I am sitting here as I write this post typing on a new Macbook Pro with a Retina screen. You've seen a Retina screen before - any iPhone since the 4 has had one, so odds are, if you have an iPhone in your pocket, it has a retina screen.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the iPad mini was its lack of a retina screen. It has the same resolution as an iPad 2, only squeezed into a size that was almost 2 inches smaller. Lots of people love the smallness of the iPad mini, and some have even said that the iPad mini outsold the iPad 4 two to one. People really like it. 

Now the iPad mini has a retina screen, and the resolution on it is even better than the new iPad Air. I haven't seen one yet, and the word is that supplies this holiday season may be severely constrained, but this very well may be the best iPad for preaching, teaching and writing yet. 

Why? Because of text. 

Text rendering on Retina screens is extraordinary. And if you're a preacher, teacher, writer, or anything in between, you live in text. You take notes in text. You read and write in text. 

There are lots of great apps for the iPad mini out there - Simplenote and Editorial are a few of my favorites - that take complete advantage of the sharp, un-pixelated text rendering you find on a Retina screen. The best part is that the text rendering is built into the system, so as long as your app runs and has been updated for a retina iPad (which most of the have and are now required to by Apple), the text in any app will look crisp and clean. 

For example, in my workflow as a youth minister, I do a lot of writing, copying and pasting, reading, and presenting. I have all my notes in Simplenote (which has a really nice Mac app as well). I compose my lessons and sermons in Simplenote and they're automatically synced to my iPad mini. I can't wait to see what my words look like on a Retina screen, not to mention how much easier it will be to read while presenting. 

If you need to format your work and make it look great, Apple's Pages is also a great place to start. You can even print to several cloud-enabled printers using AirPrint. 

I won't be getting a Retina iPad mini immediately, but I'll definitely be checking them out as soon as I can. If you're in the market for a 7-inch tablet, the resolution on the Retina iPad mini is certain to please. 

Hebrews 4.12:

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

In other words, the Gospel cuts. 

The true, unadulterated, unbiased message of the story of Jesus cuts us to the heart. The Gospel can do its work. Our own wisdom cannot do this - the Gospel can. 

When was the last time you spent a significant amount of time in the Gospel? When was the last time you dove into the Word?  

Martin Luther said this about the Gospel:

"[It is] is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me."

Sometimes we need to just get out of the Gospel's way and let it work. 

Then Jonathan said to David: ‘Tomorrow is the New Moon festival. You will be missed, because your seat will be empty.’ - 1 Samuel 20:18

Growing up, I was made to go to worship. Every time the church doors were open, I was there. My mother would (almost) let me miss school before she’d let me miss church. It was engrained into my mind that I would be there.

This carried over to later in my life when I found a purpose in worship. I found that it wasn’t just about me getting what I could get out of it, it was about participating in the worship of our Lord and giving what I could to Him.

I think that maybe a lot of us fail to understand that these days.

As a youth minister, I see it a lot. If there is something better to do, then that certain kid won’t be at worship services, whether it’s sports, a concert, or homework. So what are we raising our kids to think their priorities are?

Without getting too much into the actual importance of being at worship, I just want to say one thing: that when you’re not there, believe it or not, you are missed.

In 1 Samuel 20 Jonathan says this to David, talking about the New Moon festival. Without reading the context of this verse, we may think, “Aw that’s sweet. Jonathan was concerned for his friend.” But if you read into it, you’ll understand that David was staying away from the festival because he was sure that Saul would try to kill him.

Every true worshiper needs to understand this verse – You will be missed, because you seat will be empty. If they do not understand this, perhaps the rest of us need to remind them.

As Christians, we have a lot of things in our job description. Be an example of Christ. Care for those less fortunate than you. Preach the Gospel to everyone. But another part of our job that we sometimes overlook is something I like to call Retention.

During my time spent in the Marine Corps, I learned that every base of large unit has something called a Retention Officer. This officer’s only job was to make sure that Marines were staying in the Corps past their allotted time of duty. He would call us from time to time to see if we were thinking about reenlisting and what those reenlistment options were. Sometimes, big incentives were given to high-value occupations.

As Christians, in our local churches, in our local communities, what are we doing to keep people there? Do people know you care? Do people know that they are missed when they’re not there?

I encourage you - members, youth ministers, ministers, what have you - to start making an effort to see where the empty seats are located. Christians need to be with other Christians. Christians need to worship.

