5. Youth min must shift the focus from reach and keep to equip and send. I entered youth ministry with a very strong desire to reach as many youth as possible so that we might see some converted and then some become leaders in the church. My mindset in ministry (which I found to be…

4. In youth ministry, our goal is to glorify God. This is true of all of life actually and our specific calling to work with students is no different. I find that this raises an important question. By what standard do we evaluate our work? How do we know if we are doing it right?…

3. Youth Ministry that is effective revolves around content and context. (part 2) If the content is Jesus… the gospel… scripture, then the context is community. By that I mean authentic community that is akin to what we see in Acts 2:42-47 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the…

3. Youth Ministry that is effective revolves around content and context. It is my conviction that everything we do must center on those two aspects of what we do and are. The content is the gospel and by that I want to encourage others to think very broadly because the good news is not just…

2. Ministry is relational. I used to say “all ministry…” but I don’t want to overlook a really important work that we do which falls mostly outside of direct relationships. When I went into schools and spoke at assemblies I did not have a relationship with each student. Guest speakers and others who enter temporary…

Credo is Latin and means I believe. It is a personal statement of belief whereas a manifesto is not usually just one person’s ideas or beliefs. I am therefore simply stating what I believe. Some of what I am writing at this point is very open to being shaped and molded in the future. Other…

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

I think we’re beginning to see a time of darkness when, amid a plethora of high tech connectivity, one-quarter of Americans say they have no close confidante, more than double the number twenty years ago. It’s a darkening time when we think togetherness means keeping one eye, hand, or ear on our gadgets, ever ready…

We can tap into 50 million Web sites, 1.8 million books in print, 75 million blogs, and other snowstorms of information, but we increasingly seek knowledge in Google searches and Yahoo! headlings that we gulp on the run while juggling other tasks. We can contact millions of people across the globe, yet we increasingly connect…