Category: Throwback Thursday

  • Fast and Slow at the Same Time

    Fast and Slow at the Same Time

    May 20th, 2004. Eleven years ago. A long time ago and just like yesterday. When your kids are born people say, “Blink, and they’ll be grown.” It’s easy to look back and say that. But sometimes each moment, hour, day, week, month grinds on into oblivion. Time is a funny thing, kids can’t grow up fast…

  • Throwback Thursday – 2007

    Throwback Thursday – 2007

    This is a doozy of a Photoshop job, circa 2007. Lesson: Affiliations matter.  When YMX joined Gospelcom in 2007 it was a little deal that was kind of significant. The truth is that joining a small affiliation of Christian websites meant very little to us as a company. But the impact of an affiliation with a more…

  • Shrinking the Job

    Shrinking the Job

    I first learned this lesson as a young pastor. But it applies to me today just the same. In 2002 I left my job in Chicago, moved my family across the country, and started a job as the youth pastor in a small community in Northern California. The first week was spent cleaning out my…

  • The Truth About Screens

    I had an article featured as the cover story for Group Magazine’s January/February 2015 edition entitled, The Truth About Screens. Little old me. The cover story in the biggest magazine in youth ministry?  That’s cool, especially when you consider… I got a C+ in AP English in high school. I got a B in both semesters of…

  • The Summer of 95

    The Summer of 95

    Today’s Throwback Thursday is to July 1995, the summer that Kristen and I became a couple.  We were not quite 19 years old when we met, set up on a blind date at the end of our freshmen year at Moody. This photo is in front of the Hesburgh Library at Notre Dame. Football fans…

  • My First Posts on Social Media

    My First Posts on Social Media

    A quick trip down memory lane to my first posts on various social media platforms. Facebook It took me a while to figure out what to do with Facebook. I was able to join because I was a student at Huntington. And mostly I was just keeping an eye on my high school students. My…

  • Sacrificing Today for Tomorrow

    Sacrificing Today for Tomorrow

    There’s this really funny scene in Bill Bryson’s book A Walk in the Woods. Early in their trip up the Appalachian Trail, about two days in to a six month journey, the main character gets separated from his hiking partner. He goes back to a meadow to see his friend, furious, chucking things from his backpack into…