Using long car rides to connect
A bus full of middle school students, a 7 hour trip and about 10 adult volunteers. If you’ve been in youth ministry for even a year or two, you may have experienced this situation. Kids pile in as far toward the back of the bus as possible, take their seats and plug headphones into their ears. Then your adult leader load the bus, sit together near the front and start talking with each other. Two problems...

Are You A Last Minute Youth Minister?
In ministry, when we throw things together at the last minute we’re basically telling those we serve, “My time is more important than yours.” And I don’t think any of us want to communicate that to teens. So, if you’re a youth minister who’s struggling with leaving things to the last minute, here are some tips to help you get things done (before the last minute)...

Today I was a New Volunteer
So I’ve been getting the emails from my son’s 7th grade football league, begging for parents to come help set up the fields on game days. I decided to go help out – partially to remember what it feels like to be the 1st-time volunteer … who has no idea what he’s getting himself into. It was SUCH a reminder of what people might be feeling when they show up to serve in our ministries. Here are a few observations from this morning...

Miracles Happen: The Untold Story of the Chilean Miners’ Rescue
When I heard this miracle story it blew my mind! It’s about Pope Benedict’s role in the rescue of the Chilean miners, whose one-year anniversary we observed last Thursday. Check it out...

10 Signs you might be married to your job

Fruity Technology

Should Parishes Communicate With Facebook?
In my experience, Facebook is typically avoided by parishes. I understand. Facebook, and other social media platforms, carries with it huge moral implications. This being said, Facebook currently has over 750 million users. Right now it is the second most visited website….IN THE WORLD...

The Stakes are High

[Homily given at the opening of Baltimore's High School Leadership Institute (High-LI) - 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time] Dear Mr. Potter...

48 Hours: A Crucial Time for Youth Ministry
I know most summer youth ministry schedules are filled with mission trips, leadership training and youth conferences. Just as important as your preparation and work during the event are, what happens after the retreat is even more critical – especially in the 48 hour period. Teens come back fired up, excited about their faith and they need to share it...

“I love Jesus more than bacon.”
Yeah, I know, that should be a T-shirt or a bumper sticker or something. But it was just a simple sentence that came out of my six year old daughter’s mouth last night after I said good night to her at bedtime. Before I turned off the light she turned on the charm and blurted,“Daddy, I love Jesus more than bacon.” I laughed out loud and said, “I do too. Good night sweetie...

Work Hard, Be Kind, and Amazing Things Will Happen
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… but it does almost kill you. Conan O’Brien delivered this year’s commencement speech at Dartmouth College...

Top 10 Words/Phrases You Don’t Want to Use Anymore

10 Ways to Improve Your Relational Ministry

5 Things That Make Great Core Teams
Throughout my life I’ve been on a lot of teams. There have been baseball teams, basketball teams and now that I’m old – slow-pitch softball teams. Some of these teams I’ve played for and others I’ve coached, but perhaps my favorite team was my youth ministry Core Team. There are few things more rewarding than working together with other dedicated Catholics to lead teenagers closer to Christ. As you take time to evaluate your ministry this summer, consider these five things that make great Core Teams...

The Narrow Path
God loves us more than we can possibly imagine. But I’ve noticed in my recent Scripture readings that when the Bible tells us about how much He loves us, it usually follows by saying how important it is to obey Him. For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says the famous words: “As the Father has loved me, so I love you.” (John 15:9)
But then He immediately follows it with...

What I Saw At Home Depot. . . And A Good Ending. . .
So last night I'm standing at the paint counter at our local Home Depot while the clerk's got my two cans shaking violently in the machine under the counter. I'm guessing that most Home Depot stores are set up in the same way. The paint counter sits on the open aisle spanning the width of the store way up front, just across from all the check-out registers. If you want to see all the action at a Home Depot - and who wouldn't!?!? - then the paint counter offers a pretty good 360 degree vantage point...

Top 20 Youth Ministry Blogs of 2011

10 great benefits of confession

Why I Just Stopped Coming to Your Youth Group
I’m an average teen. I am in 11th grade and I work a part time job at a local grocery store. I am Catholic and was confirmed last spring. I don’t come from a messed up family, just a family that is spun in many different directions each day.I have a few close friends who I have been friends with since I was in elementary school. Most of my other friends are people I know from the internet and are part of on online gaming group I hang out with online after school. I am a loyal person and once I become your friend, I am always your friend. I just stopped coming to your youth group...

