Joel Stepanek - LifeTeen.com for Catholic Youth Archive

Not the Same Lent: Four Ways to Engage Teenagers in the Lenten Season

We take for granted the gap between curiosity about these unique practices and understanding them, let alone incorporating them into our spirituality. For teenagers – especially this year – Lent is an important season.

Failure to Communicate: The Biggest Reason Teens Aren’t Listening to Your Teachings

by Joel Stepanek

When we stand up to communicate to a group of teenagers (or anyone, for that matter), we need to understand two things: context and content. The context is the state of the audience receiving the message.

Why You Can’t Form Community

by Joel Stepanek

We need community, and the good news is you are already part of a few, now get to work in transforming them from something where you are just a frequent shopper number into a place where you are sustained and supported.

Campaign Speech: Having Conversations with Teens About the Election

by Joel Stepanek

The signs have been up for months and the ads keep interrupting your YouTube videos. The news is focused on it and social media is bursting with everyone’s opinion. The election is here.

Speak Something New

by Joel Stepanek

We can only speak in a way that makes us open to the wildly creative, incomprehensible, and wholly incredible Spirit of God that transforms us and our world, making all things new.

Relentless Father

by Joel Stepanek

Beyond our hurt, beyond our questioning, beyond our fear, there is still a God that is all-powerful, all-good, and all loving. He has not changed – God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

You Are Going to Die… and Other Thoughts from 35,000 Feet in the Sky

by Joel Stepanek

Why are you afraid of dying? I needed to dig heavy into that question. I didn’t like the answer, but it was something I needed to hear.

Heart of God

by Joel Stepanek

God’s heart is for you. Don’t let that statement be a cliché or platitude. Look at it again. Let it roll over you and take you in. Embrace this divine mystery and seeming contradiction. God is a self-contained Trinity, in need of nothing. He is being itself. God has no […]