Keeping Your Passion for Ministry

Doing youth ministry for the past 12 years of my life naturally comes with challenges. One of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced as a youth pastor is balancing the logistics of creating a ministry that is functional, healthy, and hopefully thriving, without being...

Reality Check: Are You Really Listening?

As Otis went through various transitions with his own kids, now three and eight years old, he realized that he was already “shutting down” emotionally with them. Nothing bad, mind you, which others would readily notice or at least admit to. Yet, it was enough that the...

How Wasting Time Could Save Your Life

“Come waste your time with me.” A line from one of my favorite bands “Phish.” As someone who works in student ministry, you might be thinking….waste what? Time? Truth is, there’s a lot of us who feel a little bit of guilt when we read that line. The...

Don’t Overlook Even One

How important are our youth? That is a question that deserves full attention from anybody at any level of ministry. I have a very prejudiced reason for saying that. In the early 1970’s there was a pastor’s wife in a small town in Maine who always noticed the...

Led by Revelation

Sometimes my kids (my biological ones) need me to bring an injection of life and fun into their day. For whatever reason, they can get bogged down by the routine of life, or just start getting on each others’ nerves. And what they need is for me to just bring a...

Our Own Worst Critic

“It’s never as bad as you think it is….” These words had a calming effect on me as my boss sat across from me and dissected my latest event. However, the next words out of his mouth weren’t as warm and fuzzy: “…..and it’s never as good as you think it is.”...