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How Would You Draw God?
One of my favorite Bible lessons I did with our church teens a few years ago involved Pictionary. I gave them random Biblical stories to draw, which became quite comical. Most of them were pretty easy; but, it was all part of getting them to the final image. For the finale’ we had a draw-off and told them to draw, “God.” As I suspected, the two draw-ers stood with marker in hand but no action. The audience began shouting out Bible words hoping for a lucky guess. They eventually abandoned even trying to draw and turned instead to waiting and encouraging better guesses. So, how would you draw God?…
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The Danger of Growing Up in Church
As a mom and former children’s ministry director, I know the joy of seeing kids excited about Jesus. I’ve also been at it long enough to know the heartbreak of seeing former students walk away entirely as they got older. Mark Batterson, a mega church pastor in DC, said this in his book, All In, “My greatest concern as a pastor is that people can go to church every week of their lives and never go all in with Jesus Christ. They can follow the rules but never follow Christ. I’m afraid we’ve cheapened the gospel by allowing people to buy in without selling out.” (p. 20) I think this…
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Teaching Teens about Rape Culture and Modesty
Today I'm happy to feature a guest contributor, Laura Hercher, one of my students, talking about something that has certainly been in the news—rape culture. Her thoughts address the intersection of rape culture and what churches teach teens about modesty and personal responsibility: As someone in a ministry position and involved in a church, I find there are many ways I can work to combat rape culture. The biggest way is to prevent it from continuing into the next generation by teaching youth how to think about these issues. I think one of the most powerful ways we can do this is by changing the way we teach youth about…
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Help Teens Live in Purity
Today I'm happy to have Kim as my guest. She has tons of experience working with youth. And she has some interesting stuff to say about Living Pure: Virginal vs. Virtuous. I recently got to hang out with some friends who work in different student ministries, and we had a blast telling war stories, reliving some of our dumber mistakes when working with teens (and parents), and lamenting some of the ongoing difficulties facing student ministries and workers, as well as the challenges students themselves are facing in this increasingly technological world. I seized the opportunity to casually float some questions to my friends about how they encourage their youth…
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Are you OK without your Facebook, twitterfeed, instagram…? A report from the front.
True story. Last weekend a group of teens gathered in a nicer than average home in the American suburbs to celebrate the fifteenth birthday of a pretty, popular teenage girl. We’ll call her Miranda. Miranda, her mom and her grandma had knocked themselves out for days making tasty food, decorating the pool, deck and house, and devising a hilarious line-up of games and activities. They even had some movie choices to watch before they settled in for the sleepover. Confident she had everything to keep the girls enjoying themselves for the duration, Miranda’s mom greeted each girl at the door with a promise of great fun and a gentle reminder…
