Last March I explored the idea of developing a one-on-one mentorship program for those who have been in youth ministry for two years or fewer. The response was overwhelming! After sifting through over 200 applications, I choose two individuals and went through the one-on-one mentorship program with each of them. They were great guinea pigs because since then I’ve developed the program a bit further to create what I think is an incredible learning and growing experience for new youth workers.

The Mentor Team
The mentorship program is opening up once again starting right now! But this time I have a whole team of youth ministry veterans on board. I’m very excited about this Youth Ministry Mentor Team because most of them have been in youth ministry for over a decade and are passionate about teaching and training other youth workers like yourself. Their backgrounds range from volunteer to full-time paid youth pastors to even a sr. pastor.

Apply!
If you’ve been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and would like to have a FREE one-on-one youth ministry mentor for 10 weeks, read the official Youth Ministry Mentorship page. The link to the application is there. It’s open to anyone who serves in youth ministry in any capacity, whether that be on a volunteer basis or as a full-time youth pastor.

The application period is open for only 2 weeks. After Tuesday, September 9, no further applications will be accepted. Read an overview of the mentorship and apply there.

As you can understand, we have a limited number of mentors, so you may not be one of the 10 chosen this time around, but keep your eye on this site because we plan to make this an on-going program. The next round will be in January 2009 sometime. Subscribe to the RSS feed or by email to stay up-to-date.

The sponsor who makes this FREE!

Thanks to YouthBytes.org’s sponsorship, this program is offered free of charge to everyone who participates! They’re covering the cost of purchasing and shipping all the necessary books and resources you get as an accepted participant of the mentorship.

YouthBytes.org creates video curriculum for youth groups that contains some of the most outrageous stunts I’ve ever seen, all for the purpose of illustrating Biblical truth. Check out some of these crazy video clips to see what I mean.

Here in Alexandria, Minnesota, I’m part of a network of community youth workers called Allies. Together we planned to pool all our resources and bring all of our adult youth leaders together for a time of intense youth ministry training that none of us could otherwise do on our own. But then we figured if we’re going to put all the time into planning the event anyway, we might as well open it up to any other youth ministry organization that would like to join us. We know there are a lot of churches here in Minnesota and the surrounding states with youth groups that are led strictly by volunteers who have never received any training, nor do they have the time or financial resources for training like the NYWC or the NYMC. That’s why Allies decided to fund the entire training conference ourself and make it available for only $10 a person! If you’re in the area, we’d love to have you!

Jeremy Hughey from Dare 2 Share Ministries will be our featured speaker as he helps us understand how to feed teenagers who have no spiritual appetite. Other local youth workers, including myself, will teach workshop sessions:

• Moving students from spiritual apathy to spiritual passion.
• Dealing with the difficult and disruptive student.
• Answering the tough questions.
• Youth ministry for the right reasons.
• How to lead a small group.
• Using music in ministry.

Plus, there will be breakout discussion sessions to process the information with other youth workers and a panel of Christian counselors to publicly answer your questions on teen issues like depression, cutting, abuse, and more. Oh, and lunch is provided!

The Allies Conference is on Saturday, August 23, 2008, at my church from about 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. For more information and to register, visit our website at AlliesForYouth.com. If you can’t make it, but know of someone else in our area who could benefit from this training, please pass the information along to them. Thanks!

Part of what I really enjoy doing through Life in Student Ministry is encouraging and resourcing youth workers in ways that other organizations aren’t. I have no desire to repeat the ideas that are successful for others — I want to do things that are unique and help you guys in ways no one else is. That’s why I offer weekly devotionals specifically for youth workers and why I don’t offer a youth ministry forum.

For a while now I’ve had the idea of developing a one-on-one mentorship program for new youth workers. Then I heard from some of you rookies asking for it, so I knew there was a need. I searched and couldn’t find anyone already doing it, which seemed kinda odd to me. Why don’t the people who are mentoring youth have mentors themselves? With all the Web 2.0 stuff that’s being developed, this should be easier now than ever before, especially over great distances.

