Media will eat your family alive, unless you tell it not to! I have a deep inner aversion to living things that crawl, creep, fly, or slither around and find their way into places they don’t belong. They bother me. They creep me out. I just want them dead as quickly as I can make [...]
Quick post—the top ten ways to completely bore and disconnect with those you teach: 1. Say something not worth hearing—This is basic, but if you want people to listen, start by saying something worth hearing. The number one reason we lose the attention of those we teach is that we’re not convincing them that what [...]
Seems like kids are getting cell phones younger and younger these days! This post is one I’m only doing because of requests. Several years ago, as our boys became teens, we decided to get cell phones for them—primarily so we could get a hold of them in relation to school and youth group outings. It [...]
Both TIME magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported on some dangers surfacing behind the many hours that teens are spending in social networking. Here are a few quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle article that relayed the results of a poll of 1,000 teens and 1,000 parents: “From behind their bedroom doors, more [...]
Recently, I posted about our Q&A times with students at teen camps and retreats. Over the past five years, hundreds of questions consistently revolve around the same themes. If you are a parent or youth worker, this list might help you get into their heads. It is a general consolidations of hundreds of questions. Here are [...]
How an Honest Q&A Time Can Help Your Students This week we’ve been at teen camp with 275 of our teens from LBC. It’s been a great week! One of my favorite aspects of camp is something we instituted a few years ago called “Answers to Tough Questions.” It’s a one hour Q&A time before [...]
(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 [...]
(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 [...]
(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 [...]
A Special Memory for the Senior Class of 2009 Last Monday we had the privilege of hosting our Senior High teens and many of their parents at Spring Banquet 2009. It was an amazing evening, featuring a delightfully decorated “Grand Ballroom” at the Disneyland Hotel. The students arrived at church at about noon, dressed their [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Guarding Your Heart for a Wonderful Someday! People have asked for years if we would do a book to teenagers and college students about guy/girl relationships. It wasn’t until Pastor Chappell approached me about working on this project with Pastor Mike Ray that I really thought seriously about it. What a privilege to work with [...]
How Parents Let Their Kids Go Too Far, Too Fast, Too Soon This is the final article in a series about the mistakes that parents often make in allowing their children to date too seriously too soon. We’ve seen the first seven, so let’s wrap it up… 8. They push their kids into dating out [...]
