Sufficient Hope for the Teen Years

Have you ever had someone say to you in an ominous tone, “Just you wait until…?” I remember expecting my first child and hearing a friend warn, “Just you wait until you are up all night with a…

Jessica Thompson on Teen Anxiety and Moralism

This Sunday on Instagram, author and speaker Jessica Thompson offered a much-needed word of grace and rest. It was too good not to share with our Rooted readers: “Teen anxiety is skyrocketing and I think the church shares…

Podcast: Scott Sauls on Grace, Teenagers, and Befriend

In this episode of the Rooted podcast (recorded at our 2017 conference in Dallas), we interview author and pastor Scott Sauls about his remarkable book, Befriend, and how many of its themes speak to the current generation of…

Ministry Across America: Manhattan

1. Please describe the context in which you minister (socio-economics, geography, race, etc.) New York City is, of course, a diverse community both socially and economically with hundreds of cultural pockets throughout the five boroughs. Primarily, our ministry…

Confessions of a Small Town Student Pastor

Every now and then we take our regular worship service and change things up. I give our band a night off to thank them for their hard work and to create an environment that doesn’t become dependent on…

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: What Does the Gospel Say?

The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, amongst most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of…