At the Battle of Belleau Wood in France in 1918, the Germans described the ferocity and fighting spirit of the US Marines they were battling as tefel hunden, translated Devil Dogs. Devil dog is now a term of endearment in the modern Marine Corps. Many Marines will use it as a alternate term to ascribe to the other Marines in their unit, and some will use it as a motivator and method of praise. 

In Philippians 2, starting in verse 19, Paul talks about some servants he hopes to send to the church there at Phillipi. Usually, unless we're looking for a historical context, we skip over these portions of scripture and discount them as just administrative verses, because, after all, Paul was writing a letter to someone, telling them what he was going to do, just as if you and I would send a text, an email, or make a phone call. 

But in verse 25, Paul has some very high praise for a man named Epaphroditus. He calls him a brother, a fellow worker in the Lord, and a fellow solider. 

I don't know about you, but if Paul would have called me a fellow solider in Christ, I would have seen that as extremely high praise. 

I know as Christians we don't seek the praise of men, only the approval of God. But for Paul to call someone a fellow soldier, a fellow Devil Dog, would seem to indicate that he was doing what was approved of God as well. 

Could Paul say the same thing about you? Would he, today, be able to give you such high praise? If not, then why not?

Jerry Elder has been at youth ministry for a long time - 30 years this year to be exact - and he has lots of experience with all sorts of things in youth ministry. ​

Crisis Management is something we don't think about... until a crisis hits. Just ask the people in Moore, Oklahoma right now if they had a crisis plan in place if it would have made a difference. ​

Click on the audio bar below to listen to Jerry's comments and our discussion on crisis management for ministries. Click here if you wish to download the audio file to your computer (49 MB). 

My confidence and trust in free services is at an all time low. Like many other geeks and early adopters, I’m focused on using services that I’ve paid for and for whom I am the customer and not the commodity... So in the arena of read-it-later services, I’ve been thinking about options where I would be considered the customer.

I realized that one company that I do trust, for whom I am the customer, offers such a service. But it’s one I never gave any consideration since it launched, I suppose because I was already enjoying some other service at the time. This company is Apple and the tool is Reading List.

Great writeup from Chris Bowler on Safari's Reading List, a service that no one uses (yet), but is right under Apple users' noses. ​

You want to know what I have to say about someone that tells me 'not to take personally' comments, criticisms, gripes, moans, or complaints about the ministry I work for? ​

Rubbish. ​

Because for me (and you may be different), there is no way for me not to take things personally.​

When a kid says, "I don't like the color of the summer camp shirt," I take it personally. ​

When another kid complains that there wasn't anything to drink to go along with the doughnuts I brought to class that morning, I take it personally.

When anyone makes a snide or unthoughtful comment about an event that I spent months planning every detail, I take it personally. 

You see, some people in ministry (pulpit, family, youth, or otherwise) can step back and take themselves out of that situation, turn off a switch when they go home from work and forget about all the things that were said that day. ​

Not me. ​

And I'm betting that's most ministers of all types out there. ​

Comments, arguments, moans, complaints are not like water off a duck to me. With some people, yes, because some people will do nothing but complain. I'm talking about others. Other people, parents, and the very teens in the youth group. To me every complaint is like a stab with a needle. It hurts for a while, it doesn't bleed much, but it leaves a mark. ​

No one can run the perfect, flawless ministry. No one can go without mistakes. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's okay of you take the ministry you work for a little personally. It's okay to take work home with you sometimes. It's okay to ​be emotionally involved - frankly, I don't see how all ministers don't get emotionally involved. 

In ministry, everything is personal. Jesus even took things personally and showed emotion because of it. We can't hold everything in. We'll eventually explode. ​

If you're one of those ministers who is able to shrug things off, then I commend you. And to a certain extent, everyone has to learn to do that. But as my wife told me, I think that getting involved and being passionate about the work we do makes us better ministers, even if we can't detach ourselves sometimes. ​

People are being very critical of Google right now, and some of their decisions that they see going against the 'Open Web' policy. Laurent Eschenauer:​

We are developers, and hacking the future is what we do best. So, time to wake up and start building alternatives.

Laurent is writing to Google's dropping support for XMPP in Hangouts and eventually RSS in Chrome and SMTP ​in Gmail. 

 ​He's right though - there are plenty of developers out there with plenty of great ideas, better ideas than Google. We need to remember that Google talks a good talk but in the end, they are a company out to make money. And we are not Google's customers, we are the product.