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I’ve been helping out with the youth ministry at a small country church near where I live. They’re a fairly-typical “church youth group” bunch – have been around each other since they were babies. Most of them go to the same school. You know the drill. Last night, the youth meeting occurred in the middle […]

The two teams were fairly even, facing each other from either side of the gym. A bunch of balls were lined up halfway between them. The players were poised to make their mad dash to the line of balls. Yep. We were playing Dodgeball – a youth ministry favorite. And, instead of being the guy […]

Seems that much of the tech world was waiting with bated breath for Apple’s announcements on Tuesday. Apple fan boi that I am, I hoped to be able to watch the Keynote address live. Unfortunately, the remains of hurricane Irma knocked out my internet connection, so I had to settle on getting as many “off-line” […]

Never Underestimate Summer Camp By Tim Krause • Grace Church • Tracy, CA “I will believe in Jesus when aliens invade planet earth.” That comment prompted laughter to erupt from the back of the bus, which a group of my roughest students had claimed as their own. I had invested every Wednesday night after our […]

My iPhone buzzed and chimed – incoming text message. A friend sent a couple of videos of a youth group playing some games last night, and I immediately burst out laughing as soon as I started watching the first one. “Jeannie! You’ve gotta see this!” She laughed too. Just for you, I put the two […]

I decided to become a youth minister when I was a camper at summer camp. The camp was a small, under-funded, very-little-to-do-there place high in the Sierras that my church’s youth group attended each year. Our cabin’s counselor that week was the camp speaker—a theology professor from a Baptist Bible College, of all things—who didn’t […]

The graduating seniors as a JumpStart client church (Grace Community Church in Arlington, Texas) describe with the youth ministry of their church has meant to them. Yep. What we’re doing is significant for the Kingdom of God!

“What do you do for fun?” That’s one of my favorite “get to know you” questions when talking to a teenager that I don’t know very well. That open-ended question is much better than, “So, what school do you go to?” or “What grade are you in?” or even, “What classes are you taking?” If […]

This weeked we “Spring Forward” and change our clocks ahead an hour. I found this hilarious “movie preview” about the time change. Go ahead. Click the link and watch the video. I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . . . . . . I told you it was hilarious! And, it points […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about life lately. Not in some wild-eyed, mid-life crisis sort of way but in the… I guess you could say, practical kind of way. And I don’t mean that I’ve been thinking about the practicalities of life (like what kind of sandwich to put in my kid’s lunch box tomorrow… […]