Junior Seau, Rachel Ehmke, and Edvard Munch. . .
Rachel Ehmke Every now and then there comes a day when it all gets piled on and you can’t help but think about the common threads that tie certain news stories together. Yesterday I heard about the death of…
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Caring For Cutters – Part 3 on Kids Who Cut
Yesterday I posted a link on Facebook to my blog on cutting. One of my former youth group kids (who is now a mom in her 40s) commented under the link: “Last year, my 9th grade daughter could name 23…
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Inside A Cutter’s Heart – 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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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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A Dangerous Adolescent Sexual Practice. . . .
Last weekend we held our Hope and Healing for Broken Kids one-day training conference in New Jersey. During one of the breaks, I stepped in on one of the many serious conversations taking place in the room. People were talking…
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Charles Colson: The Bulldog Who Shaped My Life. . . .
“Colson died!” That’s what my buddy Rich Van Pelt told me as he looked up from reading the news on his phone. That was on Saturday. Since then, I’ve been thinking about what Charles Colson meant to the church over…
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Dick Clark. . . Gatekeeper of Youth Culture. . .
The history of popular youth culture as we know it is a short one. Real short. Post-World War II to be exact. And I think a case could be made for the fact that nobody other than Dick Clark served…
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Facebook. . . Friends, Loneliness, And The Liquid Avatar Known as “Me”. . . .
Incredibly connected. Incredibly alone. We’ve been watching that reality unfold for years. We’ve been talking about this great irony as well. Technology has given us an amazing and unprecedented ability to be connected all the time to a greater and…
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A 12-Hour Media-Peek Into Culture. . . .
Culture is best described, I think, as “the soup we swim in everyday.” We don’t just swim in it. We marinate in it. It gets into our pores and flavors who we are. . . our beliefs and behaviors. .…
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I Still Won’t Go To The Prom . . . .
I didn’t go. There’s no way my kids will ever believe it was for any reason other than I couldn’t get a date. They believe that because they’ve seen my senior picture. The real reason – which I can’t convince…
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7 Ways To Support And Help Parents. . . .
As a youth worker you can either be a help and hero to parents, or you can be a hindrance and, well. . . a flat-out pain in the butt. In my own ministry, I’ve done things that have built…
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Boundaries For Youth Workers. . . .
Over the course of my years in youth ministry I’ve learned many things the hard way. . . either by watching myself or observing friends One of the lessons I’ve learned is just how important it is for a youth…
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