How to Succeed in a Youth Ministry Interview
Summer is almost over. For the field of youth ministry, summer is a hiring season. I know of a number of parishes that are hiring here in my diocese. This process can seem difficult and intimidating. Submitting a resume and preparing for an interview can give you butterflies that remind you of asking someone on […]
Don’t Clear the Backlog Just Yet
Coming Up For Air I sat down with a friend the other day. And, as we indulged in a hipster lunch in some gourmet coffee shop, he shared his plans to take a month off this summer. He is an excellent youth minister who has not come up for air in years. I was fascinated […]
Panning for God
When Everything is Awful
No matter how many good days you have, how many wonderful friends are in your life, how great your relationship with God is going, how perfect your job is, there will be days when it feels as if everything is crashing in around you and you just don’t want this particular life. There will be […]
23 Ways to Be Yourself
Got a little story for ya ministers- there were three identical villages facing an identical problem; a large boulder had nestled itself in the village river, halting most of the flow of the river. The people were thirsty. The crops weren’t being watered. The village water hole dried up. The people of the villages met […]
Comfortable Yet?
Usually when we have growth in our spiritual life, certain parts of ministry get easier. Things that used to make us anxious become second nature. We work faster on things that used to take forever. What used to worry us is no longer a concern. This kind of comfort in ministry isn’t a bad thing; it’s just […]
3 Cities, 7 Deaths…NOW WHAT?!
You’d have to be living under a rock to not know what has been happening in our country over the past week. There were multiple fatal shootings by police officers being called into question with a public outcry helped by witness’s video, then someone taking the law into his own hands and ending the lives […]
4 Strategies to Confidence in Ministry
Busted! My wife and I have caught our children doing something wrong on multiple occasions. Getting them to fess up to it follows a similar pattern. “Did you break the dish?” “No.” “Sweetheart, I want you to tell the truth, did you break the dish?” You can see the inner struggle growing on their face […]
Striving for the Best Solution
My microwave was broken. Everything worked except it didn’t heat the food anymore. A quick search narrowed it down to 2 problem areas, one of which was called the ‘magnatron’ which sounds like a villain in the generic version of the Transformers. The parts would cost near the price of a new microwave. In a […]
What Do You Hunger For? Blue Bell vs. Jesus
It was a beautiful April day, that was until Blue Bell Creamery put out a voluntary nationwide recall. It was the great Blue Bell famine of 2015. The long, scorching days of summer dragged on without the palpable taste of Blue Bell on my tongue. The anguishing outcries were felt across the world (that is, […]