My friend, youth pastor and writer Mike McGarry, offers some great advice to youth workers and parents on how to prepare students for a lifelong faith. This is important to consider as the research consistently points to the fact that far too many kids are not only graduating from high school, but graduating or walking away from the faith as they enter young adulthood. Here are Mike’s four best practices for facilitating a lifelong faith. First, apply the Gospel to everything. Help them see that Christ not only came to save them, but to lead them into faithful God-glorifying living in every sq ..read more

With March Madness now being over for about a week, it’s a good time to think about the place sports holds in our lives. Some recent data from the Pew Research Center offers five facts about Americans and sports. First, about half of Americans say they took part in organized, competitive sports in high school or college. This means that many of our kids grow up playing organized sports. Second, most Americans who played sports in high school or college say their athletic experiences improved their physical health and confidence. Third, our love for sports is also about spectating. Almost forty ..read more

Do you think that pop music has an influence on the values, attitudes, and behaviors of our kids? The truth is that it’s not just the lyrics that influence, but the high-profile lifestyles and stories of the pop stars themselves. Popular singer and Grammy award winner Olivia Rodrigo is one star whose music and lifestyle influence our children and teens. As part of her recent concert in St. Louis, Rodrigo did more than sing to the twenty-two thousand fans assembled at the Enterprise Center. With the help of the Missouri Abortion Fund, Rodrigo handed out free Plan B pills, or morning after emerg ..read more

If I remind you that today is known as tax day here in the United States, some of you will breath a sigh of relief that you have completed the tedious work of pulling your tax returns together. Others of you, if you’ve forgotten about today, might now be panicking over your procrastination. What I want to encourage you all to do is to use today as a teachable moment to share with your kids what Jesus and the Apostle Paul have to say about governmental authority. Both of them taught that we are responsible to pay taxes to the government. Jesus tells us in Mark twelve seventeen that we are to re ..read more

Today, we wrap up our look at the categories of Pornographic Style of Relating, or PSR, that Dr. Andrew Bauman tells us undermine God’s good desire for our sexuality and human flourishing. After the first four categories of control, objectification, speed, and hunger, Bauman cites a fifth: isolation. With pornography, sexuality is experienced in sinful and fallen ways behind closed doors. This isolation fuels a secret life and very quickly breaks down our relationships, undermining our relating to our spouses, children, and friends. God’s design is for our sexuality to be shared with our spous ..read more

Today, we continue our look at the categories of Pornographic Style of Relating, or PSR, that Dr. Andrew Bauman says undermine God’s good desire for our sexuality and human flourishing. After the first two categories of control and objectification, comes a third category, speed. He writes, “the rapid pace of relationships comes to resemble the quick climax of intensity around pornography. Pornography desires speed, which is opposed to the kind of healthy relationships marked by faithfulness and long-lasting intimacy. Bauman’s fourth category of relating is hunger. In terms of sexuality, hunger ..read more

Yesterday, I told you about Dr. Andrew Bauman, a Christian counselor whose own experience and study on the effects of pornography has reported on the dire effects of pornography on young men and young women. Bauman has written about the development of what’s called a pornographic style of relating, or PSR, which happens when pornography becomes a child’s primary teacher and guide on sexual development. Today, I want to look at the first two of the six categories of PSR Bauman cautions us about. First, there is the category of control. God has given us sex as mutual experience for one man and o ..read more

It’s no secret that our kids are being misinformed and misshaped by the pervasive presence of online pornography in today’s world. Because they are sexual beings who are naturally curious about their developing God-given gift of sexuality, we should be instructing them in age appropriate ways about God’s plan for sex and gender. But if we choose to be silent, they are left to have their questions answered by a sexualized culture and peer group that’s been heavily influenced by exposure to pornography. The largest pornographic website in the world reports over ten billion visits per month, and ..read more

One of our greatest concerns about smartphone use among children and teens relates to pornography. With ninety-five percent of teens having access to a smartphone, we should be concerned about exposure to pornography, either intentional or unintentional, along with both the short and long-term effects of pornography on our kids. The average age of first exposure is between eleven and thirteen years old, with some studies finding that kids as young as nine years old are exposed. By the time our kids reach their teens, about eighty-five percent of our boys and sixty percent of our girls have vie ..read more

One of my favorite memories of childhood was reaching the age where from time to time, my parents would allow me to sleep over at a friends house. I remember the joy of staying up late, watching movies, and eating pizza with a group of buddies. My kids experienced sleepovers as well. In today’s world, there’s a movement away from sleepovers that I think is warranted. We live in a world where we’re learning more and more about predators and sexual abuse. When a child is a victim of sexual abuse, ninety percent of them know their attacker. Half of those known abusers are family members, and the ..read more