​1. Martin Luther: A Spiritual Biography by Herman Selderhuis

2. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke

3. A Reader’s Guide to the Major Writings of Jonathan Edwards edited by Nathan Finn and Jeremy Kimble

4. In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character by Jen Wilkin

5. God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs by Tim and Kathy Keller

6. Everybody, Always by Bob Goff

7. The Messiah Comes to Middle-Earth: Images of Christ’s Threefold Office in The Lord of the Rings by Philip Ryken

8. Into His Likeness: Be Transformed As a Disciple of Christ by Edward Sri

9. If Only You Knew: My Unlikely, Unavoidable Story of Becoming Free by Jamie Ivey
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10. Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture by John Piper

With Mother's Day right around the corner, I've put together a cute, little (alliterated!!) list of event ideas and girls only topics! If you are wanting to throw a Mother Daughter Event!

I usually don't like to share about individual series, but this fall we did an amazing series that I briefly wanted to share about! This fall we did a 4 week evangelism series called "Don't Freak Out". This series was partly adapted and inspired by the book "Sharing Jesus (without freaking out)" by Alvin Reid. In this series, we showed out students what it means to share your story and what that actually mean, how to share their story, and then encouraged our students to go out and share their story with their friends, and then invite them out for our "Freak Out Night" for the last week of the series. This is where we shared the gospel with a room full of first time guests and friends of our brave students who were able to bring their pals! We saw a 13% increase in attendance this night and saw 3 decisions made for Jesus! It was an incredible night and I am so proud of our middle schoolers for being bold in their faith!

This event was the most fun to follow up an awesome Girls Weekend! This girls night was focused on bringing the girls together and teaching them to bring what they already had to the Lord! Our lobby was filled with all things FALL! Fall-themed food, an adorable photo booth, fall-themed games, and more! This night was a blast, and again, a perfect follow up for what we spoke about to them at Girls Weekend!

There are not many things I love more than Girls Weekends! It's such a sweet time for our lady students to get together, learn, grow, and just feel special and loved on. I'm going to share what we did and some elements we had that really made our Girls Weekend super special!

- After Service, they went into small groups to process what they had heard.
- By the time everyone got done with small groups, it was time for bed! 
- Our girls had to wake up early Sunday morning to eat breakfast, get their t-shirts, and get the busses loaded in time to be at church for Sunday AM small groups!

It's your first time serving in Middle School. Middle schoolers are smaller than you, but they are still kind of (somehow) intimidating. What to do now?! I got chu, boo! Here are some of my fool-proof ways to talk to middle schoolers, in a none-small-group setting. 

I'm not going to lie... this one hurts (my ego) just a little bit to write right now. But I think it's going to help in the future/long run, so I am going to suck it up & tell you the tips I learned from the mistakes I made when it comes to promoting an event for your ministry. (Yes, I have given myself grace... don't worry about me) Here are my tips to help with promotion.

-- Hit Them From All Sides // There's more than one form of communication when it comes to promoting an event. All forms of social media; church slides; video announcements; word of mouth (on stage and going classroom to classroom); emails; handouts; mailers; etc. HIT THEM ALL to ensure you've contacted everyone.
-- Communicate // This goes with the advice above. Let them know what you're about to tell them. Then tell them. Then tell them what you told them. Then repeat that process about 4 more times. If you think you communicated, you didn't. If you think you might need to communicate more, do it. If you think you're being obnoxious with all the communication, you should probably send out one more email the day before... just in case. You can never over communicate when it comes to getting event information out there to students and their families.
-- Event Graphics Matter // I have always thought this was important, but it has been ingrained in me. If your graphic designer is not making you happy and you're *this* close (cue fingers very close together*) to just settling with a design you know is no good. Go. With. Your. Gut. & don't settle. Event Graphics can sometimes make or break your event. People say "don't judge a book by it's cover", but they don't follow their own advice... so just be sure the graphic is dope as heck!
​-- *Eye Emoji Here* // Videos help build anticipation!! Whether it's a 15 second bumper or a 2 minute video explaining the event -- videos can be the visual push you need to get those students signed up!
-- School Promotion // If you live in a city/state where you are still able to go into school lunches & clubs to promote your event... take advantage of it! Bring registration forms to schools, put up posters, pitch the event to a class... do whatever it takes! If you do not have access to schools, it is vital to tap into your key students in leadership. Give them registration forms to hand out, invite cards to shove in lockers, posters to hang up, food items that have a stick with the event info to give to other students, etc. 
-- SWAG // As Michael Scott would put it, "Stuff We All Get". Or, in this case, stuff we all get when we sign up for this event! Having a promo item with your logo on it to give away upon completion of registration is such a smart move, if you have money for it. Whether it's a t-shirt, pop-socket, or just a pen... people love free stuff! Use this fact to your advantage to promo your next big event!

Second Sunday's have been the most fun and they are definitely something I think other ministries might want to implement! Here's a little bit about it!

I contemplated putting this under the "Ministry" tab, but I 1.) thought it was very important 2.) figured it was vital for someone in ministry. Let's address the first thing you might be thinking... NO, SELF CARE IS NOT SELFISH. In fact, if you want your ministry to succeed, and if you want to be a great leader -- this is a key component to your underlying success in ministry.
Now, when I say "self care", it's very easy to think of a SPA day or a day of Netflix-ing. Although these things might be wonderful and fun (and sometime expensive), self care is different than just being lazy. Self care involves something(s) you do to take care of your mind, body, and spirit. As someone who struggles with giving herself non-lazy, self-care, I comprised a quick list of things you can (and should) do when you're looking for quick, easy, and *affordable* ways to self-care on the daily... or at least weekly.