Greg Robeson's blog

I find Lent to be a powerful liturgical season because of the emphasis on sacrifice. If I give up chocolate, I can relate better to a child in poverty who has never tasted chocolate. Sacrifice connects us to the suffering of others. It is easy to forget about the way babies suffer in the womb at the hands of an abortionist, or the way women and their families suffer as a result of the death of her child. We forget because this harm is hidden. Abortion is marketed in a crafty way, targeting the youth in particular, but the abortion industry goes to great lengths to hide the suffering they cause. Abortion often gets treated like an issue for debate or an argument with two sides, and the suffering fades from our view. We must remember. Our pro-life advocacy is a function of our willingness to suffer with dying babies. Read more »

Do I really need to study my faith after all these years of religion class? I am tired of homework!

Isn’t it enough to just love Jesus and work on my prayer life? After all heaven is based on my relationship with Jesus, not book knowledge, right? Read more »

When I was in high school, I played just about every sport; but, by my junior year, I had dropped down to two sports so I could focus on getting a basketball scholarship. Had I not sacrificed those other sports and fun extracurricular activities, an athletic scholarship may not have been possible. As a youth minister I view commitment in a similar way; sometimes I see teens hopping around from one group to the next. If you don’t commit to one youth group, you run the risk of maintaining a shallow faith- you don’t ever get rooted in any community.

Being a part of a youth group is similar to belonging to a team. If you regularly attend a youth group, you become part of the team. Accountability and intimacy grows with knowledge. Read more »

Have you ever heard the expression, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”?

Recently I was on a show called “Life on the Rock” and I had the opportunity to talk about a topic that is exciting to me. You can check out the episode here if you like- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNiCc-OcnOo. During the live interview, I got to share some thoughts on youth ministry. Since the show, I have been getting emails from people all over the country asking questions or commenting on something related to the topics we discussed on the show. A topic that often comes up is the relationship between apologetics, or defending the faith, and youth ministry. Exactly how do I teach the faith as a youth minister? This is the topic of my blog. Read more »

I am easily impressed with knowledge. I often find that the moment I learn principles of the faith or new insight into moral living, I am not only quick to share them, which is good, I am also quick to expect others to live up to these newly acquired standards of mine. Here is an example. Read more »

Do you have the new iPhone 4 yet? I waited in line for over an hour in the heat to get one. The AT&T store only had 60 on the day they came out and I wanted to be one of the chosen. So I got up before everyone in else in my house and made the necessary sacrifice to get what I wanted, the best phone on the market. Initially my new phone impressed me mostly because of the new features and speed- it has the same processor as the new iPad computers, so that’s a pretty fast phone. After using my phone for a couple of days, I noticed that it was dropping lots of calls. Many business calls were interrupted, sometimes 3 or 4 times in the same conversation. I later learned that Apple publicly addressed this and is working on a solution, but I was no less disappointed. Read more »