I know, I know. Not the cheeriest title to start the New Year with, huh? But we here at the Westminster Blog wanted to start the new year thinking about fresh starts, about clearing the slate, about making things as they ought to be. For me, this means looking hard at resurrection. Resurrection is bringing life from death. Resurrection is about putting the old way of doing things behind us, and…
A few weeks ago those of you who joined us in worship got to hear from some amazing students that I have the privilege of working with in our confirmation class. We call our confirmation class here at Westminster Storyline for two major reasons: 1) The convention Ed and I go to every year gave away a ton of free graphics with the storyline title a few years ago, and more importantly 2) stories…
People’s questions about prayer are often about “how do I pray?” What techniques can I use to make my prayer time more meaningful? A better first question is “why do I pray?” All of the instructions and techniques are of little value until we wrestle with why we pray in the first place. If we only explore the how and not the why we will have another thing that we can do but little understanding of the re…
Exactly in line with Erikson’s works, I have found there to be one major “project” of teen’s high school years. That project is answering the question, “who am I?” As Jason eloquently wrote last week, this is a matter of identity formation, and is a psychological priority for teenagers. This stage is something of a nexus of development for youth ministry. Students who have navigated through the first four …
One of the most prevalent questions in the minds of many teenagers is “so what?” If presented with a great deal of information, even a tremendously beautiful view of the world, we as humans are so frequently compelled to try to figure out what to do with it all. This is why so many students will take an advanced algebra class and come home sighing to themselves and asking “when am I ever going to use t…
