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.
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 helped at a concert that our local church and two other churches put on with one of the primary purposes being to raise money for an evangelistic concert on October 19.
Basically, the idea was that if you attended the concert on Sunday, you could get in to the other concert as a VIP. I’m not sure exactly what it means to be a VIP at the other concert, but it’s going to be a huge concert, so I’m thinking preferential area, etc.
The cool part was to see how the youth pastors interacted with each other and worked together. I just met 2 of them, and they seem like great guys. I’m looking forward to seeing how all of this works for the future.
It’s great to see different churches from different denominations come together to reach young people for the Kingdom of God. This is something that I’ve noticed is not very popular here in Mexico, but things are changing, and this concert was a good start.
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.
