Ministry Leadership professor at Bethel Seminary. Learner. Former coach. Three kids in high school and college. Wife pastors at City Church in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis, MN
Joined August 2008
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Excellent Sept 2026 overview of the literature on childhood and teenage athletic development focused on Sweden but applicable broadly.
"pure junior to senior developmental linearity evident in less than 7% of cases" (Patterns of performance development in elite athletes, 2013).
Early sport diversification is associated with later elite success and may support motor competence .
Early specialization is no guarantee of success.
Causality remains uncertain, but sampling sports may help children discover their strengths.
link.springer.com/article/10…
Andy Rowell retweeted
The number of people writing dissertations in the humanities has collapses, now the same thing is happening in the social sciences.
I'd wager that we will see a similar trend in psychology and other fields before long. Cuts in funding, the tight academic job market, and AI are rapidly changing the university and cratering graduate programs.
Andy Rowell retweeted
Americans have a "revealed preference" for doing less of basically everything except going online and I have serious doubts that this is making us happier.
slowboring.com/p/americans-n…
Andy Rowell retweeted
Christianity Today has seen about half its staff quit or laid off in the last 14 mos. Former employees told me that new business leaders have intervened in editorial decisions & are effectively abandoning the outlet's commitment to independent journalism. nytimes.com/2026/10/21/us/ch…
Visited two college campuses for parents' weekend two weekends in a row where I also went for undergrad and grad school so it triggered many realizations and wonderings! ... And I should have kept some of them to myself.
Fellow thoughtful parents, you've been warned. 🤐
Andy Rowell retweeted
Drop what you’re doing. Go to today’s New York Times Opinion section. Sit down in a quiet corner. Start reading: “I Teach at a Business School: It’s Time to Shut Them Down,”by Chris Marquis, Univ. of Cambridge, former HBS professor.
BRILLIANT.
IRREFUTABLE.
LOOOONG OVERDUE.
I started doing all the cooking when my wife started a position with more responsibility and the three high schoolers needed huge helpings of food and no longer needed me to coach their teams. The internet makes it way easier than in 1999 when you needed cookbooks.
The cycle "pulls money, attention and legitimacy away from the disciplines best equipped to question this logic: history, philosophy, sociology, political theory."
"I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down."
By Chris Marquis
Gift article:
nytimes.com/2026/10/18/opini…
Andy Rowell retweeted
A "happiness crash" is unfolding among young adults. Since 2000, the share of 20-to-35-year-olds reporting unhappiness has more than doubled, from 11% to 23%.
By fueling social isolation, the Digital Revolution has exacted an esp. devastating cost on young adults.👇🏽
In Harlow's 1960s experiments, isolated monkeys "rocked, harmed themselves" & later cowered around peers.
Social contact, it turned out, was "as nonnegotiable as food or oxygen" for monkeys.
The same holds for young adults today. @Deseret deseret.com/opinion/2026/10/…
Andy Rowell retweeted
The empirical social science around the positive impacts of religious attendance is overwhelming.
When I tell this to crowds, I often get this response:
"Yeah, but I don't believe in all that. I can find community in other ways."
Yet, there's been no replacement for religious community created in the last 30 years that has even 5% of the participation of weekend church-going.
So, there's kind of an impasse here.
Agreed. The 1 Timothy 3 description of an overseer includes hospitality and right treatment of spouse and children. It helps to live near the church building. We don't host as much as we did before becoming senior pastor because now all the family are involved hosting at church.
Chad Van Dixhoorn on how hospitality can act as a bulwark against ministerial failure. For so many pastors that fall, it comes out afterwards that no one really knew them — how they were in their private life and with their families.
Pastors: open your homes.
Congregants: encourage your pastors to show more hospitality.
Andy Rowell retweeted
Note that the few activities that Americans do more often today, taking an exercise class, air travel and playing video games are often solitary. (They are also expensive)
@DKThomp has a great write up on this that is worth reading. derekthompson.org/p/the-deat…
Andy Rowell retweeted
Striking new @FamStudies: You've heard of the "male malaise," but it's much less of a problem for religious young men.
Churchgoing young men vs. unchurched:
✅ Very happy: 41% vs. 24%
✅ Life feels purposeful: 66% vs. 39%
✅ Depressed: 12% vs. 25%
@KBurchfiel3
Andy Rowell retweeted
Prominent megachurch pastor @craiggroeschel has just cancelled his scheduled appearances at four upcoming Life Surge events, following our investigation.
Update from @bobsmietana @RNS:
Shoutout to @BostonGlobe and @AdamHimmelsbach for following up on our Life Surge reporting with this news about Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla:
Andy Rowell retweeted
After my husband made an ambitious 2025 resolution, we’ve hosted people for dinner nearly every Saturday since January of last year and it’s been occasionally hard, often chaotic, & completely transformative for our social life.
New newsletter: THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN HOST
The share of Americans who say they host friends or family at their home at least monthly has declined by 70 percent in the last 50 years.
derekthompson.org/p/the-deat…
I had missed this from January. Exemplary work here by a snooty professor being open to the richness of popular sincere art.
There isn't a single "Live, Laugh, Love" sign in my house, but you should go to the Precious Moments Chapel. mbird.com/art/a-visit-to-the…
