Category: youth ministry
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To the mountaintop
I’m a dreamer. I like to dream big dreams for myself. But I really like to dream big dreams for the students in our ministry. So when Kathy gave me the opportunity to paint a big picture and ask big questions as we start off this Fall in our high school ministry, I jumped at…
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Thankful
Thankful. That’s just about the only word that can describe my heart right now. The last week at NYWC left me completely spent both physically and mentally– but I sit here now with my spirit soaring. Feet aching, eyes leaky, and thankful. Back in December I had this silly belief that YS’s best days were…
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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…
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What a difference a year makes
A year ago I was packing for NYWC and trying to convince myself that everything was going to be OK. I knew the facts but had to convince myself that they didn’t matter. With the pressure to perform numerically stronger than ever we watched in horror as the economy collapsed. Earlier in the year we’d…
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UPDATE: Praying for Walt Mueller
Back on August 6th, I asked blog readers to join me in prayer for Walt Mueller. While preparing for a bike ride to raise money for CPYU, he was involved in a nasty spill which left him with a whole myriad of serious injuries. To the glory of God many of those prayers have been…
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I like Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream
Currently, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream is top 10 on iTunes. It’s huge. And I am not ashamed to admit that when it pops up on my iTunes I listen to it 3-4 times in a row. While I’m sure most youth workers groan when they hear this song… I take a totally different perspective. I…
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Open Letter to My Former Students
Like all my friends in youth ministry, I have acquired a growing list of graduates that now scatter the globe. Some are freshmen in college this year, some are married and have cool jobs, and most are kind of in an in-between state. We bump into each other from time-to-time, we comment on one anothers…
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Coming to Dallas and Tulsa next week
Epic. Awesome. Life-changing. PlanetWisdom on Vimeo. I’ll be in Dallas next week, Monday-Wednesday, meeting with youth workers and chatting up both PlanetWisdom and the National Youth Workers Convention. Here’s the RSVP for the meet-up on Monday. I’ll be in Tulsa for lunch on Thursday. If you want to meet up and hear specifically about PlanetWisdom…
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Youth Workers: Don’t Punk Out
Youth ministry seems to be facing asymmetrical challenges right now. Two of them on the forefront of my mind are longevity and transference of wisdom. With a tough job market and a climate of deconstruction/re-thinking/shifting in the profession… it really pains me to see a lot of very gifted youth workers move on. Some of…
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Labor Day Remembrance for Youth Workers
Labor Day became a holiday in response to the massacre of 13 employees to end the Pullman Strike at the hands of the Illinois National Guard. Why were they on strike? The owner of their company cut their wages on their 12 hour work day while holding rents on employee housing. When the owner refused…