There are over 1,900 posts here on the Love God, Love Students blog on DYM. What a year it has been! As we countdown the year together, I thought it might be fun to post a few of the Top 10 posts of the year. Enjoy the list … and if you haven’t read these posts yet, they are some of the best of the best:

  • Top 5 Trends Teens Aren’t Blinking At … But Should
    When you’re born into something, you don’t notice it. It’s normal. It’s always been there. You know nothing different. You don’t question it. You accept it. And when someone comes along who does question it. . . well. . . that rattles your world and you think the questioner is nuts. That’s certainly the way it is with the youth culture soup kids are swimming in today. There’s stuff in there that wasn’t around when those of us who are older were adolescents. But it’s always been there for our kids.
  • What I Learned from the Ultimate Warrior
    I have been a professional wrestling fan since the 6th grade. Call me lame, but I have always found something so exciting and interesting about the entire idea of the show, emotion, athleticism, and history of it. The Ultimate Warrior is one of the most famous wrestlers of all time. While he is well known for his time in the early 90’s, he is better known in the wrestling world for his poor reputation and his own self-destruction. Another title for this blog could be, “How to Not Be a Flash in the Pan.” Here are a few things I learned from his mistakes that easily translate to ministry.
  • Colonial Hills Youth Group Tragedy
    An Indianapolis congregation on Sunday mourned the deaths of their youth pastor, his pregnant wife and another member who were killed when a church bus overturned with just a mile to go in a return trip from a Michigan summer camp.
  • 12 Questions to Ask Before You Teach
    This last Saturday I was struggling with the message that I was going to teach on Sunday. That’s not unusual. Typically, when that happens, I ask Cathy (my wife) to read it and then help me wrestle with it until I feel better about it. While she was reading it, I opened my journal and began to write down questions about my audience and my message. I thought a couple of these questions might be helpful to you. I just typed up my scribbles…
  • 5 Lies Girls Believe: Part 2 (here’s Part 1, and part 3, part 4 and part 5 as a bonus)
    Gossip and cliques become the norm. When you walk into a school cafeteria you see a scene right out of Mean Girls- lines are drawn between people based on their appearance, interests and socio-ecomonics. Social exclusion is one of the most common, and therefore normalized, form of bullying. This is the most common among girls. 1 in 3 girls have stated that they have experienced this forced isolation.

JG