Why Harder is Almost Always Better
Let’s face it, youth ministry is hard. Trying to realize our passion to see young people fall in love with Jesus is hard. The institutional church, parents, culture and many other limiting factors often don’t help us much. It would be easy to just throw in the towel. Many do. Easier isn’t always better though. Trying to do something really hard, staying with it through enormous opposition, benefits us as youth workers...

Ministry to Families in Need
As I began working in youth ministry four years ago, I realized quickly that as you get rooted in a parish, you also get rooted in the families that make up that parish. At the time, I had no grasp on the gravity of this role. With our role comes the joy of sharing in family moments such as awards, honors and graduation. But just as we get to share in the “high points” of family life, we also share in some of the most difficult moments. Whether it is divorce or death or illness, we need to understand our role as support to the whole family, not just the teens...

The Problem with Value
Last week I read a great post by Seth Godin. He writes that depending on external motivation traps us. What we need is to find motivation inside of us. I whole-heartedly agree, but where do we find value in ourselves? It’s a mystery unless you know of something in yourself that is amazing. It could be good, but that isn’t really satisfying. We all want to be more than good...

Jesus in the City

Favorite iPhone/iPad Apps

7 Reminders when Students Mess Up
If you give students responsibilities within your youth ministry, sooner or later they will mess up. Not because they’re incompetent or irresponsible, but because they’re students and therefore only human. How you handle their mistakes can have an enormous impact on them. Here’s seven golden rules to keep in mind when your students mess up...

Discipling ADD
I have recently been revisiting a familiar paradigm in youth ministry. I thinking about how you minister to an ADD adolescent. There are so many teens with this label I feel like I need to clarify. I’m not talking about a child with lots of energy or a kinetic learner, although both of those characteristics are found in people with ADD. What I am talking about is the ability to focus which may be also tied to hyperactive behavior or a physical learning style...

How Being Southern Made me a Better Catholic
Living in Minnesota for 15 years has taught me many unexpected things, including not wearing post earrings in January (don’t ask), but one of the more serious things I have learned is that Southern Catholics have a cultural leg up on people who live in Catholic-entrenched territories. For example...

Heartbreaking...
I was in college when one of my buddies said something to me that captured a universal truth in a way that I had never considered it before: "We're all worshippers. We all worship something. We've been born to worship. . . and worship we will." Some of us make a conscious choice of worship object, and we build our lives around that. Others wind up worshipping something without giving it all much thought. It just happens. In one way or another we all - as Dylan once sang - "got to serve somebody."

Postagram

Never Tie a Water Balloon Again

Keys To Being a Great Core Member
I was training a group of young core members when I commented about what a great looking group of young adults they were. I think I said they looked like they could be in a Gap Ad. All of a sudden one of the girl Core Members asked me “What’s the perfect core member looked like?” I thought for a second and then immediately responded...

Youth Tracker
A few months ago, I noticed a major weakness in our student ministry administration. It seemed like we had a revolving door of student visitors with no sense of follow-up. We had informational cards, but it never seemed like we did anything with them. The result was seeing new students come week after week, but finding that we were ineffective in drawing them in to stay...

Creating a Ministry Brand
There is nothing more important when you’re selling a product than the branding you give it. That’s Business 101. Out of all the logos listed to the left, you could probably identify the organization immediately. You know who it is, what they are selling and probably how you can get your hands on one of their products. They have relentlessly put their brand in front of you and convinced you it’s something you need. Shouldn’t we be doing the same in ministry...

What Do You Think About Lady Gaga's "Judas" Video?

Change

Blessed
Dear Young People, I would like to add something else to what I have already said to you. I would like to speak to you briefly about prayer, about communion with God, a communion that is deeply personal between ourselves and God.

Tradition
This last few days we’ve seen two amazing examples of the power and beauty of tradition. On Thursday, Prince William and Kate got married. It was a beautiful ceremony, dripping with hundreds of years of history. Though I was not at all a fan of the tabloid way the news media covered it (I couldn’t care less about Kate’s dress) it was an important moment, especially for the people of England. On Sunday, John Paul II got beatified. A million people gathered to celebrate the event. The liturgy was amazing and reflected over a thousand years of Church Tradition.

They Are Listening, But Are They Hearing?
I don’t know about you, but I was not raised in a Christian home and listened to some pretty foul music as a teenager, music I would never play for my mother let alone my students. I may be embarrassed about it the reality was that I owned those CD’s listened to them all the time; it was a part of who I was. The question is, did I know what I was listening too? Did my mind compute the words that I was saying?

