Remembering Dallas Willard. . . .
“Readers are leaders.” I’ve had several people tell me that over the years. I don’t know that my reading has led me to leading, but I do know that reading has opened my eyes to so much. I would say…
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Texting Your Students. . . A Need for Youth Ministry Wisdom. . . .
Stupid. Now, it seems just plain stupid and risky. Thirty-five years ago I was a freckle-faced youth ministry rookie. . . twenty-one years old, just out of college, exuberant about ministry, naive, and incredibly naive. I had just signed on…
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Money, Sex, and Power. . . Thinking About Those Things That Destroy Pastors. . . .
I’ve been reading through Eugene Peterson’s memoir over the last couple of weeks. It’s simply titled The Pastor. Peterson brings a sensibility and wisdom that’s much-needed and often ignored in our relevance-obsessed church culture here in America. It’s a sensibility…
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Unmarried Moms, Cultural Trends, and Youth Ministry. . . .
Have you pondered the news that was released last Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau? The agency released a report that offers insight into current values and attitudes through it’s statistical analysis of behavioral trends. The report, Social and Economic…
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What Is The Wrong Message? LeRoy Butler, Jason Collins, and The Church. . . .
The Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That’s how theologian Karl Barth said Christians should begin their day. Theologian John Stott told us to engage in “Dual Listening”. . . the practice of listening to both…
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What Does This Say About Us? A Little Exercise In Culture Watching. . . .
A couple of weeks ago someone sent me a heads-up about the new commercials for Facebook Home. If you’re on Facebook, the social media giant has most likely hit you up with a few of their ads for Facebook Home…
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Jason Collins, ESPN’s Chris Broussard, and Coming Out. . . .
Youth workers and parents. . . if you haven’t yet talked to your students about same-sex attraction and the Christian faith, you need to now. The events of the last twenty-four hours and the chatter that’s ensued and which will…
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Market-Driven Pastor? . . . Market-Driven Church? . . .
Hard questions are a gift to the Body of Christ. We have to ask the hard questions of ourselves. We have to ask the hard questions to each other. Those hard questions are good for us. They make us think.…
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Something Stunning About You That Will Rattle You. . . .
Yesterday a link my friend Brandon Fisher put on his Facebook page caught my eye. I took the bait, checked it out. . . and was stunned. The stunning wasn’t occasioned by learning something new. Rather, it came from being…
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Post-Boston Thoughts. . . .
Over a week has passed and the dust has begun to settle, with the people involved starting the long and painful process of physical and emotional healing. Seeing and hearing the firsthand stories of trauma is truly gut-wrenching. My mind’s…
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Responding to Kids Who “Can’t Handle This Sucky World Any Longer”. . . .
These are words from a 15-year-old’s suicide note: “I can’t handle this sucky world any longer.” My first encounter with teen suicide came in the early 1970’s when a childhood neighbor and friend took her own life as a high…
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Boston’s Massacre, Media’s Response, and a Telling Imbalance. . . .
Horrible and horrifying. . . that’s what it was. Like most of you, I got to the television as soon as possible to catch the reports and updates as they came out of Boston. That’s how we get the news…
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