Some people may think it weird or merely the sign of an obsessive personality, but I get butterflies when I walk into an Office Depot. Even the thought of notebooks, filing cabinets, planners, and binders gets me excited. Oh for more sticky notes and file-folders with reinforced tabs! And, for those who think I am…
Before you Hire a Youth Pastor: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Fit. By Mark DeVries and Jeff Dunn-Ranking. Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2011. 124 pp. $7.99. The search for a youth pastor can be a tedious one. While many churches have a plan in place for replacing their departing youth pastor, often times,…
Why did you write Family-Based Youth Ministry? Tell us about the process by which this book came into existence. So many youth workers, including myself, were heartbroken over the disconnect between kids who participated in youth group and those who continued to live out their faith for a lifetime. It set me on a search…
I first read Family-Based Youth Ministry by Mark DeVries when I was just a couple of years into ministry. As a 20-year-old student pastor, that book shaped my thinking in crucial ways. In those early days, I was well-intentioned, but I had in my immaturity developed a subtle bias against parents. I saw the problems…
In this article I will argue that Jesus has given believers a “key” that promises to help them glorify God in their families. It is a priority that is plainly spoken, but one that is easily missed when well-meaning Christians sinfully put their family above God. Though this “key” may at first seem to be…
Higher education, while never a completely stagnate field, is experiencing what has been called a ‘flurry’ of changes in recent years, driven mainly by technology.[1] The technology of inexpensive computers, high speed internet, and high quality multimedia educational delivery systems have allowed for increased flexibility in higher education so that students can easily take courses…
Expectations are always high when it comes to short-term mission experiences. After all, the sometimes multi-year process of identifying where to go, who will go, and how they will get there usually comes to an exhausting, but successful conclusion, complete with video clips and jet-lagged participants. The reentry from the trip commonly brings with…
A series of recent and ongoing research studies are exploring the nature and extent of intellectual and ethical maturation among pre-ministry evangelical undergraduates at varying institutional types. This line of research represents the most in-depth analysis ever conducted among this population with regard to epistemological development—i.e., students’ maturity in their ways of thinking, reasoning, and…
strategies for reading to your children
Many contemporaries have a deep-seated suspicion of catechisms. In our own Baptist denomination, many would consider the words “Baptist catechism” as mutually exclusive. A popular misconception is that catechisms are used in times and places where inadequate views of conversion predominate or the fires of evangelism have long since turned to white ash. If the…
My first response was to reject family ministry as an utterly ridiculous and impractical idea in my context. It took two years for the struggles of ministry and the work of the Spirit to change my mind. “I Don’t See Any Way That This Could Work Here” In 2002, I was called to oversee children’s…
James K.A. Smith Professor of philosophy at Calvin College What would you call the primary shortcoming in Christian academic engagement? In a lot of what passes for the Christian “academy,” I think we are still too ensconced in echo chambers and not really exposing ourselves to the real academic challenges and cross-pressures of the day.…
Invitation to Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Grammar by Russell T. Fuller (Kregel Publications 2017, $64.99) Regardless of the method you choose, learning Biblical Hebrew is hard. A massive amount of memorization, diligence, and patience are required to learn it well, and the student is exposed to a extremely foreign language system. While Greek has letters…
This is Our Time: Everyday Myths in Light of the Gospel by Trevin Wax (B&H Books 2017, $16.99) Review by S. Craig Sanders At 35, SBTS alumnus Trevin Wax is one of the earliest millennials, at the edge of the divide with Generation X. But in his new book This is Our Time, Wax confronts…
John Sampey received a mysterious letter with a message from his late friend and colleague A.T. Robertson. Problem was, Robertson had been dead for three years.
A Vietnamese student’s road to faith
Russell T. Fuller, professor of Old Testament interpretation, discusses his new intermediate grammar for Biblical Hebrew
Don’t just start scrolling through your Netflix queue immediately after taking your last final exam. Set the TV remote aside for a minute and crack open a novel first. You might be surprised where it takes you.
