I wrote a post about generational youth ministry for my friends over at Generation to Generation Youth Ministry’s website. Here’s a clip. You can go there for the rest: To raise up a crop of believing servants, youth workers must: – Watch for potential: You can’t mentor every student. Look for the ones who are [...]

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27 years ago when I was, a couple of weeks before my 14th birthday, I started making these time capsules. I was always intrigued with the passage of time. Several times I would gaze at the time capsule in the small town where I grew up. I thought it would be cool to save some [...]

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I love our students. They’re incredibly helpful around the church, passionate about the causes of Christ, eager to sign up to go on mission trips, etc. With some of them, however, there’s a huge disconnect with the work of the church and their interactions at home. I’m not surprised anymore, but I am at a [...]

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For a couple of years I’ve been thinking about how to interact with the issue of homosexuality in youth culture from the world of youth ministry. While I haven’t made much progress researching how ministries approach the topic, I have known of a couple of students in our ministry struggling with this in their lives. [...]

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Last night a FaceTime call came in on my iPhone. It was from Donny, a student who has been my righthand man at The Landing (a program I lead for students at Saddleback Church). I’d been thinking about him all day because he had left to start school at Biola University yesterday. He called in [...]

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Last weekend I was in a pretty serious conversation with another leader. This conversation ended abruptly and prematurely by an interrupting student who wouldn’t quit saying my name until I turned from the conversation and gave him my undivided attention. His interruption was to ask if I would notarize a form for him this week. [...]

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I’ve got this new kid in my small group. He’s a nice guy, but I really haven’t had a chance to get to know him more than just on a surface level. Tonight I got a chance to find out a little bit about him in a behind-the-scenes kind of way. I like this kind [...]

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This year I recruited a co-leader to help lead my expanding small group. As we wade deeper into the waters of leading together, there are some considerations I’m thinking people need to think through as they find the right person to share responsibilities with. So far, we’ve had a great experience together. These are just [...]

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• Jerry Klumas taught me how to tie a tie. His wife, Helen, had me working alongside her every week doing projects for the church • Pastor Darrel Hall allowed me to preach at the church when I was 14 (my apologies to those poor people, but I also thank them for letting me get [...]

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Traditions get kind of a “that’s my grandpa’s generation” reputation around the church. I’m kind of a fan of tradition and rites of passage. I believe it’s important to have a connection from one generation to the next. All of this came to the forefront of my mind tonight when I saw a guy wearing [...]

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