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Why Your Church Should Use Weebly Instead of WordPress

Last Updated November 27, 2015 by Matt 6 Comments

Since 2009 I have recommended that churches use WordPress to create their websites in a cost-effective and easy way. But I am now changing my stance after actually working with clients and helping them manage their websites (sometimes watching over their shoulder). This is what people are actually looking for: Drag and drop, click and edit […]

Filed Under: Websites

Stop Kony 2012 in your Youth Ministry

Last Updated March 8, 2012 by Matt 2 Comments

If you’ve been in the youth ministry world for a while, it is likely that you were aware of Invisible Children before the #StopKony campaign blew up the internet yesterday. I didn’t know anything about the campaign until one of my youth posted the video on FaceBook yesterday at about 7:30am. A few clicks of […]

Filed Under: Youth Ministry Tagged With: #stopkony #kony2012

Reinventing Seminary: The Goal

Last Updated January 26, 2012 by Matt 6 Comments

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Seminary

What is seminary for, really? It seems to me that the typical goals have been things like: maintain accreditation with Association of Theological Schools (ATS), hire world-famous faculty, be a leader in scholarship, maintain denominational standards of indoctrination, and have a beautiful campus. These must be the goals because seminaries seem to do these things […]

Filed Under: Seminary

Reinventing Seminary

Last Updated January 24, 2012 by Matt Leave a Comment

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Seminary

About two years ago, I wrote a little series of posts about why seminary is irrelevant, and it was mostly a critique without a lot of constructive thoughts. Since then, there are a lot of significant voices weighing in on the subject recently trying to discern a way forward: Fuller Seminary has a whole website […]

Filed Under: Seminary

High School & College Faith

Last Updated January 12, 2012 by Matt 1 Comment

My friend Noah is writing a book about transitioning your faith as you graduate from high school to college, called Face to Faith (you should go check out the website… he is posting blogs related to the book, and the best comments will be incorporated into the book). It got me to thinking about my […]

Filed Under: Youth Ministry

What I’m Giving Up This Year

Last Updated January 5, 2012 by Matt Leave a Comment

I said a few days ago that the key to focusing is willing to give up and cut out some things in life. So, with that, here’s what I’m cutting out in 2012: Personal: Reading non-Bible stuff. As I said, this year is the year of the Bible, reading-wise, for me. So I will do […]

Filed Under: Personal

What I’m Focusing On This Year

Last Updated January 4, 2012 by Matt Leave a Comment

Taking into account the questions I asked myself to help me focus this year, here’s what I want the next 12 months to be about: Personal: Reading the Bible. I love to read and have lots of interests. My default reading genre is theology (but recently I dabbled in lots of business, marketing, and financial […]

Filed Under: Personal

How to Focus

Last Updated January 3, 2012 by Matt Leave a Comment

I ran through a list of questions in my mind to help me decide on what to focus in 2012: Is it pleasurable? Things you spend time on should, if possible, be pleasurable. Yes, there are certain tasks and responsibilities that you can’t get away from, but I bet you would be surprised how flexible […]

Filed Under: Personal

Focus in 2012

Last Updated January 2, 2012 by Matt Leave a Comment

A new year is upon us and so I am inclined, like most, to reflect a little bit on the past and make some adjustments moving forward into the future. First, some observations about the past. Time Creep My makeup naturally makes me want to learn about anything and everything. I buy lots of books, […]

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Focus

Help Me Win $500

Last Updated December 20, 2011 by Matt Leave a Comment

My blog post “10 Things Youth Ministry Needs Less” was nominated for the best blog post of 2011 at YouthMin.org! Now, it is up to a vote to narrow down the 32 nominees to the best post of the year, with the winner receiving over $500 worth of goodies in “Books, iTunes gift cards, Starbucks […]

Filed Under: Youth Ministry

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Best Youth Ministry Books

These are the books that will completely change the way you think about youth ministry, for the better. Links are to my reviews of each book.

Teen 2.0 by Robert Epstein

A psychologist makes you question every assumption you have about adolescence.

Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry by Andrew Root

Why build relationships? Root’s answer will surprise you.

Best Youth Ministry Books: Youth Ministry 3.0 by Mark Ostreicher

Yesterday I finally read Youth Ministry 3.0 by Mark Ostreicher, and since I’m one of the latecomers to the conversation I won’t summarize the book too much. Marko has linked to tons of reviews on his blog if you are interested in more in-depth summaries. If you are fairly in-tune with a lot of the […]

Best Youth Ministry Books: Postmodern Youth Ministry

Postmodern Youth Ministry by Tony Jones is the book I would recommend to youth ministers if they could just read one youth ministry book. I first read the book in my Foundations and Practices of Youth Ministry class at John Brown University. After the preface to the book there is a page titled, “The Day […]

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