Trader

3 Things You Must Master in Youth Ministry … But Never Will

How to Rock the Parish Bulletin
I visit a lot of parishes in the course of a year and I usually will pick up a parish bulletin to see what is happening. Since my passion squarely is with parish youth ministry, I always look at how the youth leader communicates with the community via the bulletin. First of all, let me say that I have seen some great examples and some epic fails on the part of my fellow Catholic youth ministers. If you ever struggle with the concept and wonder if it makes any difference at all, here are three ways that you can make the most of the free communication you get each week in the bulletin...

Helpful Website for Youth Ministry/Culture: YouTube Trends
I’ve ben watching the YouTube Trends website for a little while now – I think it might be helpful to you in youth ministry. I watched this terrible music video called “Friday” this past week, and the every next day I bumped into a whole group of students laughing around the very same video. Might be a helpful heads up for you as a youth worker, too...

Clowning for God
While I was in Boston, I met a woman who was a circus performer in Brazil, and did a lot of ministry with people in the circus. She shared with me a prayer she gave to people who were clowns. I know it’s a fashionable thing to say that clowns are odd, or that they are scary (thank you, Stephen King.) But I’ve always loved clowns. In Chicago, I grew up watching Bozo the Clown on WGN channel 9. And when I worked at the improv club in Orlando, I knew a lot of guys who graduated from clown college. Yes, there’s a clown college. It’s actually pretty cool...

Sunday

Twitter Easter

Contrary to Popular Belief: (Mis)perceptions in Youth Ministry
I’ve always liked the phrase “contrary to popular belief”. It gets your attention. It challenges your knowledge. What follows it can leave you feeling sheepish at your own ignorance or quite edified in your own intelligence. For instance, contrary to popular belief…

Making the Best of Your Time at the Desk
I’d like to take a guess and say that administrative work is NOT topping the “My Favorite Things” list for most youth pastors. We do the paper-pushing because it seems like we have to; like it’s a “necessary evil” of our job description. When I started out in ministry, I was anything BUT organized. Because of that, I often found myself less than prepared for stuff I “coulda, shoulda, woulda” seen coming. Years ago, I created a skeleton that I hang every workday on...

New iPhone app aims to help Catholics go to Confession
Developers of a new “confession helper” iPhone application say they found inspiration in Pope Benedict XVI’s call for more youth involvement in social communication. “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” is the first iPhone, iPad and iPod touch application from the South Bend, Indiana-based publisher Little iApps, LLC...

KC Star on KCK's St. John Catholic Church's Social Club
The Strawberry Hill area of downtown Kansas City (KS) is home to Saint John's Catholic Church, an "ethnic" parish set up for Croatian immigrants in 1900.Saint John's obviously retains its Croatian character, as shown by a Kansas City Star article today about the church's social club, which has an active bowling league...

Vocations and Bathrooms
I’ll be honest with you. I never was much into bathroom humor. I remember in high school watching many of my friends relish in the odors that they could create, either by sweat or gastro-intestinal issues. This is how it usually happened: 1)Someone would emit a fowl odor. 2)They invite their friends to smell it. 3)For some reason, their friends would acquiesce to that request...

The Spiritual Gift of Bilocation
“The Onion” has always been a great source of fake news. Someone recently started Catholic Onion blog, of which one Catholic itinerant minister commented “I wish them luck… on-going satire is difficult” Nonetheless, their third posting took on the “news” about youth ministers: 93% of Youth Ministers Can Bilocate, New Study Finds...

Truth Is Stranger #118: Examination of Conscience?--got an app for that
Can modern technology help strengthen our faith? Some techno-savvy Catholics from South Bend think so. In his message for the 2011 World Communications Day, Pope Benedict XVI said it's not enough to just "proclaim the Gospel through the new media," but one must also "witness consistently." The developers of "Confession: A Roman Catholic App" for Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch think their product helps people do both...

A New Arrival at CPYU!
Those of you who know us know that we love books. We also like to write books. . . it's not always a fun process, but we do it! We've got a new one that arrived here at CPYU this week that I'm very excited about. Derek Melleby - Director of our College Transition Initiative - has just released a new book with Baker Books, Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life + Learning...

Ordinary Time: A Revelation
I’m still sweeping up pine needles from the Christmas tree. I don’t mind, because unlike every other mess, this one has a definitive end. Some day soon, I will find and remove the final pine needle, and then the house will be back to normal — back to Ordinary Time.

Caught on Tape: Planned Parenthood Aids Pimp’s Underage Sex Ring