I ordered two books last night to be sent to me with a team that is coming this weekend. Hopefully, they’ll get to them in time for them to bring them to me.
The Ministry of Nurture is a book I’ll use in my Youth Discipleship class at the seminary this fall. Here’s the description: Trying to build real-life faith into kids may seem a futile task to others, but you know it’s worth it. Duffy Robbins describes a thorough, yet flexible discipleship program that is a time-tested winner with students. Ministry of Nurture examines 7 keys to effective discipleship, plus information on how to help your kids develop their spiritual faith, and exercise their practical faith in everyday life.
The Youth Worker’s Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis is a book that I’ll use for my class called Ministry to Troubled Youth that is coming up in January. Here’s the description of this book: If you work with students, you will encounter crisis. Leading crisis-management expert Rich Van Pelt and respected author and youth worker Jim Hancock unfold step-by-step plans for managing the fallout from all sorts of worst-case scenarios, from substance abuse to natural disasters. This comprehensive manual also includes action items geared to help prevent small crises from escalating to huge ones.
Unfortunately, neither of these books are in Spanish, yet. I’ll have to translate important parts of them and use them in class. There are very few good youth ministry resources in Spanish, making the search for textbooks a never-ending task. I keep telling my students that they will be the authors of the textbooks in the future. That will be great when we have some professional youth workers writing books in Spanish for youth ministry in Latin America.
So, Janell is at the store and Nathan is napping, so I can update on what I was doing last week. Well, I was in a place called Santiago, teaching a Master’s class to 12 students. The class was Programming for Youth Ministry, and I’m training students to be teachers at Centers for Youth Ministry in their country. It was the second time I was there, and there’s a lot to tell you about. It’s funny how you can visit a place two times and feel like you have a family there. Anyway, my class went well. They are awesome students and really stretch me as a teacher. The photo is of our classroom with me teaching. Great stuff. I’ll write more about this trip later.
Tomorrow morning, we leave before any human being should be out of bed. We’ll be heading off to Florida. Janell will be there for a while, but I’ll only be in Florida for 2 days before I go out of town to teach a class for a week. I’m looking forward to being with my students, but I do not at all feel very prepared for this class. I still have a lot of “on the fly” adjustments to my notes and other things. We’re also praying that we get our visas in time. I leave on Saturday, but we still do not have clearance to go. Maybe, I’ll have to wait until Tuesday to go. That would not be very good financially. Just another one of those waiting games. We’ll see how it works out. This time tomorrow, I should know if I’m going on Saturday or Tuesday. Hopefully, it will be Saturday.
I’m spending my time preparing for my Programming class that I’ll be teaching in a few weeks. It is a class on youth ministry administration, so I am using a construction theme. I was working today on some graphics for introductions to sections, the cover of the notes, and for the Powerpoint. The picture to the left is something I came up with. So far, I don’t like the letters/font I used. I need it to stand out more. Anyway, this is what I have so far. The outline for the class goes a little like this:
Constructing a Plan for Youth Ministry Programming
- Laying the foundation: Prayer and Philosophy
- Developing a Team: Volunteer staff
- Sketching the blueprint: Calendar and long-term planning
- Finishing the details: Event planning
- Specific needs: Camps, Ministry Teams, Small groups, large groups, Worship
- Safety Procedures
On May 5th, we had our first ever Youth Emphasis Chapel at the seminary. We invited Nahum Leon, a friend of Tim and Annette Gulick to speak about the necessity of youth ministry to the students and faculty at the seminary. If you speak Spanish, here is the MP3 of his conference. Nahum also shared in my youth ministry class, and we had a great time with him. He is a student and graphic designer, working on his Masters in Education and also working with paralideres.org.
Hopefully, this will be the first of many “Youth Emphasis” events we will have at the seminary. I am hoping to have a Youth Emphasis Week sometime next year, probably in October.
If you need other formats for the audio file, click here.
