I just got out of an interview with one of the youth ministry students at the seminary. She has a radio production background, so we had a good 20 minute talk about youth ministry in general. We recorded it in the media center here. She’s done about 6 interviews with different people about youth ministry in the last few days.
The thing I’m excited about is the ability to create a Spanish language youth ministry podcast that includes some training in it. She is very open to doing this. In fact, she WANTS to do it. Now, I just have to set up a way to put it up online. I’m gonna revamp the ministeriojuvenil.com website to include this in it. Anyway, this could be the start of some really cool ministry stuff.
Yesterday was the first day of my youth culture class. It is one of my favorite classes to teach.
We start by looking at this picture and talking about what we see in it. Things that stand out to me are the way the lady is looking at the guy. He doesn’t care. I believe that many times the church looks at youth culture like this. She appears to be trying to protect her child from the guy, which is another thing we do in the local church many times. We had a good discussion on it, and I’m looking forward to the class this quarter.
Part of the training we have at the seminary is that the youth ministry students are supposed to work at an “approved site church.” Basically, it’s a church that has a youth pastor and is running a youth ministry with a similar philosophy to what the students are learning in class. This balances the academic learning with the experience they need to be successful.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many churches that would even come close to qualifying to be an approved site. Most of the youth ministry students work at their church as THE person working with youth. They don’t get the mentoring relationship we are looking for with a youth worker at the church. After having spent a lot of time with the new youth pastor at PIB Satelite, I can begin to see a great opportunity for a partnership. I am beginning to see the makings of our first possible “approved site church.” We’ll see how it turns out.
I hate grading papers and exams and everything else. It’s the worst part of my job. My students have done pretty well on everything. This is one of the first quarters that I have been teaching in the seminary that everything was turned in on time. I am amazed. This helped me finish the grading up today. The only thing I have to do now is post the grades, and I will be finished for the quarter. Yippy! Now…to think about next quarter’s classes.
We were at Sam’s Club the other day, and we saw that the movie Coach Carter was on sale for about six bucks, so we picked it up. This movie has a lot to do with leadership, mentoring, and discipleship. Here are some of my thoughts on this movie:
- Leadership is about molding people into who they need to be and giving them a chance to succeed.
- We should see beyond what people are now and challenge them to become what they need to become.
- A good mentor loves the people he is working with. Coach Carter was upset that the community did not want to see his players succeed off the court as much as he did.
- A good mentor is determined to do whatever it takes for his students to succeed. He is willing to pay the price.
- A good leader takes responsibility for the actions of his team. If one fails, they all fail, even the coach.
- Effecting change in the lives of others will have opposition. Even the principal of the school didn’t understand.
- A good leader has a clear vision of what he wants to achieve. His definition of success may be different than that of those around him.
- A good mentor is there for his students.
There are many other lessons that can be learned from this movie. It is a great movie about a great leader. I liked it so much I showed it to my class on discipleship when we were talking about mentors. We must look for people with these qualities to impact the lives of the students in our ministries, and we must become these types of people in order to effect change in the lives of students in our communities.
