds of them implementing that definition in their youth ministries are about the same odds as me slam-dunking on a 10-foot rim (zero, in case you’re wondering).…
5 Tools for Jesus-Style Digital Discipling
Use these 5 digital tools to help disciple youth in your ministry. In his day, Jesus used one of the most powerful communication tools known to man—it’s called “the parable.” He was a master storyteller. And so, we read in Matthew 13, when he has gathered a large crowd, he leverages the moment by telling five parables in a row.…
Church Kids: helping teens fall in love with a familiar God.
How can you help teens fall in love when they’ve known about God their whole life? Here’s one leader’s experience! I was born on the front pew of a church during a Sunday night worship service. Before I could say momma, I said Jesus.…
The 6 T*H*I*N*G*S* Every Teenager Can Do
American teenagers are amusing themselves to death.[1] They regularly avoid “depthy” things in favor of mindless media consumption (just like the adults in their life). In fairness, teenagers—particularly high schoolers—are under more pressure now than in any other time in recent history.…