As a youth worker, I have the blessing and privilege of stepping into the sacred spaces of students’ lives on a regular basis. While sometimes this looks like pranks and games, a lot of times it looks more…
Another school shooting. A classmate dies in a senseless car accident. A friend’s mother dies of cancer. Why? Why does God allow these things to happen? It’s tempting to respond to those who suffer by pointing the finger…
Watching Just Mercy is not an easy, lighthearted afternoon’s entertainment, but it is well worth the energy to bring your teenagers along to see it. As an aside: you will want to be sure to see the movie…
We all dread getting caught in the act. Take my student Steven, for example. He was thrilled to discover his parents would be out of town for the weekend. So he quickly texted his friends, planned a party…
I had just returned from a weekend retreat with my son, who has recently entered middle school. That means I’m not only his father, I’m also his youth pastor. It’s weird. But cool. But still weird. Within the…
While our team recovers today from last week’s Rooted conference in Chicago, I thought I’d share the manuscript from my devotional, which opened the conference. We hope our time together blessed all of our attendees as much as…
When my oldest son Mac was applying to colleges, one school required that he write a 150-word essay about something that outraged him. He came to me wondering what he should write about: Racism? Human trafficking? The opioid…
Over the past several weeks, we took a look on both sides of the blog at how we — as both youth ministers and parents — might love and disciple our boys and girls well and with prayerful, thoughtful…
Spoiler Alert: I will unabashedly expose storyline and details of Toy Story 4 in this article, so if you’d like to be surprised, get thee to the movie theatre ASAP (and bring your students!). Let me tell you…
