March 2013
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Noah and Scleroderma
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on Noah and his battle with Scleroderma. You can find my previous posts/updates here. It’s starting to feel like we go through spells of very little to report … and then get slammed with waves of challenges. At the moment, it feels like a bit of…
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Lose weight with Dr. Huizenga of the Biggest Loser!
The man actually behind all the success at the Biggest Loser is Dr. Huizenga. He’s the one who designed the workout programs, who tracks the contestants, developed the diet, and more. So much of what we see on the show is done for entertainment, but when the cameras aren’t rolling, it’s Dr. H and his…
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Student Videos from Planet Wisdom
We had a blast at Planet Wisdom, the conference for teens in Washington DC a few weeks ago. Here are a couple videos that some of the kids shot; the first one is by Tommy Neilson (I had no idea he was filming all this!), the other one was shot with Rachael’s phone in the…
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No dating for middle school students!
An interesting article exploded across the internet yesterday talking about the dangers of middle schoolers dating. It was fascinating to see a lot of worries I’ve had and heard documented in this long running study. Basically, they found that the sooner kids began dating, the more likely they were to have negative behavior in dating,…
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Congregations Where Teenagers Have a Voice
I love this TED style talk from Amanda Drury on congregations where teenagers have a voice. Some really great stuff in it; I was particularly challenged by the questions she posed about teaching teens to articulate their faith … but our tendency to do so only when they come back from something away. While we…
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Jamaican me crazy!
A little music video from our mission trip to Jamaica last summer … that I finally finished putting together! It is no exaggeration to say that every where we went these guys started dancing around. Not only was it an amazing, exhausting, moving, spiritually challenging experience … there was also a lot of joy and fun! And…
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Planet Wisdom recap
This past weekend a couple van loads of us went down to Washington DC to the Planet Wisdom conference … and it was amazing. If I’m honest, I went into it with a lot of high expectations; a lot of my personal philosophy of youth ministry has been heavily influenced by the team behind the…
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Using Instagram in Student Ministry
Instagram is the ‘it’ social media go to place for teens these days, which means lately I have been trying to use it more and more. Here’s what I’m thinking and playing with … I created an account for our student ministry separate from my personal account. You can find it here. I would like to get…
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How I’m Using Social Media
I’m constantly tweaking how I use social media as a youth ministry tool. It’s constantly changing, which means over the years I’ve used a lot of different platforms. What’s really changed from my perspective is that this year I think I’m using my phone as my primary tool for accessing and using all the accounts…
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Every kid gets a letter
Mailings to students are an important piece of the communication process in youth ministry. It’s the one form of communication that everyone still has in common. One of the questions that comes up from time to time with people I work with is whether or not every kid should get an individually addressed (and stamped…