A unifying theme of my work has been to issue this challenge to youth workers: Always, always, always endeavor to think biblically, theologically and deeply about everything in life. Then, teach your kids to do...

The state-of-the-art classroom was filled with all the latest technology: computers, quality sound and video, wireless access, you name it. I was sitting in the back of the room as the students engaged with a g...

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 o...

The truth is I was jealous. I was convinced there was no way I could compete. Even worse, I believed there was a competition.I was a young youth worker doing ministry in a suburban church during the 1980s, a de...

It's 1998 and I'm walking through the barren streets of a tiny, middle-of-nowhere, rural Polish village on a cold and cloudy January afternoon. Even though I'm thousands of miles from my suburban Pennsylvania h...

Queen's 1980 hit "Another One Bites the Dust" has come to mind recently whenever a ministry friend or peer has been brought down by an "emotional affair."It's something that's happened far too often in my own l...

It scares me when I think about what I would have been like if I had been living during Prohibition (the period from 1920-1933 when alcohol was illegal in the United States). Based on my attitude toward alco...

More than 30 years ago, one of my best friends, Kyle, dropped a bombshell that left me reeling. He told me he was gay.At the time, I was a young, full-time youth pastor doing ministry in a cultural environment ...

No matter your age, the kids to whom you're ministering today are living in a media world very different from the one you inhabited when you were their age—even if you graduated from high school last year...

From Learning My Lines: "Over the course of the last several weeks I've been thinking lots about anxiety. I'd like to tell you that my thoughts have been prompted only by the growing parade of people I meet ...