Russ Cantu: Archive

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Understanding Your Young Teen - Chapter Three

WALKING HORMONES Chapter three brought us to one of the most tantamount sections of parenting and guidance we have come to thus yet: “Walking Hormones”. We all know that one kid who reeks of him or herself from lack of a quality shower, or the kid who walks around thinking they’re the stuff because their bodies are ahead of the curve. We know these things to be true. Yet do we talk about the...

Feb 15th

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Understanding Your Young Teen - Chapter Two

IT’S ALL ABOUT CHANGE This chapter, is really all about you. But it’s not; and it is. There is a mass idea out there that as parents, we don’t need to try and understand our young teens, because we already do. After all, we were there once and things haven’t changed all that much. The thing is, things have changed dramatically. The fabric of our culture today - within the...

Feb 7th

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Understanding Your Young Teen - Chapter One

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME OF THIS AGE? Last week we started looking into youth ministry guru Mark Oestreicher’s new gem of a book, Understanding Your Young Teen. Going through the book is something our entire youth worker staff and a few parents have decided to do together in order to better understand youth culture, how we can best relate to young teens, and how we can make the most positive...

Jan 31st

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Understanding Your Young Teen - Introduction

For the next several weeks, our regular posts for leadership development in student ministry will focus on a new book by youth ministry guru Mark Oestreicher. As a youth worker team at Prescott Church Modesto, we will work through his book Understanding Your Young Teen, taking one chapter per week (or longer), pulling out a few golden nuggets and have ongoing discussion as to how we can...

Jan 24th

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Jan 18th

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Watch

Make Us One - High School Winter Conference 2012 If you are a part of the Prescott student community, watch all the way through for a chance to earn a camp discount.

Jan 18th

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“Just because you say you’re a team, doesn’t make you an actual team.”

– Calling yourself a team is not the requisite for being a true team. Look at it from the sports angle. On a team that plays effectively, each player or participant in the team: Knows the clear overall strategy on how to reach an accepted end goal. Knows their role in the overall strategy of the...

Jan 11th

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Affirming Students, 8:1

Students do not have enough victories. Unfortunately, failure is more prevalent in their lives than victories. But is this really the case? No, this is not the case. It’s just that failures are felt more than victories. Think about it like this: it takes eight positives to overcome a negative in a person’s development. Therefore, if a teenage girl is told that she is ugly, it will take eight...

Jan 10th

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Jan 10th

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Dec 23rd

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Youth Workers Should Be More Like Alec

Do life just like Alec Baldwin. Get on that plane and become so engrossed with a game that you pay little to no attention to those around you. Forget the instructions. Ignore the authorities. Be like Alec. And really, would it be all that bad if you did? If you cared more about connecting with your friends in different ways more than you cared what others were saying? Would it be bad if you...

Dec 13th

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Surviving the Fray

Sometimes life requires us to merely survive instead of thrive. It’s just the way it is. We lead busy, fragmented lives; distracted and unprotected. The demand for our attention consumes every waking hour, from things that are both within our control and things that are not. Getting by is sometimes the only option. That, is the fray. It is the frazzle of life. Where things come undone, but...

Dec 6th

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Four-Part Communion Message @ Prescott Church....

Dec 4th

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Dec 2nd

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Suffering with Students

When students suffer, we suffer. Suffering is a value we hold high within the confines of student ministry. It’s not a pretty value like you typically see, but it is real; it is life. And it something we want our students and leaders to get as they process life in small groups and as a ministry. When one student suffers, we all suffer. If we are to be the true church today, then the value of...

Nov 29th

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Protecting Our Kids, Our Church and Ourselves: ...

“How do I [as a youth worker] make sure the issues we see at Penn State don’t repeat themselves at my church?” In order to make sure these situations do not occur at your church, under your watch, to the students that are under your care, you need to make sure certain policies and procedures are: Clearly stated Communicated Understood Adhered to In our ministry, we have a Youth...

Nov 16th

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“May no act of ours bring shame.”

– Penn State Alma Mater. Due of recent accusations, Penn State is now in the thick of its own waste. At the center of the mess is the most revered college football coach of all time, Joe Paterno. A former assistant was caught fondling a young boy naked in the shower. This was witnessed by another...

Nov 9th

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Setting the Bar, and Getting Passed Up.

Let’s start with a simple and basic leadership principle: That a follower very rarely, if ever, passes the leader in their own competency, skill, endeavor, etc… This is a tried and true principle that is proven over and over. There is this leadership ceiling if you will, a ceiling that caps off at an individual leader’s ability and leadership capacity, that disallows a follow to break...

Nov 9th

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Harold Camping is done with predictions. Are you?...

Are you one of those youth workers who know what’s going to happen when they show up and lead their small group? You know- the kind that knows Jimmy is going to distract everyone and that the new kid is going to shirk low in his chair. Are you certain that this week Caleb will refuse to participate? Too often as youth workers, we assume to know how students will act and react in groups and in...

Nov 2nd

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Communities of Practice & the Tension: Youth...

There is a large discussion going on in the world of youth ministry right now regarding the methods we use to disciple students. This encompasses the way in which we teach and the way in which students participate in the learning process. One of the largest conversations happening is about creating Communities of Practice, where learning is social; doing life together. Students and staff...

