There can be a million distractions while driving and the laws restricting cell phone usage and texting are an attempt to minimize diversions. But I have to admit one of my greatest distractions is reading bumper stickers. I am simply intrigued by some of the philosophical nuggets that can be gleaned from those little pieces of adhesive. I have been…
I just met for 27 hours with some of the nation’s strategic student leaders. Our focus was how to reach the 67,000+ students in our middle and senior high schools. Meeting at the Fellowship of Christian Athlete’s headquarters we spent a great deal of our time in prayer as well as strategizing. I think every student ministry realizes the importance…
Is there a difference in student ministry from culture to culture? If so, how do you prepare for effective cross-cultural ministry? I am asked questions like these by students and church leaders headed for short-term missions’ opportunities as well as those preparing to spend a lifetime reaching youth globally. In the last couple of years friends like Dr. Alvin Reid…
It is not a new idea; it has been used before at other camps, on videos and in dramas. Still it had a powerful effect on the students present Friday night at Word of Life Florida Youth Camp and more to the point…on me. I was moved by the honesty and the courage of each teen. One by one the…
Ministry linguistics, as I addressed it in last week’s post Ministry Linguistics: Connecting Core Concepts, may be as simple as communicating how two concepts are supportive of each other. However, sometimes the issue is not comparing concepts: it is clarifying terms. If while talking about your favorite sporting event or high school memory, students look at you as if…
We live in a world full of words! If you work in student ministry, then you have noticed that words appear to be in a constant state of evolution. Just when you think you understand a word well enough to use it in conversation with students; you discover it is dated or irrelevant. The same thing happens with ministry communication.…
“Somebody ought to do something” is perhaps one of the most frequent phrases spoken when a situation needs attention. The problem is often that we are looking for someone else to step up and do it and then they can take the flack for not doing it the way we thought it should have been done while we sat idly…
I know the numbers, I have read the studies and I know that many good people have done credible research but…I am weary of the statistics about you…the graduating seniors. I believe that some of you have actually walked away from your faith, but I also believe that some of the surveys reported students as AWOL who had never really…
An open letter from a graduating high school senior... I remember the first day I walked into the youth room as a middle schooler, I was trying so hard to be brave but I was scared out of my mind. I felt a little like the twelve or should I say ten spies in Numbers 13 when they reported on…
“I’m so bummed out of my mind right now, it’s not even funny. – I just had a college meltdown.” These were words my wife saw on her Facebook page just yesterday. Diagnosis: Senioritis. Is Senioritis a disease, a condition or just a temporary frame of mind? I ask because every year around this time, a phenomenon of pandemic proportions…