The YS Conference

This last weekend was the annual Youth Specialties C0nference, this year in San Diego. I've been going to the conference ever since I started youth ministry, so I guess this year's conference was the 8th one for me. Overall it's a great conference. I enjoy the general sessions (most of the time) and the seminars are good. The best part to me is simply being away with some of our volunteers and being able to just talk together, hang out, and deepen those relationships. The conference tends to repeat itself over the years. I found that the seminars this year weren't all that great for me. I was disappointed with the ones that I went to with a couple of exceptions. But the general sessions this year were great. Maybe the best ones we've had in years. I just found the worship times to be great,...

Read More

The ALCS

Most people that know me understand that I'm a huge baseball fan. Of course, my Angels got swept right out of the playoffs, so naturally I'm rooting for Cleveland to take it to the Red Sox. Part of my daily ritual in the morning is to check out mlb.com as well as ESPN's baseball site to see scores, articles, etc. I was just doing that today and one caught my eye. It is about Paul Byrd, the former Angel, and now current pitcher with the Cleveland Indians who is starting tonight against the Red Sox. The article is entitled "Paul Byrd's struggle to walk with God." I linked it so that you can go there and read it if you want. I was just really blown away by the way this guy lives out his faith in the world of professional baseball. He's not a flashy guy, he readily admits that he doesn't have...

Read More

Jim and Casper

I recently finished the book "Jim and Casper Go To Church" and wanted to blog a bit about my thoughts. The book is co-written by these two guys, Jim and Casper. Jim is a former pastor who has written books and curriculum on evangelism. Casper is a proclaimed atheist. The book is the summation of the two of them traveling around the country going to different churches and conversing about the things that they see and experience. Jim's premise is that for most of us who have been in the church for a while, we need a fresh set of eyes to look at things and to be brutally honest about the things that they see. The point being that an outsider's perspective (the very person we ought to be trying to reach) is often very different than those of us on the inside. To be honest, I hate that language...

Read More

Formulaic Faith

This summer I read Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. It's really an amazing book. It's been one of those books that has stayed with me for quite a while since I've read it, partly because of my own thoughts, but also partly because some of the high school students in our group have been reading it and talking about it with me. As I read it, I began thinking about doing a teaching series on some of the ideas that Miller addresses. So anyway, this week I started that series.We talked this week about the problem of understanding faith as some kind of formula or recipe, where when we do this, God does that. I went on a Christian book web site this week and typed into the search engine the words "How to". The results were crazy! There were hundreds of books that had these words...

Read More