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10 Questions
A friend of mine, who has spent more than his fair share of time having to wrestle with the expectations we ought to have for church leadership (and what to do when leaders fail), posted ten questions he would ask of anyone who asipres to lead in a church. I found them to be pretty…
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Adolescence is not new
I’m a little over a decade into my career working with 6th-12th graders. In those years, I’ve come across the following idea in a variety of places, whether from youth ministry professionals, education advocates, or random think pieces about “this generation.” The statement will be something like this: adolescence as a life stage is a…
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A Tale of Two Marches
(Also Posted on Christianity Today’s website on March 26th) (I have to note that what I’m writing is my own opinion, not the position of any institution with which I am affiliated. Anyone who knows anything about institutions with which I am affiliated should find this to be obvious, given the diversity of opinions in…
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My Problem With Samson
The very first Sunday School series I taught upon becoming a youth pastor was through the book of Judges, and ever since then if you are one of my students, a parent of a student, or anyone else who has simply been in the right (wrong?) place at the right time, you’ve heard my rant…
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The New Testament’s War of the Family
If you are around conservatives enough, you‘ll often hear some variation on this theme: The family is the building block of society. Or, in religious circles you might hear that the family (by this we mean the nuclear family of mother, father, and children) is like a little church. It comes up in politics, in…
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Why I’m Thankful for Black History Month
In Ohio public schools (at least in the late 90s), there were a series of tests you had to pass at the end of the Eighth grade. I wasn’t worried about showing competency in math or English, but I was worried about social studies, or as the test was called: “citizenship.” I had just moved…
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Why Nationalism is Unbiblical
I can’t do a good job of assessing how national policies that isolate our country from the rest of the world will affect our economy, safety, or general prosperity. I have opinions on them, but it’s not my area of expertise. I can make an argument for what that kind of a mentality looks like…
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In Defense of Fear
In the last few days, my social media feeds are filled with sadness, anxiety, and fear. And one of the most common responses I see to the grief or in response to the grieving that many are going through after Trump’s election sounds something like this: Don’t worry. Trump isn’t even president until January. And…
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Youth Ministry as Creative Contextualization
My students love Harry Potter. Just recently, a sophomore asked (out of the blue) about how the time-turner plot in the third book of the series could possibly work out. With absolutely no hesitation, one student started to explain how it worked, while another quickly pulled out her iPod so she could play the relevant…
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Repent!
This is the text from a sermon I preached on November 11th, 2012 – the first Sunday after Barack Obama’s second election victory. I think I might word things a little differently now (I think how we implement change via government requires a bit more nuance than what I said), but someone shared with me…