After spending five years serving as the youth pastor in a church that held its weekly youth service during “big church”, I knew I wanted my next congregation to be one in which families worshiped together, where worship and faith formation (or...
What I'm Reading:
Fiction:
Between our trip to Africa and my mission trip to Haiti, June was a SLOW month for fiction reading.
Book I couldn't put down: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I know, the...
As a youth pastor, as much as you might like to be the one who’s in charge of your church, you’re not. Whether it’s another person in the youth ministry or an associate or senior / lead pastor, you’ve got a boss who directly supervises you.
One of...
What the book's about: As the subtitle says, Hope Prevails shares "insights from a Doctor's Personal Journey through Depression." It emphasizes the spiritual nature of depression.
Why I read this book: As a youth worker, I always...
I've just returned from one mission trip and now my focus turns to the next one. This week is littered with several meetings related to our upcoming mission trip, one of which is our adult leader's meeting.
At this meeting, we'll cover logistics...
Worried first-time mission trip adult leaders often ask me, “What can I do to be a good adult leader?”
As someone who is not only a youth worker and a parent but also a former mission trip staffer, I have a unique perspective on this. I still...
My husband and I have traveled a LOT with our daughter, Hope. My in-laws joke that Hope has been on a plane more in her first two years than some people are in their entire lifetime. When people hear how much we've traveled with Hope, they often...
Before we had kids, my husband and I loved to travel together. As juniors in college, we studied abroad in Russia. Ever since then, whenever we've gotten the chance to go somewhere, we have.
One of my fears in becoming a parent was that we'd stop...
A few days after returning exhausted from a week-long mission trip, I woke up to the worst kind of e-mail, a nastygram from a parent chewing me out for a comment made on the mission trip.
Upon reading it, my first thought was “Seriously? I spent a...
What the book's about: Mack & Leeann's Guide to Short-Term Missions is just that: A guide to short-term missions, written by two InterVarsity Campus Fellowship staff workers who have directed numerous mission trips to Kenya, the Middle East...