Notes from a Boy Preacher

At age 11, my pastor asked me to make a regular presentation during the morning worship service. It seemed appropriate to use this platform to speak for the younger generation in our church. I interviewed other young people and talked about what we thought. I walked through the various rituals and services of our church and discussed them from a young person’s perspective. As my wife remarked over 15 years later: “Those were sermons, and you were a boy preacher.” I was led to compile forty-four of the brief sermons into this book. The purpose: to provide a window into the mind of a young Christian from ages eleven through sixteen. I hope that this window will give insight into the development of Christian faith in the early teen years. This is an important topic for Christians to consider, as proper development in one’s youth is the greatest predictor of how faith develops over the long term. I hope that this book will provide a starting point for more thorough and fruitful discussion between young people and their more senior counterparts. I pray that God will use these sermons once again to inspire, challenge, and lift up a generation of youth.