Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

In John fifteen, Jesus uses a gardening allegory to tell his followers about healthy and vibrant spiritual growth and development. Jesus explains that when we enter into a relationship with Him there is a life-giving connection along with a sustaining maintenance procedure that we must willingly and actively pursue if we are to bloom, grow, and bear fruit as He intends us to. In effect, he describ...

I recently ran across another clear example of how secular science confirms what we know as Christians to be most beneficial to our teens as they navigate the difficult years of adolescence. Researchers at the University of Southern California have been looking how a teenager’s thinking influences their brain development, for better or for worse. Using interviews, functional mri’s, and ongoing sur...

Adoniram and Ann Judson, were the first foreign missionaries from the U.S., departing for their work in Burma back in 1812. When young Adoniram approached Ann’s father to ask for her hand in marriage, he wrote these words: “I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathe...

When we think about teenagers and addiction, it is important that we engage in preventive efforts in order to keep kids from getting addicted. This holds true when it comes to device and screen addiction, which will become more of an issue in years to come. Experts are telling us that if we would take time to set limits and borders now, we would prevent addiction and these marks of screen addictio...

When difficult decisions. . . or even the little decisions of life. . . need to be made, what authority do you consult for guidance? All of us make thousands of choices a day, and every one of those choices is made based on some standard or authority. For the Christian, it is the authority of God’s Word that should form the basis of all of our decisions. The writer of Proverbs tells us that the di...

Today, we come to the end of our week-long long look at researcher Ellen Galinsky’s new book about teenagers, “The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens”. In it, Galinsky lists five things teens wish their parents and other adults knew about them. As Christian parents, we should pay special attention to the fifth message she heard from kids: “We want to learn st...

Researcher Ellen Galinsky has released a brand new book about teenagers. It’s called “The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens”, and it includes five things teens wish their parents and other adults knew about them. All this week, we’re looking at what Galinsky heard from teenagers. The fourth message she heard is this: “Understand our needs.” Obviously, we hav...

Researcher Ellen Galinsky has released a brand new book about teenagers. It’s called “The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens”, and it includes five things teens wish their parents and other adults knew about them. All this week, we’re looking at what Galinsky heard from teenagers. The third message she heard is this: “Don’t stereotype us.” Just like us, our t...

Researcher Ellen Galinsky has released a brand new book about teenagers. It’s called “The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens”, and it includes five things teens wish their parents and other adults knew about them. All this week, we’re looking at what Galinsky heard from teenagers. The second message to parents is this: “Talk with us, not at us.” As our kids d...

Researcher Ellen Galinsky has released a brand new book about teenagers. It’s called “The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens”, and it includes five things teens wish their parents and other adults knew about them. All this week, I want to look at what Galinsky heard from teenagers. First, teenagers say they want parents to “Understand our development.” I agre...

There’s a growing amount of research pointing to the fact that  smartphones and social media are undermining the well-being of our kids when borders, boundaries, and safeguards are not enacted. Recently, the American Psychological Association released a report on the science of how social media affects our youth, specifically looking at the risks associated with content, features, and functions. O...

As followers of Jesus, we must go to and trust God’s Word as the spotlight that shines truth on our understanding of gender. God, the Creator of all things, pronounced everything He created as “good!” But when He finished creating humans He said “very good!’ And what He pronounced as “very good!” was male and female. . . the binary genders He designed and assigned. . . male and female only, that a...

When Christian missionaries go through training, they spend lots of time learning their message. Missionary training is centered on learning the Gospel so that it might be shared correctly. But the message is not the only thing they learn. They also go through lots of learning about the culture of those to whom they are being sent, along with how to best communicate in ways that can be heard and u...

When one of our kids came home from school and announced that he learned on the school playground where babies come from, I asked him what he had learned and from who. Not surprisingly, what he had learned didn’t even come close to the truth, so it afforded us an opportunity to tell him the truth about God’s good design for sexuality. Parents, here are three essential elements to good and Godly te...

Last month, I read social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” Over the past few years, I have found Haidt to be a trustworthy voice of reason regarding those issues that foster healthy growth and development in our kids, and those practices that are harmful. In his latest book, Haidt provide...

On this weekend when we look forward to celebrating Father’s Day, I want to remind the fathers who are listening of their greatest responsibility in life. In Ephesians six four we read this: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” If we are taking the time to carefully, diligently, and correctly teach the Word of God to our...

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase, “Garbage in, garbage out.” I remember my own youth pastor telling us that a car has been created with great care to run smoothly on the right kind of fuel. He used the illustration of what happens to car when someone maliciously pours sugar into the gas tank. It wreaks havoc on the engine, as it clogs the fuel filter and injectors. Of course, my youth pastor was t...

Advances in neurological science point to the amazing complexity of our God-made brains. Because their brains are still developing, our children, teens, and even young adults have what is called an underdeveloped impulse control. This makes them less prone to resist behavioral impulses and more prone to engage in risky behaviors perceived to bring some kind of immediate benefit, but which could al...

In a world where our kids are hearing that there is no such thing as the creational gender binary of male and female, and where they are hearing that they have the power to choose their gender based on their personal feelings and desires, there are a growing number of young voices who hope to turn the tide including nineteen year old Chloe Cole. As a young self-described tomboy, Cole was introduce...

Earlier this morning, I went online and purchased a book with a title that grabbed my attention. The book is Linda Flanagan’s “Back in the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports – and Why It Matters.” While I have yet to read the book, the overview describes how Flanagan lists some ways that this frenzy and obsession is changing things for kids and our families, and not for the better....

“We did it, and we turned out ok.” Perhaps you’ve heard that line of reasoning from other parents regarding today’s teens and marijuana use. In fact, a government survey indicates that since 2015, the number of parents who believe there is a risk of harm from using marijuana has dropped, from just over thirty percent of parents, to just over twenty percent today. But researchers and medical profes...

In the story of Noah, a righteous man who walked blamelessly with God, we see God’s grief over humankind’s sin. And while God chooses to cleanse the earth through a flood, he also chooses to make a covenant with humanity to never again destroy the earth through a flood. The mark of this gracious promise is the rainbow. As a sign of God’s promise of grace, the rainbow should point us to exhibit a r...

In his book, “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”, Alan Kreider offers an explanation of how Christianity took root and grew in the Roman Empire, even though the church was marginalized, despised, and discriminated against. The parallels to the world we find ourselves inhabiting as Christians today is remarkably similar. Kreider explains that four things happened to advance the faith, and I b...

Advances in neurological science point to the amazing complexity of our God-made brains, and inform us about how best we can parent our kids in ways that lead to their healthy growth and development. Recently, the American Psychological Association released a report which reminds us that starting around age ten and continuing until the mid-twenties, the human brain is hypersensitive to social feed...

As our culture continues to promote ideologies that leave so many questioning their gender and sexuality, it’s important that we as parents and the church continually remind our kids of God’s good and glorious creational design as put forth in Genesis one and two. God made humanity in His image, and He made us male and female, which is the gender binary so many dispute and deny today. Why should b...