I got this text from a student this morning. It’s one of those “pass the torch”, feel-good moments in youth ministry. When he was in my small group, we’d open the group by having each person sharing a chem (good thing from their week) and phlegm (something they wish had gone differently). This idea actually [...]

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Here’s a text message I sent to a student today to let him know I’m thinking about him. It’s kind of goofy, but it speaks love into his life. I’ll never use this with any other student because it would shave off the impact with Kyle. I will, however think of goofy things to text [...]

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My prayers were answered! We brought an intern onto our staff to help us with our overwhelming load, but also help him get his feet wet in ministry. Now the surprisingly difficult task is releasing responsibilities to him. I thought that would be the easy part. However, I don’t want to overwhelm him or trust [...]

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Here’s a great tongue-in-cheek video the brilliant Parker Stech did to get students to consider joining a small group. Life Groups with Parker from HSM on Vimeo.

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I have some friends who do volunteer youth ministry in Kansas. This week they got a shout out that I completely agree with. I’m reposting it here. I stole it from

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Our High School Ministry did a 2-week series on the topic of secrets. It was an EXCELLENT way to nudge students to get help with their issues and to direct them toward The Landing. This is the video they used at the beginning of the service. I stole this video from here Here’s the series [...]

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This blog post is a little bit heavy. I share it with the intent of helping others think through their actions if they ever have to remove a student from their ministries. This isn’t one I enjoyed writing, but if my goal is to help other in-the-trenches youth workers, I have to share the ugly [...]

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Here are a few tips for counseling your students with their parents: – Don’t be available at a moment’s notice. If you can delay the appointment for at least a few hours after the explosive argument, they’ll have a chance to cool down and the session will be more productive – Start the appointment with [...]

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You can order these banners by clicking here As part of a strong back-to-school push for our ministry, I’m ordering some banners to help students understand what our ministry is all about, how it can help them, and who should attend. Here’s a peak. They might go through some editing before I place the order [...]

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I blog about youth ministry partly out of passion for the task, somewhat as an outlet for ideas, but mostly to somehow be a resource to other youth workers. It’s great to help others avoid some of my mistakes, alter a perspective now and then or pass along the occasional joy of something that went [...]

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