For a while now, we’ve been thinking about a way to expand the youth ministry training we do in Mexico. We already started one of the only Bachelor’s degrees in youth ministry in Latin America. But we know that it’s not enough to offer a bachelor’s degree in youth ministry.
Although the bachelor’s program has been growing, we recognize that not everyone who is working with young people can come to the Seminary full time for training. With the problems that come from living in Mexico City, it makes it difficult to do a lot of informal training.
Saturday was the first day of the long-awaited Diploma in youth ministry. We started with 6 students who are working in various churches. Each one of them told us how important it is to get training in youth ministry, and they are all very happy to have this informal type of training.
The purpose of the diploma program is obviously to provide practical training for youth workers as well as promote the other youth ministry programs at the Seminary.
We are praying that this Saturday morning course (9 months out of the year) will help many local church youth workers and spread throughout the country.
We’ll keep you up to date with this new program, which we think will grow and expand in the coming months.
Some of my best memories as a youth pastor in Dunedin, Florida, were going to a monthly youth worker meeting. I would sit in the youth room at Clearwater Community Church and talk shop with a bunch of like minded people. Every month it would be a little different, but I remember looking forward to this meeting, unlike many other meetings I had to go to in those days.
Leadership can be lonely. Often times, you go about your business, and it seems like nobody even notices what you do (unless it’s bad) or even the struggles that you have in your own personal life. Most of the time, ministry is difficult. But because we recognize the need that leaders have to connect with each other, we held the first ever youth leaders’ network meeting in northwest Mexico City.
I don’t know about you, but I always feel great after hanging out with people who share the same vision I do (like we did when we went to Ecuador). Networking is more than just seeing what you can get from other people or even how you can work together to extend your reach.
It’s about a shared vision and a shared passion. It’s about shared dreams. It is about identifying with other people so that you can understand that you’re not alone in ministry (and so they understand this, too). This type of connection is vital.
Yes, leadership is lonely, but we are doing what we can to encourage those youth workers in our area and let them know that what they do is important.
What can you do to help connect other like-minded people? You need it as much as they do.
The Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, at a recent meeting of heads of state in Latin America, said, “Hope must be offered to young people who don’t believe in anything.”
Even the President of Mexico realizes that young people need help. The interesting thing is that there are many people in the church (even in our Seminary) who think that youth ministry is a waste of time.
My students have to deal day in and day out with people telling them that they are wasting their time studying to minister to young people.
I tell them that there is a great need out there for people who really care about young people and who want to invest their lives influencing the next generation. It’s an ongoing struggle for them, but I know that they are committed to offering to these young people something to believe in.
It’s been a great week. I can’t wait to hear what my students say on Monday when they come back from their churches where they work. I know that they will be used this weekend as they offer hope to the hopeless generation here in Mexico.
(Photo of Mexican President and the President of San Salvador at a recent conference)
I’ve written about the opportunities for youth ministry training in Latin America before, and it seems like more and more people are becoming interested in youth ministry training.
I just got another email from a graduate of ours who recently went to the Dominican Republic, and of course he talked about youth ministry training while he was there. He writes to me, saying, “The people in the Dominican Republic are very interested in taking the experience we had here to their country, and I think it would be a great place to invest in because they have very little ministry to young people. It’s almost zero.”
There are at least 4 countries on the horizon for us in Latin America. We need to know where to go. We need to know what to do. Things in Mexico are picking up. We have a certificate program planned to start in January, and we are working with our Seminary to start a Master’s program as well.
So, where do we go from here? That’s a good question. Please keep praying with us about these things. Pray for wisdom. Pray for resources (both human resources and financial resources).
These are exciting times.
(Photos by: oui c’est moi! on flickr)
We just announced over on our Spanish website that we’ll be starting up a certificate program in youth ministry (see the announcement – Diplomado en Ministerio Juvenil – in Spanish) in January.
The idea is to offer an informal youth ministry training for those who cannot study at the seminary full time. This program will meet on Saturday mornings for four hours starting January 10, 2009. We’ll have two locations – one at the Seminary and the other at a church in the south of the city.
The entire certificate program lasts for a year, with nine courses overall that each last a month. We’ll be taking June, July, and December off each year.
I’m praying for 30-40 students in the entire program, which will benefit many churches.
So, if you read this and know someone in Mexico City who would be interested, pass them the link with more information. If you don’t live in Mexico City or know anyone in Mexico City, pleas pray with me for this new way to train youth workers here.
This weekend I had the enormous privilege of attending a youth conference called “Dimension Juvenil” with my students from the seminary.
It was two days of training, fellowship, and networking. We had a great time together. Some of the highlights were: traveling on the subway with my students, acting crazy at the concerts, learning lots of great things at the conferences, and meeting new prospective youth ministry students.
I met Josh McDowell (as you can see in the photo), and I caught up with some other friends of mine who are involved in training youth workers throughout Latin America.
Overall, it was a great conference. I had a great time.
