When I told some of my friends that I would be attending a meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers at Westmont College, their responses fell into three basic categories: • Horror: "What? Why? That ...

My friend and I were having lunch; and as we always do, we revisited our slow journey through the stages of grief following the loss of our friend Matt, who died at age 35 of a brain tumor.While remembering Mat...

I did not grow up going to church. We didn't say grace at meals. I wasn't raised on a steady diet of felt boards, Vacation Bible School and stories about Daniel in the Lion's Den in Sunday School. For me, Sunda...

Full disclosure: I have 1,156 friends on Facebook. Clearly, I spend some time on the infamous social network!Currently in my 28th year of youth ministry, I have seen many technological changes. Remember the day...

Teaching About Advent:I subscribe to several weekly emails from various church and youth ministries. I have found that around Thanksgiving, all of them send me messages about Advent. I read each of them wi...

Veteran youth worker Kelly Soifer says, "I have three operating premises when needing to raise funds for youth ministry"... Donor Fatigue: churches tend to wear out their people by "going to the well" far to...

Moving Students from Faith to Lives of Service to Social ActionOne of my favorite things to do when training a group of students for a mission trip is to share embarrassing moments from past trips. It loosens u...

For 10 years, our youth ministry has served at the rescue mission. The mission invites churches to lead a chapel service once a month; ideally, they would like to have 30 churches commit so every night is cover...

I have worked with youth since 1982. Frequently, adults ask (especially parents of teenagers) what keeps me from quitting. Their questions take various forms, but they all boil down to one basic query: How do y...

I joined the staff of Young Life in 1984 and soon started planting new clubs in the junior-high schools. We called them, appropriately, Wild Life (since changed to Wyld Life). To get started, I wanted to introd...