“But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now [...]

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I saw this over on Doug Fields’ site. I like this because I’m a big proponent of doing ministry with the entire family in mind. This list is written by Doug from the perspective of being a dad of 3 kids who have gone through our high school ministry: 1. Another significant adult is caring [...]

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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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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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Late tonight Pastor Rick Warren sent out a note on Twitter recommending this blog to youth ministry volunteers. As you’ll see in the chart below it had quite an impact on the amount of traffic I got in the last hour and a half of the day. Today’s been pretty amazing, too. While it’s fun [...]

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I remember the first crisis I had to face when I first started in youth ministry. I was paralyzed at the idea of going into the home of some students I barely knew whose dad had just passed away. I’ve learned a lot since then. Seeing this article from Kurt Johnston and Josh Griffin confirmed [...]

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I used this a couple of times last week at high school summer camp. “You’re not in trouble, but…” is the perfect medium I’ve found between the lands of Knuckleheadville and You’reawesomeistan. When student isn’t really being “bad”, you just need him to take a break from driving everybody crazy, we too often resort to [...]

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Last night I happened upon an over-nighter being thrown for some students in our High School Ministry. The leader of these boys is one of my former students. It was a huge blessing for me to see him serving in ministry. He’s actually been doing this for a couple of years, but this was my [...]

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I started a new ministry to recently to help troubled students. It’s going great! In fact, it’s almost “too” great. We’ve got an overabundance of volunteers. The ratio is something any ministry leader would salivate over. However, with volunteers comes the occasional turmoil. Here are a few nuggets I’ve implemented while working through occasional blow [...]

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If you tell a students, “Dude! Go brush your teeth, your breath stinks!”, you’ve thrown away an important youth ministry opportunity. Taking a different approach to this and other embarrassing situations can become a strong foundation for insider, deep relationships. Case in point from last weekend… (I’ve had done this many times) Last weekend one [...]

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