Oct 24th

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Grow A Pair!!! →

Seriously. How could think for one second that the issue of compromise is an unworthy topic of conversation to discuss in an open format? What are you waiting for: some pastor to screw up so bad it taints the whole of Christendom? For church to get a bad name, or be called irrelevant because they won’t talk about the gritty things in life? Really, what’s the hold up? Read the full...

Oct 21st

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Choosing to be Present: Youth Worker Training

Presence is a word that defines what makes and breaks a group. If the group is continually present in the lives of its members, then presence exists as it was intended. However, if presence is not active, then the group is not existing as was intended and the group is merely a gathered group of people with no intentionality. Job was a man who lacked present friends. When he first was tested,...

Oct 17th

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Oct 7th

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Go Ahead Compromise. It's Cool... Right? →

It’s all the rage these days. Pastors who lead their church with showboating excellence, when behind the curtains there exists a fragile and broken leader; afraid to live out who they really are. Unable to confess their junk and be real with their staff, their elders; their congregations, they align themselves squarely in the corners of the Pharisees, the one group Jesus challenged more than...

Oct 4th

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Your crap smells and it's getting everyone dirty!

Did you not know that your crap stinks? Was this some great mystery, as if you’re walking around thinking your stink don’t stink. In ministry, the way we lead our personal lives flows directly into how we lead our ministry areas. If we are horrible personal life planners, if our lives are spinning out of control and our calendar is mis-managed; if we can not get a grip on who we are...

Sep 28th

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How to Think AND Do Leadership

What does it matter, really, if all we ever do is think leadership? We come up with fancy new concepts, we bring others around the table and talk shop, but what happens when we simply sit on our hands and leave it there on the table? Nothing. Nothing happens. It never will. Because as good as it is to think leadership; to dream big dreams, it is impossible to do leadership unless transform the...

Sep 27th

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Dry Diaper Leadership

Do you know these leaders? You know, the kind that walk around thinking they’re all hot stuff, puffed up and great at speaking or leading worship; and yet their lives and ministry reflect the type of leadership that is simply misguided and directionless. In front of everyone, they look well and good; perhaps even polished. Yet behind the curtains, their lives are infantile. My son is...

Sep 19th

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Sep 16th

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Living by the Maybe →

My good friend Jeremy just wrote this beautiful POST about the tension of living in the now, instead of for the maybes of life. Think about it- how often have you been guilty of sitting idly by, waiting on the world to change, perhaps even expecting it will? That is pure garbage, and I think you know it deep down. In order to make a difference, to plan and stay ahead and be available, you need to...

Sep 14th

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Watch

Sep 13th

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Tailor-made Religion [Christianity] →

Check out the linked article from USA Today. The premise: that there’s this whole world of Christianity that is basically catering their own version of religion. We get this, and we can see into the future the cause and effect playing out. We know that the moment Christianity gets put into a box, especially a box made by human hands, it loses its worth. Why? Because it is no longer religion...

Sep 13th

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“If you’re good at everything, you’re not great at anything.”

– In fact, you’re probably only mediocre at best, and that’s with only a few things. Most likely, you’re only good at one thing and the rest is just a distraction. you’re wearing too many hats, and they don’t fit. Trim the fat. Spreading your skills thin is not good for...

Sep 12th

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How Adult Are You? - Survey →

What is your adult competency? Im a 95%. Take this interesting survey and see how grown up you are… or aren’t.

Sep 9th

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Plan Ahead and Stay Creative

There is this undermining subculture of ideology within student ministry that has our student pastors and leaders failing to plan ahead. And why would they? They is a multitude of resources available to them at the click of a button. Need an idea for Wednesday night youth group? Just click this website and they have it for you. It doesn’t matter that it’s Wednesday morning and...

Sep 7th

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Watch

Help start a revolution with the guys at The Youth Cartel! Extended Adolescence Symposium: FUND HERE.

Sep 6th

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“10,346”

– The number of hits this blog post has within two months. God is working out some serious tension over there. Glad I can be a part of it.

Aug 31st

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Aug 30th

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Aug 24th

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Yes. Shattered lives are avoidable. →

Absolutely. Positively. Broken. Shattered into millions of tiny pieces, strewn about the room. A husband’s confession tore open the heart of his wife, and she lay huddled in an almost embryonic state. A decade long married crumbled at the state of his depravity. If only someone was there to help him along the way. This man gave up his fight against porn because no one wanted to help him … READ...

Aug 2nd

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Aug 1st

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Watch

A short synopsis of the soccer camp hosted by Prescott Church and sponsored by Sports Authority, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Soccer Pro and Visual Horizons. Throughout the camp we reached over 100 children and their families and are seeking to continue to build bridges that will contribute to community wide ownership.

Jul 20th

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How Do I Know God Still Loves Me? →

“How do I know that God still Loves me? The things that I have done are so wrong I do not think that He can love me any longer?” There is this beautiful section in the Gospel of John chapter 10 that brings this idea out to a fuller extent. In it Jesus declares… READ MORE on x3Church or Every Man’s Battle.

Jun 28th

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