Twenty-One Pilots And Teen Stress. . . Talking Points. . .
It was a well over a year ago that I sat with our doctoral cohort at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary deconstructing a music video that featured a couple of mid-twenty-somethings riding oversized Big Wheels (admit it, we all want one, don’t…
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Fifty Shades Returns. . . Darker. What Now?
I spent the last couple of days in Mississippi. On Wednesday night, I spoke to a gym full off parents and teens about pornography. What is it? Why are we drawn to it? What effect does it have on us?…
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Lady Gaga’s Broken Halftime Theology. . .
First things first. No matter who you were rooting for, that was an amazing game. And second. . . let’s think about Lady Gaga and her halftime show. . . beginning with some thoughts on Super Bowl halftime shows in…
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Super Bowl Commercials. . . A Little Exercise In Critical Thinking. . .
Parents and youth workers… why not make your Super Bowl viewing experience productive for you and your kids? I want to challenge you to see it as an opportunity to teach how to apply their faith to the glut of…
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Teens and Self-Injury. . . A Helpful Infographic. . .
We’ve been talking about it for a couple of decades for the simple reason that far too many kids are doing it. “It” is self-injury. I’ve blogged on it on numerous occasions. Our good friend Marv Penner has become a…
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The Epidemic of Anxiety. . . Some Helpful Words. . .
Ever feel like this? . . . Apparently anxiety was a problem way back when Time Magazine ran this cover in 1961. The covered featured the now-familiar Edvard Munch painting known as “The Scream.” Interestingly enough, Munch painted this way…
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Pleading For Our Kids. . . .
Early this morning I was reading in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5, about a distraught father named Jairus. As I pondered his two-sentence urgency-filled request to Jesus I kept thinking about kids today. Jairus said to Jesus, “My little…
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The Latest On Teen Drug Use. . . A Helpful Infographic. . .
I’ve never met a parent who says, “I want my child to grow up to abuse drugs.” There are, however, many twisted individuals making millions of dollars off of their pursuit of the desire to promote addiction. And for too many…
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A Little Exercise In Priorities. . . Football vs. Family. . .
The NFL Playoffs are in full-swing. Last Sunday night, a friend who’s here in the U.S. from her home in Northern Ireland landed in Boston just before dinner. The friends who met her at Logan stopped for dinner at a Buffalo…
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The Great Slip-Up. . . And Satanic Exposition. . .
This morning, I was reminded of a short-yet-thick and significant thought from Os Guinness that captures a mistake that we so easily make and must constantly/consciously work to avoid. Consider the perils of living by the latter-half of what Guinness…
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Pornography And The Brain. . .
This morning I got up early to head south to Daytona Beach. I’m spending the next couple of days with a group of youth workers talking about significant trends in youth culture. This afternoon, I will be speaking about pornography’s…
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A Prayer For Year’s End. . .
While they often get a bad rap, the Puritans sure knew how to pray. For several years now, the Puritans have taken me deeper in prayer as I’ve found a friend in the Puritan prayer book, The Valley of Vision. Heart-yearnings…
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