Category: Youth Ministry

I saw on Facebook a recent photo of one of the students in the youth group I led at the first church I worked for. It brought back a great memory. One Sunday morning, as I was checking in with the other teacher who also had a high school Sunday School class at our church,…

It amazes me how often I’ve been contacted by people who found this audio file online and listened to it.  I never had listened to it myself – but then again I don’t like the sound of my own voice recorded (odd quirk I have). Anyway the audio is of the workshop (or seminar) I…

If you enjoy subtle British humor, this is a great interview of the author of a useful book. The interviewer (voice off screen) is Nate Morgan Locke who is speaking at our middle school weekend in October.

I really appreciate the preaching of Alistair Begg and this clip is both hilarious and true in many ways. Sadly, some might mistake his passion for anger and miss the general point that he is making. If you have not heard him preach before, this could be misunderstood as the rant of an angry man.…

An excellent post over on The Gospel Coalition blog where my friend Cameron Cole shares some great thoughts on sustainable faith. (Note also at the bottom of the post, the bit about the Rooted Conference coming up in October.) As I listen to and observe the faith journeys of former students and young adults, I…

I love what this girl is getting at!  Another case for dropping “youth talks” and really digging into scripture.  Do we want another generation of moralistic therapeutic deists?  Let’s instead create a generation of biblically faithful students.

We need to start teaching our students rhetoric and not rhetoric. Confused?  It used to be that rhetoric was the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. To study that, one used to learn techniques and develop skills that made for more effective debate.  Being skilled in this way allowed a person to show…

I’ve long had a fascination with St Columba, an Irish Abbot who is credited with spreading Christianity across Scotland. I first learned about him on a trip to Scotland with my college where we visited Iona, the small island on the west coast that Columba used as his base for his missionary journeys. The place…

Last week I had the opportunity to do some seminars at Camp St. Christopher.  It was Sr Session (high school) and my favorite age group to speak to.  I led two seminars.  One on surviving after camp… along the lines of how do we keep growing.  The other was on persecution and suffering for the…