Youth Ministry is a great trip. It’s a journey. It’s something that requires us to know where we are, where we want to go, and how to get there. That’s the theme of our informal youth ministry training seminar.
We’ll be in Ojo de Agua, a town a little north of here, this weekend, sharing about the great journey of youth ministry. If you think about it, please pray for us.
Today in my ministering to troubled youth class, we watched Gridiron Gang, a true story about a guy who works in a juvenile delinquent center and wants to help the guys get out of problems by turning them into a football team. We had a great time eating pizza, chips, and watching the movie.
It’s a great movie. The first time I watched it, I had to fight back tears a few times. It has a lot of great lessons in it, too. It teaches us a lot about helping youth in problems.
The list goes on. I’m looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday.
We’ve been working on some really cool projects lately. One of those is an online conference/workshop site where we’ll make informal Spanish youth ministry training available to people all over the world who have an internet connection. The idea is to post videos of conferences and workshops so that people can watch them online (or download the audio, or order a CD or DVD). We’ll also have downoadable discussion questions, notes, and other things.
We’re also working on an informal institute to train youth workers here in Mexico City. This is going to be a more informal, weekly training that we’ll do on the seminary campus, offering a diploma or certificate in youth ministry over the course of a year. The first class is scheduled to start the 3rd week in April. Right now, we’re tweaking the final details for the first course.
Another thing is we’re preparing for an all day workshop next week a little north of where we live. I’ll be sharing a youth ministry training workshop all day next Saturday, then attending the church service next Sunday and having a time of questions and answers after the service.
Overall, we’ve got a lot planned and a lot of details to work out.
I’m working on a syllabus today for a Master’s level class that I’ll be teaching at the seminary in March (the week between quarters). It’s my one shot with these students who are already serving somewhere in ministry (mostly as pastors).
I have a lot of ground to cover in 30 hours, and I know I can’t give them everything about youth ministry. I’m trying to help them understand the concept of youth ministry so they will do the following:
We’ll see if we can pull it off.
Whew! We finished another youth emphasis week! It was rough to pull this one off because of all the other activities that were going on during the week. We hardly had any time to prepare for it. Overall, it was a great week, though. I just hope to have more time to do it next time.
Yesterday, we went to the middle school in Atizapán. We walked into a classroom of 40 middle school students (12-15) with no idea of how they would respond to us. I am so proud of the seminary students. One of them told me before we walked in that they were nervous, but you could never tell it by their actions.
(Click here to view a slideshow from the activity)
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