In 2003, the Department of Justice established a cooperative arrangement with NNYM to lead a nationwide effort to recruit adult mentors. Through this partnership, they launched MentorYouth.com, which was/is very successful. Now, federal funds have expired. Their resources are excellent…and they could use our help click this link and give them your support as part of the Pepsi Refresh Project.

First Story: about 5 years ago i met an interesting young man named Xan Hood. we became friends.  Xan and his partner Cory Smith have been doing some great Kingdom stuff.  Training Ground has impacted the lives of literally dozens of young men who are finding their place in the larger story.  Now they’ve stepped off with an another impacting ministry called buffalo and company.

Second story…I have an amazing job.  part of the job is walking with students to encourage them.  two of these students Ian and Cotie and I spent part of our afternoon doing some volunteer work at Pleasant Hill Outdoor Center…just a way to wrap up the school year.

After a good time of working, for the sake of working…doing good, we all got a chance to try out the new 500 ft zip line that PHOC just installed.  Thought it was a perfect way to begin what will be a few ways that i get to help students find their place in the Story.  So enjoy the video.

For both Ian and Cotie it was their first expereince (and mine too) on the zip line.

i didn’t see the zip line on Xan’s list of their new challenge called Honor Your Wild…but the three of us stepped off in a whole new way…literally…i think its exactly four steps off the launch platform…fun stuff.  so check out Honor Your Wild and see what adventure you can step off on.

ethan johnson - visual storyteller

in the last year i’ve developed some friendships with some amazing students at our ashland campus. one in particular ~ ethan johnson has a keen gift for the visual. he just completed the reel dreams fim festival at regents and walked away with the 2010 Audience Favorite Award for his entry entitled “dying to live“. the top 7 competitors received an all expense trip to Regent’s campus and then the final award selection. Its impressive to see Ethan’s talents against others. Its also impressive to see the next generation of dreamers who, with new technology are leveraging the art of story telling.

here’s the wrap-up video from the competition last weekend at Regent.  Its worth the watch just to hear the passion in the voices of 7 incredible young people and the motivation behind their craft with film-making.  so cool!

matt flinner and adam lehman

the beauty of seismos is always the practical takeaways.  so as we gathered on the third and final morning our guide, joel daniel harris walked us through one last session answering the questions:  “what did we learn…what thoughts did we have”?

following that we broke up into several small groups to talk about our “take homes”.

i was part of group of good-hearted folks who are basically doing student ministry as the single staff person with volunteers, in a medium to large context.  we spent the first 15 minutes developing a list of things we thought might be useful to talk through.  here’s  our list…

• how to interact  with schools, parents, church & community
• nurturing those that lead youth
• helping the church see its need/role with teens
• how to engage parents as spiritual leaders of teens
• how/what to communicate w/ Sr. Pastor & supervisor
• transition to/from  Youth Ministry
• What are our limits? Age? Church? -Redefine ministry opportunity

As we talked it was clear that the reality of life is that we don’t have enough volunteers, time, money, leaders, etc. and too there is so much noise in our lives that we need to be strategic and focus.  we stated the obvious, but it was a healthy conversation about how each of us are addressing boundaries in our lives so that we could be more effective.  the list we pushed through included:

• Time
• Track your hours (so as to know how much we’re investing)
• turn off phone
• accountability
• Don’t be the Rockstar
• Protect Sabbath (taking a day off a week-unplugged)

This conversation was very useful…to see how others were doing it and mostly encouraging us to stay in and stay healthy about our serving.

Char Messenger & Cara Schroeder

Then we stepped off in a conversation about leveraging our time investment by enlisting volunteer leaders.  here’s the list we developed on engaging volunteers:

• (Vision) has to come from the Front (lead/sr pastor teaching in big church)
• Don’t beg
• ask small
• frame what it can mean to volunteer
• permit to fail
• take on their failure, give them all
• let them know what you do (so they understand the big picture)

• inconsistent (& not disingenuous)
• apparent hypocrisy
• desire
• moving away from compartmentalization
• moving outside of their comfort zone (moving them to productive risk)
• every journey of discipleship is unique
• teachability

belonging over believing

two short conversations out of developing this image were helpful and having  marko in the room offered some keen insight because good heart and the work from his book youth ministry 3.0.

Belonging trumps Believing and Experience trumps Facts.

first the journey towards community we are on…formerly was grounded in our beliefs that would then impact our behaviors that would ultimately give us a sense of belonging. in current contexts community begins first with a sense of belonging that shapes behaviors and out of that a belief system is shaped.

what would you add to the list or take away?

expereince is valued more than facts in contemporary context.

mark (marko) oestreicher

this  gathering is the second “conversations” that joel daniel harris has invited those of us in attendance into. last year we worked through Mark Ostreicher’s Youth Ministry 3.0. This year Joel invited Marko to join us a sojourner.  the first day was amazing and very good.  I’m grateful for Joel Daniel’ s heart to engage our minds in this rigorous way.  An am grateful too to be part of amazing conversation with Marko’s keen intellect and most importantly his heart for the adolescent…particularly the jr high school student.

A couple of observations from day one. One revelation we pushed through early on is the idea that “adolescence” is a modern construct.

the duration of adolescence has grown.  in 1904, adolescence was thought to begin at age 14.5 and end around age 16.  By the 1970′s it had grown to 13-18 and in 2010 adolescence it thought to start around age 11 and end 27.  there’s some fun dialogue with some some of our fellow attenders as they are close to that upper age.
interesting stuff

• the role of risk-taking
• nurture vs nature
• the quantity of change
• do we need to rethink age/grade boundaries
• partnering with parents and other voices
• the role of failure
• exuberance
• gender difference
• message the church sends kids/integration
• what’s fair to expect
• acquiesce, push or other
• hard-wiring stuff