I serve my church as the head of a team that partners with parents to develop and encourage faith in eighteen-year-olds. I love it! Faith development has been my passion for twenty-four years. Over the last decade, I and others who serve in our church have expressed the desire to reach beyond the eighteen-year-old boundary and intentionally walk with students into their after-high-school years.

This post is the first in a three-part series about ministry to those who are walking with Jesus in their post-high-school and pre-family-of-their-own years.

Did you know that October is Pastor Appreciation Month? Pastors do so much more for us besides leading services on Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings. They are a major part of a believer’s life and the life of the Church. Pastors spend years studying to help preach God’s Word accurately and passionately. For all the work that pastors do—long hours spent visiting the sick and dying, counseling the troubled and distressed, teaching classes of all kinds to all ages—it seems appropriate to offer them our thanks and appreciation.

This post is adapted from Kim Marxhausen’s newest book, Weary Joy.

Entering the back-to-school season, teachers have a great opportunity to reach out to the families in our schools and connect them to church. While some of these families may already be a part of a church body, many school families don’t have a church home of their own. During this season, churches are re-launching Sunday School and hosting back-to-school events and backpack blessings, but how can we continue to connect school families to church as the year progresses and schedules fill up?

Chances are, you are going, or have already gone, on a vacation this summer. Maybe you took a day trip to a state park; maybe you’re flying to Europe for two weeks. Whatever you have planned or have already done, vacations are part of life. This is by God’s design—God rested on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:2), God commanded the Israelites to rest one day out of every week (Exodus 20:9–11), and God told his Old Testament people to keep three week-long feasts (Passover, Pentecost, and Booths). God set a pattern for all people to find rest in the midst of the work and toil of this world.

College is tough. With the pressure of getting good grades, meeting new friends, and trying to get involved on campus, it is tough to grapple with it all.

Summer is officially here. Now that school is out, it is a constant battle to keep the kids entertained. To all the hardworking, selfless, tired youth ministry servants…

First, the bad news . . . our teen girls are in crisis. I'm worried about them, and you should be too. My oldest daughter, Catie, is in high school and my younger daughter, Elisabeth, is in middle school. We’re living the teen girl life around here, and I see what’s happening to these young women. These girls believe they have to be perfect, and they are so hard on themselves when they don’t live up to impossibly high standards that they see on the internet.

I opened the refrigerator and there it sat. On the top shelf quivered a large maroon cow’s liver—inside a bright aqua bowl.

Congratulations and welcome to the oldest club in history. Many have traveled this road of parenthood before you, but your experience will be your very own, unique and wonderful, just as you and your child are unique and wonderful gifts of God. Being a parent is an exciting, joyful, fun, exhausting, twenty-four-hour-a-day, bewildering, delightful, incredibly awesome responsibility.