Not My Own

I was sitting at a restaurant and over heard adults complaining about the current generation of teenagers. They complained about how this generation of teenagers is overly self focused and consumed way more with sex and poor choices more than any other generation. "Things are just not the way they used to be when I was a kid. Kids these days only care about getting high and getting it on. They don't take responsibility for their actions and they are giving into temptations without a care." I heard a man complain. I wish I could take this group of adults and all other adults who think and believe this and let them walk in my shoes for a week. If I had the ability to do that, perhaps they would see teenagers in a different light. As a youth minister, I get to see teenagers who are passionate and excited about their faith and serving others every week. Yes, they are tempted to follow the crowd and get caught up in moments of temptation; and yes sometimes I get frustrat

I was so thrilled to see one of my students coming back to bible study! I thought she left our youth group and started going to a different church, but she came back to us and I could hardly wait to talk to her. "We are so glad to have you back!" I said. "Well thanks, I went to another church with my friend and you wouldn't believe everything they had! They had huge video screens and multiple Wi game systems and everything! All the kids loved playing them." She explained. "That's really cool." (Secretly feeling bad because I knew we didn't have anything like that and probably wouldn't for a long time and I knew I just couldn't compete with that) "Not really. They spent half the time just playing games and not much time learning about God. I didn't like it." I was so impressed by this student's willingness and desire to learn about God. I decided that night I would  spend most of the time really focusing on th

A few nights ago I had a dream that there was a snake trying to bite Andrew and I. Chloe, our dog, was also running around in the background of my dream barking at the snake. This gets kind of weird but I was throwing acorns at the snake to distract it so it wouldn't bite us. I remember a big adrenaline rush followed by a huge feeling of fear somehow knowing this was a poisonous snake trying to cause us harm.  I woke up suddenly and could not get the dream out of my head for the rest of the day. Here's where it gets freaky like the Twilight Zone or something. After waking up the next day, I started of my normal routine by taking Chloe for a walk. I took her to the park so she could jump in the creek and cool off in case she was too warm from the scorching southern sun. Since living in Tennessee I was introduced to a little activity called "crick-stompin". Also known as... "creek stomping" basically to my understanding this means just walking

I was reading a book about adolescent development today and there was a section about sports. It caused me to heavily reflect upon my time as a high school and college athlete. I remember training harder than ever in high school so I could be a starter on the Varsity team. My defense skills as a catcher were very strong. My hitting was consistent, but I was not a power hitter. I was a decent single hitter and great a moving my team-mates around the bases. My greatest strength was bunting. Yet, every player longs to hit a home run. I had been trying to hit a home run ever since I could play ball. It was never accomplished. In high school I spent much of my time trying to make my swing more powerful. I remember after one of my best rounds of hitting in the cage every ball was a solid line drive to the back of the net. Hitting the ball like that felt so good! I hit almost an entire bucket of frozen ropes. When I was done I quickly ran over to pick up all the balls and I smi

When I was in high school, I remember walking in to youth group late skipping all the worship because I had softball practice. People at youth group would give me a hard time about it, but at least I was still there. Sometimes I even missed youth group all together or worse, I would miss a big youth group event of some sort because I had softball. I was a leader for the middle school ministry at my church but in the spring I couldn’t be a leader because my busy softball schedule. My youth leaders and other Christian friends became frustrated with me and told me that I put softball before God. The funny thing was, that they didn’t realize I was late because at the end of softball practice I asked my team to gather and pray before a big game, or that I was walking a team mate to her car and listening to her troubles in life. I was so pissed off at them for even daring to think I put softball before God when I was bringing God into softball and to my team-mates. They were