Tag Archives: college and career

7 Myths of Single Life

By caryschmidt | January 19, 2010

Seven Myths of Single-Life
Myths abound in today’s culture—through urban legends, chain emails, speed-diets, and beyond! Thanks to snopes.com, it’s pretty easy to run an email, a story, or a bizarre event through a quick research test to find out if it’s true or not.
So—do you have a “snopes” for life? Has it occurred to you [...]

Posted in ministry & outreach | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, dating, sunday school | 4 Comments

Transforming Teens—From Kurt Skelly

By caryschmidt | December 2, 2009

If you work with young people, I want to encourage you to read the blog series “Transforming Teens” by Pastor Kurt Skelly. This is presently a seven-part series of articles that examines how Paul mentored Timothy. It is insightful, well-written, and helpful for anyone who is mentoring young lives.
These articles highlight seven critical qualities/steps of [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged leadership, student ministry | Leave a comment

Thoughts on Effective Youth Ministry

By caryschmidt | November 19, 2009

A frequent question: What are some keys for effective youth ministry? While I’m certainly not the authority, here are a few thoughts that I’ve seen the Lord bless (not listed in any particular order)…
A Strong Local Church—Jesus died for the church. It is His divine authorized institution for His work on earth. A youth group [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged local church, ministry, student ministry, sunday school | 6 Comments

Struggling Teenagers? Don’t Give Up Early!

By caryschmidt | November 4, 2009

Have you had a student come through your youth group, graduate, and not mature spiritually the way you hoped? It seems no matter how we pray, labor, plan, or serve—there are some that graduate and drift spiritually.
What about trying to help a struggling student, only to feel like you’re spinning your wheels? Gauging by the [...]

Posted in family, student ministry | Also tagged counseling, parenting, student ministry, teen life | Leave a comment

Making God’s Will Less Confusing

By caryschmidt | October 19, 2009

Life is complex. God’s will isn’t. In fact, at any given moment, there’s a powerful question you can ask to determine if you are in or out of His will. It’s simply this:
“Did I follow God to where I am right now?”
The Holy Spirit will instantly resonate the answer in your heart—you will know it [...]

Posted in christian life | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, leadership, parenting, sunday school, teaching | Leave a comment

How to Help a Wounded Person

By Cary Schmidt | October 6, 2009

One of the most difficult circumstances of life and ministry is to try to help someone who has been deeply hurt. These are hard moments. More than anything, you want to take away the hurt, undo the pain, and fix the problem. But it’s just not that easy. Woundedness—regardless of how it occurred—requires time and [...]

Posted in counseling, featured | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, student ministry, teaching | 1 Comment

The Top Questions of Young Christian Singles

By Cary Schmidt | September 10, 2009

Throughout the year, our ministry to College and Career and Singles brings us into counseling, retreats, and venues where young Christian singles are airing really good questions. I have previously shared the details behind our Q&A times (both for teens as well as singles) and also the top 15 questions that teens ask.
Here’s the most [...]

Posted in counseling, student ministry | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, sunday school, teaching | 2 Comments

Three Reasons to Get Good Advice

By Cary Schmidt | August 28, 2009

Isn’t it amazing how often people venture into major life-changing decisions without getting any outside, biblical advice. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Sometimes we fear that a counselor will have a private agenda and won’t counsel us honestly. At other times, we presume to know what our counselors will say, and rationalize it away [...]

Posted in christian life, counseling | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, teaching | 2 Comments

Lessons from a 17th Century Graveyard

By Cary Schmidt | July 23, 2009

“Lord, give me an ‘engraveable’ testimony like Benjamin Edwards!”

This misty morning, my wife and I took a slow, cloud-shrouded stroll through a 350-year-old cemetery in a churchyard in Setauket, Long Island. The church was established in 1660 and the graveyard was filled with tombstones barely readable after hundreds of years of decay. What we were [...]

Posted in christian life, family | Also tagged biblical living | 3 Comments

Beating Post HS Challenges (3)

By Cary Schmidt | June 12, 2009

(This is the third in a series articles about the first big tests that high school graduates face. We’ve been studying them in our senior Sunday school class and I hope these ideas will be helpful to you or those you influence.)

The Challenge of Freedom—this third challenge speaks of the increasing freedoms that always accompany [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, student ministry, sunday school | Leave a comment

Beating Post HS Challenges (2)

By Cary Schmidt | June 10, 2009

(This is the second in a series articles about the first big tests that high school graduates face. We’ve been studying them in our senior Sunday school class and I hope these ideas will be helpful to you or those you influence.)

In the first article of this series we visited the challenge of a job—how [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, student ministry, sunday school, teen life | 2 Comments

Beating Post HS Challenges

By Cary Schmidt | June 6, 2009

(This is the first in a series articles about the first big tests that high school graduates face. We’ve been studying them in our senior Sunday school class and I hope these ideas will be helpful to you or those you influence.)

Have you ever seen a train wreck? There’s not a much more vivid metaphor [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged biblical living, counseling, student ministry, sunday school, teen life | Leave a comment

My Favorite Moment of WCBC Commencement 09

By caryschmidt | May 14, 2009

Praying with the “LBC Brats” that Graduated Today!

Today was a special commencement for West Coast Baptist College! For Dana and me it had a special significance as 20 graduates of the Lancaster Baptist Church youth group were graduating from Bible College. This was a special class! They have always had a fantastic, encouraging spirit [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged local church, ministry, student ministry | 2 Comments

Helping Graduates Prepare for the Future

By caryschmidt | May 7, 2009

A Tool to Help High School Grads Understand Their Own Hearts and Direction

I’ve not been able to write a blog post for a while due to year-end events with our graduating seniors—which leads me to thinking this might be a helpful subject. I want to encourage pastors, youth pastors, principals, and those who work with [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged counseling, student ministry, sunday school, teen life | 3 Comments

Life After the Youth Group

By caryschmidt | March 22, 2009

Part Two of a Series—Sustaining Spiritual Momentum After High School

In the first article we discussed a trend that is fairly common among young adults after high school. If you are in the ministry then you are passionate about seeing people “make it” for God. Over the years, we haven’t been 100% successful, but we’ve seen [...]

Posted in student ministry | Also tagged biblical living, student ministry | 4 Comments