<>A group of nine, fifteen-year-old freshmen boys can destroy a Walmart store in under 20 minutes...and not understand how they did it.

<> These same boys can cause a stroke in the security team at "Sports Authority" in even less time.

<> Boys like to touch things. Everything. All the time.

<> Forty eight small boxes of cereal is almost enough cereal for the above mentioned group of fifteen year olds. Two gallons of Orange Juice is two gallons too many.

<> Boys need constant contact in the start up stages of any mentoring/discipleship group. Once a week of phone call conversations is the minimum at least. If I go ten days without talking to one of "my" boys, it feels like starting over.

<> Email is your friend. Instant messaging is also your friend. It is not only girls who are online.

<> Every boy has to get past pornography issues. Some begin with Internet porn way before we think they do.

<> Don’t be shocked by anything. Don’t have a list of words you "can’t hear."

<> 60 Second Rule: Ask your questions of boys in less than fifteen seconds and shut up and wait for the answer for 45 seconds.

<> Think LONG Term. After two years of knowing a very small group of boys in my cell group, some of them are just now thinking about being really honest with me.

<> A boy who won’t talk to you while sitting across from you probably will if he has a basketball in his hands and a hoop in front of him. For some boys, substitute the basketball for a piano, guitar, computer keyboard, or broken car engine.

<> For a troubled boy, nothing speaks louder to him than his father changing his work schedule to spend time with him. If the father is not on the scene- the same holds true for his mother.

<> We can’t minister fully to teenage boys until we minister to their fathers first.

<> Talk with a slower pace to most boys.

<> Knowing what type of music a boy listens to is sometimes the only way to know what a boy is feeling.

<> Don’t believe for a moment that teenage boys feel nothing when they tell you "nothing."

<> For boys, knowledge is power, even if that knowledge is not always accurate.

<> Fear controls many boys. Identifying that fear, naming it and helping a boy move beyond it is crucial. Apathy is often a cover for fear.

<> Ten minutes in the parking lot can do more than 60 minutes in the classroom.

<> Essentials: Air, water, pizza.

<> Jesus loves the quiet compliant little boys who hug their RE teachers. He also loves the peach-fuzzy, smelly, horny, combative, body centered, vulgar and lost teenage boys who think we are all incompetent.

<> Don’t believe for a moment that teenage boys "don’t pray" even if they tell you they don’t. Just remember it looks, sounds and feels different.

<> Jesus was a wild man. John the Baptist was a wild man. King David was a wild man. Job was a wild man. Absalom was a wild man. Boys need to hear this- they need to study it. They need help owning this.

<> Keep boys busy with projects for their faith but be sure that plenty of process time is included. "Doing" Catholic is different from "Being" Catholic. "Following" Jesus is not the same as "loving" Jesus.

<> God bless the women who continue to minister in our churches. More men need to step up to work specifically with boys. But, they don’t know how to do it or what to do or even how to just "be" with teens.