What is Our Reliance Costing Us?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court had a major ruling on how the Government can or cannot tax you regarding having health insurance.  If you havent' heard anything about it, just got to any news website and check it out.  This blog isn't about that specific case but about how we as Christians have fallen into a trap that started a long time ago.

My friend Neely McQueen over at MorethanGoship.com always has some great advice on girl ministries and more.  I really liked this post because it always hurts when a students leaves, especially a student we have invested in.

"It’s bound to happen the longer you are in youth ministry…a student that you have invested in will stop showing up. They might slowly disengage from you and the ministry or maybe it happens suddenly. It can be heartbreaking, right?

What can you do?

I am strong believer in a follow up plan. Facebook, email, text, snail mail…a phone call. It’s important to make contact. The point is to follow up on the student – to provide care for them…but it’s easy to make it about their absence from our programs. I believe students can tell if we care about them or if we just care about the attendance."

Read the rest of the blog here

Going Retro: You Can Please Some of the People....

This was posted on 08/21/06


...some of the time, all of the people none of the time. This is something that is painful from some people to grasp. I know lots of people that try to be everything to everyone. I see it at work, in my family and in my friends. In ministry it is equally hard. As a youth pastor, I have to deal with pastors, boards, students, parents and the congregation. You have tons of different opinions of what you should do and how you should do it. For the most part, I haven't had a tons of problems with people and I am usually good at dealing with it.

Suggestions for Parents: Church Expectations of Parents

They say that hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to look back on what decisions we made and critique them. To look and see what we would have done differently. As a youth pastor, I have the benefit of being able to view many different family dynamics. I spend time researching families and how they should act and then I get to try to help families discover what they should do. I find that most of the times, parents don't know what they should really be doing because growing up they were never shown what to do.