ht brian glaze

joel daniel harris and marko

1. Faith Development
2. Being Failure Friendly
3. Accommodating or Challenging

here’s some notes from each session.  there is a lot here…

Faith Development in the Context of Brain Development

• what’s realistic in terms of what they can grasp?
• concretize
• implications of “use it or lose it”
• hard-wiring when combined with abstract
• dispensing of info isn’t as effective we need a dialogical approach
• what can we build into our programs that will move them along this process.
• Story is a critical tool
• The “rebellious disciple” (good)
• correlation of worldview shifts & brain stuff
• authenticity (verbalization ) of successes is just as important as failures
• so much of this depends on volunteers who connect w/ kids’ hearts
• character

Crafting a Failure-Friendly Church

• failure: “not living up to someone’s expectations” (mine, yours, God’s)
• (requires an awareness of expectations)
• need a “feelings safe” environment
• help reframe lousy expectations & frame expectations they may not be aware of
• when working  w/ Parents (& church leaders) who are creating expectations, get at their positive intent
• failure-friendly & identifying & honoring strengths are symbiotic
• when we treat kids as consumers there’s no space for choice or responsibility & no failure or success.
• we have to model this with our leaders
• use biblical examples
• check our self-worth – do we need kids to succeed in order to succeed ourselves
• belonging implies grace, implies “free to sin”

Accommodation vs. Challenging

• Yes= calling to maturity, maybe not=shortening adolescence
• careful that “shortening adolescence doesn’t imply that adolescence is bad.
• consider our language (“kids” for young adults)
• call them to Kingdom living now vs. a “preparatory mindset”
• shift in what a “training a child up” means
• encouragement instead of expectation
• encourage growth and maturity & a vision of who they can be, while holding grace & space for them to be teenagers.
• responsibility grows people.

Recently i’ve been engaged in a conversation with several good friends and we’ve decided to invite others into it.  We’ve recorded a 6-part podcast to push out our thoughts and to engage you in the dialogue.

steve caton

ben stroup

the conversation started when i introduced two good men to each other – Steve Caton and Ben Stroup.  I’ve known Steve for about two years now.  We’ve had many conversations about building and sustaining community.  Steve is the Vice President for Sales for Church Community Builder (CCB).  Our outpost uses CCB to manage our ministry.  Ben Stroup is a newer friend. He is  the Chief Broker of Opportunity at GENERIS.  He blogs here.  I stumbled on his blog and quickly learned that he had some keen insight that those doing church management needed to hear..so together, on a conference call last October Steve, Ben and I talked about how to leverage our passions and talents.  We began sharing some thoughts and ideas and then Ben pulled together this podcast.  We invited Lauren Hunter to serve as podcast host.  Lauren blogs about church technology here. So…welcome to episode one.  we’ll be interested to see what you think.

don’t leave home without it.

PDNS Webcast Live via kwout

it does seem that its been a year since i was with charles on the campus of saddleback church, but it has been…and this week pastor rick and the team are doing it again.  just in case you’ve not seen the details you can watch pastor rick live and free by clicking on the PDNS link above.  worth the time.  they’ll be back at it again in the morning at 11:15 est.  enjoy.

stealth conference - may 2008

hanging in the green room - tony steward, djchuang, me, carlos whittakker and mike foster.

some of the best memories from that trip was spending in the green room with some incredible kingdom warriors/bloggers…fun times
tony steward dj chuang carlos whittakker mike foster
.]]> http://samgamgee.org/2009/05/purpose-driven-network-summit-webcast-09/feed/ 0 http://samgamgee.org/2009/05/definitely-bringing-awkward-back/ http://samgamgee.org/2009/05/definitely-bringing-awkward-back/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 23:09:59 +0000 admin http://samgamgee.org/?p=741 a while back the guys at simply youth asked for some photos of students doing some crazy stuff. it didn’t take much effort on my part to go through my iphoto to find a few pictures. i had sort of forgot about sending them in until the printed catalog actually arrived awhile back. i was sitting at my desk looking it over…skimming over it and turned to pages 4&5 and there some of the darling young men of //the.evolution student ministry @ new hope were in real life.   i meant to post a story then, but today the email came reminding me that the same catalog was available online.   so if you’re looking for great material for jr high students go here to check it out for yourself. if you want to know about the game we were playing that resulted in this amazing group picture…email me .