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Category Archives: Personal Spirituality

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A Spiritual Workout for Youth Ministers

By | March 28, 2011

I think we’ve all seen them. You know… the holy people. And we always want to be more like them – we want to be the prayer warriors, the people that are in church, praying our rosaries, hanging out with Jesus in the Adoration chapel, learning scripture and reading spiritually inspiring books. When it comes [...]

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It’s (not) Complicated

By | March 23, 2011

Sometimes I think we tend to overcomplicate things. Relationships, projects, work, school and life; we manage to take simple things and over think them. For example, I was talking to a friend a couple of months ago. He was telling me about how he was so done with the relationship he was in. He was [...]

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Feeling Isolated in Your Ministry? How to Find Encouragement

By | March 21, 2011

I remember my first Life Teen Training Convention 6 years ago. I was fresh into a youth ministry career and was asked to do Life Teen for the first time at our small parish of 250 members.  During my first convention, Randy Raus had said, “Be prepared for when you do things for Christ, Satan [...]

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God’s Plan Not Ours

By | March 15, 2011

“What is God doing and how can I be a part of it?” One of my friends posted this question sometime ago.   I find myself thinking about it often in terms of my own life, but I also need to think about it as it relates to youth ministry.  It’s easy to make our plans [...]

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When the Wheels Come Off: Rediscovering Your Joy

By | February 25, 2011

My already bad day had immediately gotten worse. It was just “one of those weeks” in ministry where everything I did was wrong in someone’s eyes; I had a stack of annoyed emails to prove it. As if that weren’t enough, it was also the week that everything in our house broke almost simultaneously: dishwasher, garage door…even the coffee maker. Forget Murphy’s Law, this was straight up lunacy with a heavy side of spiritual attack.

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Holy Naps

By | February 18, 2011

Most people I know are convinced that prayer should be a regular part of their lives, and most people I know are also convinced that they don’t pray as often as they should. I include myself among most people I know. I find it is easy to forget that prayer is more than just a part of our relationship with God; rather, prayer is our relationship with God (you can thank Mark Hart that quote!).

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Catholic Pop Quiz: Where is the first officially recognized Marian Apparition in the United States?

By | January 12, 2011

Just before Christmas I found myself eating lunch in an almost empty parish office. When my lunch break doesn’t consist of a fast food run or an hour catching up on Facebook, it finds me in the parish office reading the comics and sports section of our local paper. On this particular day, I was greatly disappointed that my hunt yielded only the business section of the paper. When the secretary stopped by I asked her if she knew where the real paper was, and she tossed a paper in front of me: the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin Newspaper – The Compass.

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Another Year Over, and New One Just Begun…

By | January 4, 2011

“And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and new one just begun.” I still like John Lennon’s song with its beautiful melody and because it helps the listener mark the passing of a year and the arrival of a new one. As complicated as John Lennon could be as a person, his lyrics were often simple and to the point.

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Confessions of an Engaged Man in Ministry: Tips for a Healthy Engagement

By | January 3, 2011

This past year has been one of the greatest years of my life. While the New Year began with its usual resolutions: get in better shape, eat better, etc., everything changed at the end of February, when I got engaged to my beautiful fiancé, Alissa. The joy and anticipation we felt were like nothing I had ever experienced in my entire life. We were so excited to dream, not only about the wedding day, but also about what married life would look like for us. We also knew that while planning the wedding was important, we needed to ensure that it did not consume us. Below are some highlights and my thoughts from this past year in my experience as an engaged man in ministry.

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Tis’ The (Retreat) Season

By | December 3, 2010

In my area, what I like to call “retreat season” is nearly upon us. The parishes are starting to advertise parish high school retreats, confirmation coordinators are trying to find out what’s going on at other parishes, and our diocesan retreats are beginning to be promoted. As we all know, a new liturgical season is [...]