Youth Ministry

It’s the end of an era for my family and my ministry. My daughter will officially be entering into the youth ministry in a few weeks at church! I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow, I turned into a middle school dad. I’m having a tough time seeing my baby girl grow up, and this just adds fuel to

Most Christian blog writers tell you how great everything is going in their churches. I want to switch things up and tell you a little about one of our struggles this year in the hope it may help some of my readers. First, I need to give a little background. I started working with teenagers in youth ministry 14 years

StudentLife is a great organization for youth workers and they have put together an informative video on current youth culture. The truth is that today’s culture is changing rapidly due to the use of internet and media. Over the last 15 years, I have seen a huge change in the youth in our small rural community. Our teenagers used to

Lately, I have noticed something that seems to be on the increase.  I am concerned with the boredom of an entire generation.  Check out the facebook and status updates of young adolescents and you’ll be sure to see the infamous statement, “I AM BORED.” I am sure that this isn’t something entirely new, but I do see it as a

Over the past 14 years, I have been to numerous conference for students. I’ve taken groups to all of the major conferences, but there is one that stands out as my favorite. I have seen how a weekend spent in the Bible can totally change a teenager’s life.  I started attending the PlanetWisdom Student conference when it was organized by

We kicked off our study of Crazy Love with the youth and college students from Cornerstone this past Thursday night. I wanted to share the links back to my comments on each chapter of the book. I’ll be adding the later chapters to this list as we go through the study.  You can also find out more about the book

I’m not a huge fan of curriculum for youth.  I’ve seen far too many lessons that were long and culturally irrelevant, and most of the time they didn’t even make sense. If I see another youth lesson where they ask people to dress up in Biblical costumes I think I will drop kick the writer into the 21st century!  For

The blog here has been a little slow this week. We have added a second Sunday service at Cornerstone and have kicked off our new youth ministry structure. I have been busy with all the details of getting everything off the ground. I did want to share with you a new youth website that we will be using to let

On our youth retreat, I gave our students a survey.  One of the questions was “Do your parents engage you in conversations about spiritual matters?”  Here are their answers … Never – 9.5% of students Infrequently – 43% of students Regularly – 47.5% of students The numbers are actually higher than I expected.  What may be surprising to parents is that there is

We’re taking the next two days to spend time with the youth.  We’ll be having fun, but I will also be teaching during the retreat. Our retreat will be in Charlotte, where we will be going to the National Whitewater Center and Carowinds.  We are planning on making some changes to the way we do youth ministry and this retreat

Saw this over on Simply Youth Ministry this morning.  It’s a 4-year curriculum for doing small groups in youth ministry.  It looks interesting because it’s based online.  You can manage your leaders and lessons through the web.  It’s a little pricey, but it’s also for 4-years.   I’ll definitely check it out since we’re thinking about expanding small groups for