Jared Herd

In the summer of 2001, when I was 20 years old, I sat crying in the hallway of a convention center in Panama City Beach, FL.  I was a small group leader of 5 energetic and rebellious 10th graders that week, a group I’d invested the previous year with, so I highly anticipated getting away [...]

“Children aged 9 to 11 now hold “fame” as their No. 1 value. Fame ranked 15th in 1997.”- Journal of Psychology Research on Cyberspace Youth workers, our job is getting tougher. We wake up every morning to invite students to follow a guy who said the first are last.  These same students have already been [...]

The other day I drove past a car that had a plethora of old campaign bumper stickers on it. There was the “Bush-Cheney 04” sticker right next to a “Reagan-Bush 84” one, divided by a “Clinton- Gore 96” sticker.  In my head, this conversion van was driven by a church librarian who let her hair [...]

A stroll through Barnes and Noble reveals that leadership is a hot topic, as it should be.  Great companies, churches, governments and families are impossible without good leadership.  All of our lives are affected by our leaders- for better or worse.  So for that, I applaud the recent surge in leadership conferences, books, blogs, and [...]

In a world that has invented sound bytes, headlines, instant coffee, fast food, gogurt, 140 characters, and hot pockets, I am developing an increasing affinity for anything that takes awhile.  Rosanna and I spend an odd amount of time discussing the benefits of French press coffee over instant coffee, slow roasted meats over the salted [...]

I love working with high school students. I have spent the last ten years or so hanging out around youth camps and youth groups, and whether leading small groups at church or speaking at camps, I have learned some valuable lessons from the millions of interactions I’ve had over the years. I want to talk [...]

I haven’t had much desire to write as of late, between finishing my first book (yay!) and writing for a living, sitting down at a computer to put thoughts on a screen brings to mind that same feeling I get when I trudge to my basement to do P90X. (Which I don’t do very often) [...]