I love summer camp. I remember as a teenager having the first try at managing my own schedule, eating what I wanted (ice cream for every meal was one of the coolest things ever), and having fun however I wanted (good clean fun, I promise). In my experience working with teenagers and young adults, I’ve discovered that these little “interruptions” in our life open the door in a wardrobe-Narnia kind of way.  Let me explain… Last week I took one of my sisters and one of my brothers down to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (there are six kids total in my family). My youngest...

“All you need is love.” – Lennon/McCartney I went to two youth groups in high school. One of them should have been an awesome experience. It was the bigger one of the two, met in a better building, had fun games, did retreats, and all the cool kids went there. The other group was small, rural, underfunded, didn’t play games, and was kinda nerdy. Honestly, though, I didn’t connect with the first group and flourished in the other. Why? Simply because the first group wouldn’t have noticed if I dropped off the face of the earth, but the leaders and kids at...

Paul was an activist. He was always doing something about what he believed — whether that was combating the spread of the followers of The Way or (after his conversion) spreading that same message himself. Paul was a doer. He was always doing something: writing, teaching, preaching, building up young leaders, arguing with the older ones, or working. Wherever he went, he saw what needed to be done, and he did it with fairly little regard for how the boat got rocked because of him. Paul knew his beliefs were a cause big enough to do something about. That kind of life could be...

Here’s a chicken/egg question for you: What comes first – relationships or discipleship?Relationship building is one of the most important things we do as youth workers. In a sense, that’s our job — we exist to build relationships with students and our adult leaders in order to see these young people impact others. That’s what discipleship is all about right there. But does discipleship only happen when you have a relationship established?Think about this… Jesus was a master discipler. Throughout his life on earth, he gave us the blueprint for how to...

My first glimpse of the Kingdom was in my 5-year-old daughter.   My wife Amie wasn’t feeling well one Saturday afternoon, and Syd wanted to play.  Amie told her that her stomach hurt and she needed to rest.  Little Syd put her hands on Amie’s stomach and prayed a simple prayer of, “Jesus, help Mom’s stomach not to hurt so she can play with me.”   Literally seconds later, Amie told Syd, “My stomach doesn’t hurt any more, Jesus healed me!”  Syd said, “I know mommy… let’s go play!” A couple...

Discipleship is about more than Bible study and prayer. Yes, it includes those things, but it’s also about so much more.   Jesus did a few basic things with his disciples that we don’t usually do (at least not typically in westernized, evangelical countries). These are things that are so fundamental they’re like blocking and tackling. Too many of us modern disciples haven’t gone thru the basics of training camp. Here they are:   1. He required and taught abandonment. This is necessary to acquire spiritual eyes and become more fully dependent on God and...