Ever wondered why you are here on earth, or what the purpose of your life is? According to a new essay by media expert Al Menconi, you’re searching for answers to life’s four basic questions—questions that every person asks at some point in their life. What are they? Menconi lists them in the article:

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. Where am I going? and
4. What is true?

In his essay, Menconi outlines the Bible’s answers to those four questions—and using a recent example from his life, he explains how seemingly innocuous things like the entertainment we imbibe can lead us astray as we look for those answers. Read the full article, and if you find it helpful, take a look through the Al Menconi Ministries website and read hundreds of other essays about faith, everyday life, and the messages (good and bad) that we absorb from the culture around us.

The Intersect Community provides training for church leaders. Recently, on their blog, Steve Argue wrote about the drinking age and how it relates to youth ministry in the United States.

Here’s an excerpt in which he writes about how the current drinking age has made a new way for people to transition between childhood and adulthood:

Historically, adolescences has shifted from a time of “transition” from child to adult, to a significant life stage that some experience well into one’s mid-twenties. There are many developmental and sociological reasons for this phenomenon.

It has been perpetuated, not the least, by youth ministry that has (on plus side) responded to the needs of this population but may also be (on the negative side) perpeduated a delayed entry into adulthood.

More broadly, it might be said that the road from childhood to adulthood has lost its way as adolescence is desired, worshiped, and longed to be preserved.

The lack of “signposts” toward adulthood have left gaps for other rites to be adapted. I wonder if the 21 year-old drinking age has become one of these rites. Maybe this rite has had to take on a flood of meaning that, on the surface, shows itself as binge drinking, but underneath calls for something more.

Hop on over to enter into the discussion on this topic.

Are you a pastor or church leader looking for a bit of inspiration to start off your Monday? The Online Pulpit is a semi-regular column that shares thoughts from working pastors, covering a wide range of topics relevant to church leaders.

The most recent column is about a serious topic, but one that pastors are called to address frequently in the course of their ministry: death and mortality. Gerry Koning uses an unusual metaphor to paint the human journey through life and death in a new light, casting the process of life not just as a morbid approach to death, but as a unique journey back toward our true spiritual home with God. If you’re a pastor who deals with this issue often, it might help you to comfort people grieving the loss of a loved one, or facing death themselves.

If that’s too heavy a topic for a Monday morning, there are plenty more columns to explore in the Online Pulpit archives, which go all the way back to 1995. For starters, you might take a look at The iPodization of Our Culture, about our increasing tendency to focus inward on ourselves; Ministry or Management?, which addresses the delicate balance between “running a church” and shepherding a congregation; or The Church in Exile, about how to address the church’s slide into cultural and intellectual exile from the world.