The last few days have been deeply demanding. Not particularly physically demanding (although it was nearly 100 degrees every day and this northerner hates the heat) but certainly emotionally and spiritually. I have been in Managua, Nicaragua the last few days with a team of other speakers and artists from around North America that [...]
Archive for April, 2007
Tomorrow I am off to Nicaragua for five days with Compassion. I am looking forward to seeing some of what they are up to there. For almost 10 years now my wife and I have been sponsoring a few children in partnership with Compassion and are experience has been amazing. I have [...]
Last Friday night I was watching the NBC Nightly News with my friend Jim Newberry. At the end of the program they did a short but very rich story on a guy named Bill Austin. Bill has given out more than 200,000 hearing aids to people all over the world… He seems like [...]
I spent the weekend in Kansas City. I was facilitating some of our (Sonlife) new evangelism training called Reveal: Joining in the Activity of God for about 60 students and leaders from the KC area and a church from Norwalk, IA. I was thrilled with the way the students and adult volunteers interacted [...]
This morning a new friend of mine named Ryan Smith drove 2.5 hours from Nappanee, IN to meet with me regarding A New Kind of Youth Ministry. Ryan is the youth pastor at Nappanee First Brethren Church. He has been the youth pastor there for 7 years and is seeking new ways [...]
Creativity, Youth Ministry & The Gospel
Posted: 5th April 2007 by Chris in Spirituality, Youth MinistryI am intensely fascinated with creative people. I have never really seen myself as a creative type so being around creative people always inspires and challenges me. Even more than that — it gives me the permission to generate new ideas, imagine, innovate and invent.
I have been reading a short book called, Interactive [...]
This morning I read the following and thought I would share it with you all. It is from one of my favorite books, The Illumined Heart: The Ancient Christian Path of Transformation by one of my favorite authors, Frederica Mathewes-Green.
“We think of theology as an intellectual undertaking, an attempt to construct a systematic, comprehensive [...]
I had the chance to speak at SOULstice last night in Minneapolis. It was great fun. I spoke on the discipline of confession or telling God the truth. Scot McKnight in his book Jesus Creed provides some great insight into what confession means and looks like. I borrowed most of my [...]