Category: Church Leadership
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Dear Megachurch: Adam’s list…
Part 1 Last week, NorthPoint young adult pastor Sammy Adebiyi wrote an article that was published on ChurchLeaders.com which offended some people. In fairness, he was very gracious as comments flowed in pointing out the many flaws in his post. In radio, I’d call this post “shock jock material.” He called a bunch of people…
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Take the Public School & After School Program Involvement Survey
Next week, I have the opportunity to speak at the Boost Conference. Boost is the premier conference for out-of-school time professionals and administrators. While not exactly youth ministry like we define it in our tribe, these are adults who are very similar to our tribe. They live, breathe, and love children and teenagers. In some circles…
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The Apostles Stayed in the Neighborhood
Did you know that The Way wasn’t the only Jewish cult in Jerusalem in the first century? Visit a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and you’ll learn all about the strict rules and discipline of the Qumran community. While they didn’t have a Messiah figure, they were disciples of a teacher. Who had his own beatitudes…
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Powerless
Breathing heavy and full of adrenaline I stood up from the knee deep waves among the kids and did a 180. With a massive smile I began the long push through the surf back to my fellow bobbing boogie boarders. It was a Sunday afternoon at Torrey Pines. One of my favorite beaches doing one of my…
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5 things great leaders never say
If I were preparing a talk about leadership this would be my premise and these would be my 5 points. 5 things great leaders never say…. I let others do my dirty work. I could use one more critic. I’m not hard on myself. That’s impossible for us to accomplish. I need to get better…
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Easter Hype
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Learning Icons from VocationCARE
I spent 3 days last week learning VocationCARE practices with the Foundation for Theological Education. Here are my 3 take-aways from my time there: 1. When the pendulum swings, it is most violent to those at the bottom. I get very excited about changing things. Change is fun for me. And envisioning fast change within…
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A lover and a fighter
People look at me sideways a lot. As if to say, “You don’t really get it, do you?” Oh no I get it. Inertia and entropy are hard at work in youth ministry. The weight of this is how we do things and the gravitational pull of this impacted me so it’ll work today are…
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The Problem with the Cause of the Week
“Oh, I’m so going to use that with my students.” This week it was the Kony 2012 video. (And the backlash) Next week it’ll be something else because our cycle of interest is now about 96 hours. As the video went viral all of my youth ministry groups on Facebook were littered with questions from…
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How much is “enough?”
I go to church on Friday night, volunteer in the high school ministry on Sunday morning, and help lead a high school small group on Wednesday night. That is enough. When I hear an announcement for something else I could do, or somewhere else they need help, or even something else I would really enjoy…