Tag Archive - #seismos2010

seismos 2010 – day 3 – the practical

March 25, 2010 in culture, leadership, student ministry, thoughts with 0 Comments

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)

seismos 2010 – day 2 – “journey not destination”

March 24, 2010 in culture, leadership, student ministry, Uncategorized with 0 Comments

the 100 year old lodge at Skyview Ranch was filled with  another full day of conversations at seismos 2010. again more that two dozen youth pastors and workers walked through a good day.  although i don’t think it was directly said…the theme that seem to develop was “journey not destination”.  Personally i think that’s true for both youth and those of us that serve them.  Building on the insights from our spring boarding text Primal Teen that those of us walking with adolescents and their families really are guides to helping both see their place in the larger Story.  The three sessions before the evening meal focused on:

 

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.

seismos 2010 – the adolescent brain day 1

March 23, 2010 in books & reviews, culture, student ministry with 0 Comments

am spending a couple of amazing hours with about 30 great and good hearted Kingdom workers at Skyview Ranch over the next couple of days.  we began yesterday  walking through our observations from Barbara Strauch’s work: The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our Kids .

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