"There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."1 So begins The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth book in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.2 Eustace "almost" deserv...

Not every adventure has to include defying gravity, class-5 rapids or helicoptering into a remote area for backcountry skiing. If your youth ministry is doing these things, I am blown away by your insurance pol...

There is a quiet epidemic in our country—specifically in our youth ministries—and it's a killer. The problem is there's not an easy fix. It strikes unexpectedly, with little or no warning. Virtually no rese...

Here's a quiz. You are a child travelling to grandma's house. The car ride feels as if it's taking forever. In the backseat, you start fighting with your sibling, and Mom tries to get you to stop your antic...

Doesn't a conversation about discovery in YouthWorker seem a little oxymoronic? After all, we're youth workers. Our weeks are filled with activities most adults would love to be paid to do. We play. We plan...

All of us in youth ministry have come to understand during the past two or three decades that we can't afford just to be doers. We have to be thinkers. To steal a metaphor from Jesus, only a fool begins to bu...

Rebecca Boyd was not pleased. She was trying to watch a movie at a theater in Birmingham, Ala., with her husband, but a couple of teens behind her kept giggling, talking and kicking her seat. Finally, Boyd ha...

When we talk about addiction, we're talking about a habit that is our default reaction. There's a cue and then a behavioral response. Over time, this response gets wired into our brains and becomes incredibly ...

I was 16 when my mom sat my younger brother and me down for a talk. I knew something was wrong—my first clue was that we weren't sitting in our usual spots on the sofa in our living room. While I can't re...

I'm old. That was the reality that kept coming to mind as I made the 1,200-mile drive from Florida back to Texas, completing the last summer camp of the season. Tired, beaten up from late-night hangouts, bac...