It may sound like just one more thing we have to do, but the rewards of finding that one lost sheep among the ninety-nine will be incredible.

Youth ministry can be a long, hard slog sometimes. 

Sometimes you'll look out on your teens and see apathy in their faces. Sometimes you'll catch them posting really stupid and bad stuff on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe you'll even struggle as to if Christ is even having an impact in their lives. 

I've heard of numerous examples in other minister's lives (and even some of my own) about kids coming back years later, sometimes with their own kids, and saying something like, "You know, I didn't know the value of Christ in my life when I was a teen in your class. Now as a twenty-something parent of two, I've rethought that, and I've always thought of what you taught me." 

Youth ministry sometimes isn't an immediate-response kind of thing. 

Sometimes you're just planting seeds. Seeds that may take years to grow. Seeds that might not have ever been there had you not taught the Word of God and led kids to Christ like you did. 

Just remember that some kids will never be reached. Other kids won't be reached...at least not right now. But seven years down the road, they may look back and say, "You know, that silly youth minister of mine was on to something good." 

Your love and kindness towards teens and their parents now can have a long-term impact on their lives well into the future. While it might not be evident at all today, you may be planting the seeds for a relationship with Christ tomorrow. 

As a guy who is in the market for a new Mac myself, I figured I would do a no-nonsense, easy to understand buyers guide for all those who may be contemplating getting a Mac. And also, since Apple came out with a slew of new stuff including new Mac and software, there's never been a better time to buy a Mac. 

If you've never used a Mac as your personal computer, you're in for a treat. You get a clean desktop experience with a great Mac App Store ecosystem to play with. Best of all, Apple said yesterday that all their apps (for both Mac and iOS, excluding the pro apps like Final Cut and Logic) are going to be free with the purchase of any new Mac or iOS device. 

That being said, if you go to an Apple Store, the clerk is going to be honest with you. They're not going to sell you a pro machine just because they want to make money. One big difference about Apple is not just their products, but the way they sell them. Sure, you could get a maxed out MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles, but do you really need that, and do you want to spend that much money. Apple customer care is all about getting you, the customer, the right product, not the product that will help inflate profits. 

So if you've never bought or used a Mac before, you'll need to know that as of yesterday, the entire iWork suite (Apple's much better version of Office, which includes Pages for word processing, Keynote for presentations, and Numbers for spreadsheets) is now included for free. You can download them for free using your new Mac. No more buying $200 worth of software, keeping up with product keys and all that junk. You just need an Apple account - the same one you use to download apps on your iPhone or iPad - and you're good to go. 

Give Up Microsoft Office

These Office-like apps are a huge deal - the main complaint I get from users who want to switch to a Mac tell me, "Well, I just can't give up Office." Yes, you can. Apples iWork apps export to all Word, Powerpoint, and Excel formats. I use Pages every single day and everyone else in my office uses PCs with MS Word. I've had no problems in 4 years using nothing but Pages. People also tell me, "Well I have to use MS Word for work." Again, you can export any Pages document into MS Word format, to PDF, or into plain text, or even ePub. It's simple. 

While there is a learning curve with these apps, as there is with anything new and unfamiliar, I would venture to say that you'll have iWork apps figured out inside of 3 days. You'll wonder why you wasted so much time with Word and Powerpoint when you can use the elegant and simple Pages and Keynote. 

Below is a chart explaining some things about what machine you might get if you were buying a Mac today. 

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1. The only machines on this chart that are desktops are the Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Pro. I put a 'maybe' here for the Mac Mini and Mac Pro because they are such small devices, especially the Mac Mini. You could fit a Mini in a small backpack and carry it around and hook it up to your different monitors if you so choose. The new Mac Pro is a great deal smaller than the aluminum monstrosities Apple has been selling for the past several years. 

2. The speed of your processor seems to matter less and less these days with dual- and quad- cores (literally extra processors to crunch your data) and RAM, SSDs and OS management have made processor speeds not so important. So don't harp on this number too much, especially with the MacBook Air. The Air was the first Apple laptop to incorporate Solid State Drives (SSDs), i.e. drives with no moving parts. This greatly speeds up your computer. All Macs now have the option for SSDs now. 

I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next month giving you snippets of my new eBook, A Minister's Guide to the Mac, due out on November 26. The first half of the book will help any minister or professional transition to a Mac for the first time, while the second half with give you helpful apps, tips and tricks to help you make the most out of your Mac and can help even the most advanced Mac user.