Category: Culture

  • A culture of fear

    Last night I got a Facebook wall post by a former neighbor and childhood friend. He posted some Google Streetview links to the places where we grew up, including the elementary school that we walked to. It didn’t take me long to get curious about our daily walk to and from James Madison Elementary School.…

  • Free vs. Paid Content in the Church

    Whether you are aware of it or not, there is a raging battle going on about the concept of free vs. paid content on the internet. Big names in media like Rupert Murdoch have drawn the line in the sand– they are going to make people pay for news content. Others have embraced the Google…

  • Dominant Culture in Evangelicalism

    I’m now a few chapters into Andrew Marin’s Love is an Orientation. I have to tell you I am fascinated by two aspects of the book. 1. How much homework Andrew has done. He knows his stuff. He knows the GLBT culture pretty well (from what I can tell) and he definitely knows Evangelical culture…

  • Bad news for suburban kids

    In the next few weeks millions of high school seniors will hear their name called and walk across the stage to recieve a high school diploma. There is an interesting phenomonon on graduation day that I’d like to point out. Kids in the city are typically pretty excited about the achievement. In the city graduation…

  • How do we get to Youth Ministry 3.0?

    I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore. The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced…

  • What’s all the fuss about sexting?

    There have been a lot of newspaper articles about sexting lately. Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 What in the world is sexting? Simply put, sexting is using your mobile device to send a sexy note to someone. What’s the big deal about it? It’s nothing serious. As long as kids have communicated…

  • Hierarchy of Beards

    Click on the image for the full size version. Important stuff for male youth workers. HT to Cory

  • The Obama Marketing Vice-Grip

    Now that we’re a bit removed from the elections the picture is getting more clear to see how exactly Obama won roughly 70% of the electoral college. While I’m sure there are tons of political types on television who will take the politics of it apart, I thought I’d offer some observations of the campaign…

  • Picasso Tapas in Hillcrest

    Last night Kristen and I discovered a fun little place in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego called Picasso Tapas. Walking around the neighborhood we settled there purely because it was busy when nothing else was. (Little travelers tip right there.) After wiggling our way past the door we found a nice seat and settled…

  • John Stewart & Stephen Colbert Speak My Language