I’ve talked with some people I know and have decided to put together a mentorship program for youth workers and offer it online. There’s a potential that some of the mentors who come on board will be youth ministry college and seminary professors along with some other life-long youth workers from a variety of backgrounds. I’m very excited about all the experience that will be on the mentorship team!

Right now I’m in the process of developing the program, which is very difficult since every mentoree will come with different needs, different values and different gifts in ministry. The trick is to make it flexible for each individual, yet still take each individual from goal A to goal B by whatever path is appropriate.

As I work on all this, I need two things from you all:

1. Leave your thoughts and ideas about a mentorship program for youth workers in the comments below. What would you like to see in this program? What outcomes would you expect from it? What specific issues should be addressed?
2. If you have been in youth ministry for two years or less, I’m looking for two people who would like to go through the mentorship program as “guinea pigs” to be mentored by me personally.

Thanks to everyone who joined our live video feed last night of the Teen Internet Workshop for Parents! It was great to have your interaction and contribution to the discussion. And those of you who started making my cell phone take off with text messages during the Facebook demonstration, thanks. lol

If you missed the live video feed, but still want to watch the seminar, I have the video archived on Blip.tv, so feel free to check it out there. I also have it embedding at the end of this post.

Unfortunately, I had a LOT more content to review than I thought I did. Ten pages of notes is a lot, I know, but the demonstrations took longer than I anticipated. The seminar ended up lasting two and a half hours and that’s even with skipping the entire World of Warcraft section and several other sites I planned to show. I should have just stuck to one or two basic sites, like Facebook and MySpace, rather than making parents feel overloaded with information. Oh well. You live and learn, I guess. A couple other churches in the area have asked me to come give the presentation at their church, so I’ll have more chances to make it better. Too bad my youth group’s parents had to be the guinea pigs, though.

About getting my notes
A lot of people have asked that I make my notes available, but I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to or not. It’s clearly not because I want to just keep them to myself because you all know I give away pretty much anything of quality that passes through my hands. My concern is that people will take these notes and teach from them while not really knowing what in the world they’re talking about. If anyone teaches on this subject, it’s critical that they don’t circumvent the learning and research process involved. I’m not trying to be snotty or anything, I just want to set anyone up to do a disservice to the parents in their group. I dunno. What do you think?

My main resources for this seminar
Here’s a list of the main resources I used for preparing for this seminar. I HIGHLY recommend Anastasia Goodstein’s book, “Totally Wired,” linked below to all parents and anyone who works with youth, regardless of whether you plan to teach on the subject or not.

• Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online by Anastasia Goodstein
• Teens and the Internet CNN interview with Anastasia Goodstein
• Internet Caucus Advisory to Congress
• World of Warcraft FAQs for Christians
• My own experience from being a user of each of these sites.

Click To Play

Tonight I’m teaching a seminar for my youth group parents on teen Internet hangouts like Facebook, World of Warcraft, YouTube and some upcoming sites to be aware of. In order to help equip others who are interested in learning more about this, we’ll also have a live video feed online where you can watch the seminar and even interact through the adjoining chat room. It all starts at 7:00PM central time. If you’d like more information about what we’ll cover in the seminar, check out my previous blog post about it.

Watch the video feed using this direct link to the video feed or the embeded stream below.

Dana and I got up early this morning to meet with Greg Stier, despite being up late at the Comedy Club last night. It was encouraging to hear the depth of Greg’s heart for lost souls and his passion for theology, especially relating to Soteriology. It seems like so many of today’s Christian speakers are high on motivation and low on accurate theology. Greg has both. (Dana and I accidentally left the camera batteries in our hotel room, so this pic is from Greg’s cell phone. Doh!)

Originally Dana and I decided to leave right after the last general session, but we were both really tired and wanted to get home early enough to get a good night’s rest. She has to go to work in the morning and I need to set up for the Teen Internet Workshop for Parents, so after meeting Greg, we packed up and came straight home. Eleven hours later, here we are. Hopefully I’ll have pictures and video clips from the NYWC online for you all within the next couple days.

This morning was great! YS didn’t schedule anything until 10:00 AM so we could sleep in on a Sunday morning for once. Plus, with the time change, we got an extra hour, too. I can’t even remember the last time I sleep in on a Sunday. It felt great.

