Understanding Kids Who Cut. . . Part 2. . .
If we care at all about kids we should learn to recognize, understand, and answer these visual cries of a generation longing for spiritual truth, emotional healing, and answers. Self-injurious behavior (SIB) or self-inflicted violence (SIV) has been defined as…
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Understanding Kids Who Cut. . . Part 1. . .
As a culture-watcher, I sometimes like to “rewind” as a way to gain perspective on just how much and how fast youth culture has changed. The practice serves to wake me up at times when familiarity with what was once…
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American Youth Ministry: What Would Bonhoeffer See? . . .
This is probably more true than when I first wrote and posted it here back in July of 2011. I had been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the time and I was struck by how his writing decades before offered a…
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Youth Min & Parenting On The Edge. . . .
Over the course of the last few days, I can’t help but be reminded of the seriousness, complexity, and head-spinning challenges of our times. When Bob Dylan sang to us way back in 1964, little did we or he know…
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Parents. . . Take 5 Minutes To Learn About Your Kids And Pornography. . .
You can’t effectively address a danger until you see and understand the danger. For the follower of Jesus Christ, Paul’s words in I Corinthians 6:18 offer a warning about the great danger of “sexual immorality”, along with a very blunt…
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Will We Speak Up For The Transgender Kid? . . .
What does it look like to respond with love to our kids who say they are embracing an LGBTQ+ lifestyle? What does it look like to lead them well? We can start by seeing them as God sees them. .…
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“What The Heck Is Easter?”. . . Four Life-Changing Words. . . .
The fallout from our culture’s growing reality of biblical illiteracy hit me hard a couple of years ago when the day after Easter my daughter-in-law, an athletic trainer at a large suburban high school, shared with me a conversation she…
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I Am Free. . . Thank You Jesus. . .
Good Friday. . . thank you Jesus. As I grapple with the glorious and almost incomprehensible meaning of today, I will spend time looking at this David Arms painting that’s in our house. Arms writes this about his painting “Free”: The…
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Will Smith, Hillsong, Branding. . . and Me. . .
Brand. While it’s one of the most-used words in today’s lexicon, I’m not sure we should like how it’s being used. Or maybe, we should aim to use it properly. The term brand as it’s most-used these days originated in the world…
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Youthworkers. . . A Way To Help Parents Teach Easter. . .
The fallout from our culture’s growing reality of biblical illiteracy hit me hard a couple of years ago when the day after Easter my daughter-in-law, an athletic trainer at a large suburban high school, shared with me a conversation she…
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Easter Week, Trauma, and the Cross. . .
We’re almost there. Easter week. . . a week that’s gotten better as I’ve gotten older. In fact, as I’ve gotten older life has gotten worse in many respects, thus leading to new experiences of the joy of Holy Week…
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“You’re Not The Boss Of Me”. . . Authority In Today’s World. . .
I’ve long since forgotten what occasioned the fight between two neighborhood boys that required my intervention. Since the scuffle between these two fourth graders was happening in my backyard and I saw it unfolding, I needed to step in. When…
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