Tag: youth ministry
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Lie to me, baby
Maybe we are just a little too authentic in youth group? Last night, our high school ministry night met. We were down a couple of adults and up a few students. Actually, the night felt right at that balance between “out-of-control” and “in control” that is some of the secret sauce of youth ministry. As…
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Slides: Doing youth ministry on the move
This is a presentation I made last month at the East County Youth Workers Network meeting. Maybe it’ll be helpful to you. Here’s some of the content that goes with it. Slide 1: With the rapid adoption of smart phones, iPad, and hundreds of thousands of cheap/flexible apps being developed, I am quickly seeing youth…
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Hope reigns over youth ministry
Hope makes humanity unique. No matter how bad things may look, you can always choose hope. Hope is the reason a widow can smile at her spouses funeral. And hope is the reason a woman living in a tent can shock you with a smile and call out to God with thanksgiving when she is…
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Two positive trends in youth ministry
I’m on the tail end of a one week tour of the East Coast. (Catching up with youth workers; talking about PlanetWisdom, YS Palooza, and all things youth ministry.) One of the things I like to do when I meet with youth workers around the country, whether individually or in a group setting, is ask the…
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Interview with Youth Worker Journal
A few months back I was contacted by Jennifer Bradbury at Youth Worker Journal about doing an interview on teens & technology. I’ve done a number of articles for Immerse, but this was the first thing I’ve done for YWJ, and it was fun for me. When the arrived at the YS offices I made…
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Right Coast Bias
I’m sitting in the airport, headed to the east end of our fine country. My goal for the next 6 days is pretty simple: Meet up with as many youth workers as I can over the next 6 days. Talk until I’m blue in the face about two ministries I’m 1000% behind- PlanetWisdom [students] and…
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Retreating
A couple weeks back I wrote about our free retreat. I just got back. It was a quick, but profitable time. I’m more convinced than ever that when you are good news first, not only will the Good News be received, but the news of Good News will spread like wild fire as a result.…
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Choosing a new identity for youth ministry
Disorganized. Uncommitted. Unreliable. Unprepared. Unprofessional. Immature. Hot-headed. Last in, first out. One-dimensional. Sloppy. Youth pastors are disposable. These are the words used to describe our profession by outsiders. Youth ministry needs a makeover. While that makeover may need to include some changes in strategy this is really a makeover of something far more important than…
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Level of Difficulty
I’ll admit it. I’m a recovering video game junky. Up until Madden 2005 I used to incessantly play anything football EA Sports produced. One of the fun things about the Madden games is that you can adjust the level of difficulty to match your skill level in the game. So, if you were new, you…
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What Would Judas Do? Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and You
The youth ministry world is wrestling through the ramifications of what Christian Smith coined as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. What is MTD? After interviewing 3,000 teenagers, the authors found that many young people believed in several moral statutes not exclusive to any of the major world religions: A god exists who created and ordered the world…