Since beginning ministry in my current congregation, I've noticed how few high school and middle school students attend worship.
Part of the reason for that is that during the last decade, our congregation has prioritized age-specific...
Today is my 44th birthday and I'm feeling reflective, taking stock of the last year and the people and things I'm particularly grateful for. At the risk of sounding trite, here are 44 things I'm thankful for today.
When the kids filled the space and I briefly wondered how we were going to make this year’s VBS work in a building under construction, I was shocked when the word that popped into my head was “gift.”
That word kept reverberating in my head all...
One of the reasons we chose Group’s SCUBA VBS was because it’s marketed as the “easy VBS.” Maybe that’s because small group leaders do not have to do any prep (which, I’ll admit, is very appealing.) That said, having just finished our week of...
We just finished a week of VBS at our church. By every metric, it was a huge success. For several reasons, we opted to use Group’s SCUBA curriculum this year. While this curriculum certainly isn’t perfect, there were four things I appreciated...
The winter after Doug and I got engaged we went to his family’s house for his mom, Nancy’s, birthday, which was right before Christmas. While there, we visited Grandma Laura, who was still living in her apartment. Grandma fried chicken, which was...
In 2023, I read 140 books, not including most of the picture books I read to the girls. The vast majority were physical books, but I also listened to a fair amount of audiobooks (for the first year ever.) Doing so upped the volume of books I...
This is for the teenagers in your community.
The ones whose families have been hurt by churches so much that they won’t (or can’t) go back.
The ones whose very identities make them afraid they'll be reduced to an “issue” that needs to be solved.
...
“But they're just so happy.”
I’ve lost track of how often I’ve heard someone—either a teenager or an adult—use this phrase to describe someone they served during a summer mission trip.
It doesn’t matter whether you go to a Native American...
Popular youth ministry author and speaker, Doug Franklin, who I greatly respect, recently posted this on social media:
I often get calls from churches seeking great youth ministry candidates for their open positions. They are all looking for the...