The speaker at the first general session was Ralph Winter, the director of five Star Trek movies, all three X-Men films, Fantastic Four and more. Although I didn’t end up taking too many notes and his speaking style wasn’t really that dynamic, his message about the importance of storytelling was fantastic. We all have stories to share, stories permeate the scripture and people connect with well-told stories on a very personal and emotional level.

General Session Notes: Ralph Winter

• We have to learn the skills of storytelling and master the skills.
• We have to market it and reach the audience.
• Barna reports that most people cannot remember the theme of a sermon 2 hours later, but most people can quote lines from a movie 2 months later.
• YouTube and other online sources are people sharing their stories. People have stories to share and want to share them.
• If we see Hollywood only as a harmful media and not an opportunity we will miss the point and not connect with culture.

During the general session they also announced that they are giving away Doug Field’s general session talk from the NYWC 2005 as a free mp3 download at YSunderground.com. I remember hearing him give it know it’s a great talk on What Matters Most. Get it here.

I attended two seminars this afternoon and, as usual, here are my notes. The first one was by Tic Long on leadership and the second one was by Andy Braner called, Building Bridges: Helping parents and their teenagers have a better relationship.

Tic Long - Lessons on Leadership notes

Andy Braner - Building Bridges Between Parents and Students notes

After having dinner with Mike, Greg Stier taught at the evening general session encouraging us to keep the gospel in the forefront of our ministries to students. I always appreciate Greg’s passion and solid foundation on the Word. His talk from last year’s NYWC still rings in my head and has left a huge impact on my prayer life.

Greg Stier - Preach Christ Crucified notes

Dana and I went to the late night Comedy Club option with Lost and Found, Rob Stromsberg and The Skit Guys. Video and pictures will come later.

Started out this morning going to Walt Mueller’s seminar called, Smoke and Mirrors: How marketing shapes and manipulates your students and what you can do about it. He does this seminar almost every year at the NYWC and I always go to it because there’s usually loads of new info. It’s such a crucial element to understanding our teens. So much excellent stuff that explains so much about our kids and how to communicate with them. Here are my notes:

Walt Mueller - Smoke and Mirrors notes

And then tonight Doug Fields gave an excellent talk in the general session about envy in ministry, something we all experience. Unfortunately I can’t post the audio here, but again, here are my notes:

Doug Fields - Ministry Envy notes

A couple highlights from today:

1. Dana won three drawings in the Exhibit Hall today! It was crazy. This morning she won a stack of books from Dare 2 Share and then this evening she won a free screening of the upcoming Expelled movie to be shown at our church before the release date in February. We went back over to Dare 2 Share again where she won another drawing for an evangelism training curriculum kit. Now if I could only get her to win me one of the many iPod or Wii giveaways because so far my name hasn’t been drawn for anything.
2. This afternoon Dana and I pretty much took it easy, enjoying a trip to the St. Louis Gateway Arch and then a drive into Illinois to grab dinner at Chick ‘Fil A since there aren’t any in Minnesota. And speaking of free stuff, she also got us tickets for two free chicken sandwiches because our order took too long. I’m tellin’ ya, my wife was on a roll for getting free stuff today!
3. I also met a couple more blog readers today, including Jake Bouma and Roy Probus. That’s always fun.
4. Dana ran into her old youth pastor from when she was in jr. high. Kinda cool to meet a guy who’s been in youth ministry so long that he now runs into his former students at youth worker conventions.

The wifi connection in our hotel is so bogged down that it’s really a pain to get online. Even when it does connect, it moves so slow that I think I’m going to wait until we get home to post any pictures.

After a long and tiring drive yesterday, we finally arrived late last night. Unfortunately, our hotel bed isn’t that comfortable and the rooms around us are noisy, but at least it’s a place to lie down for a couple hours each night.

I met Mike of Reflection Ministry blog and also ran into a couple other people I don’t know who read this blog. It cracks me up when that happens because I still can’t believe people actually read this stuff. One guy tried to coax me into selling the resources I currently make available for free and gave me his whole plan for how I could make lots of money off it, but don’t worry, I didn’t start this blog to make money and I have no intention on ever changing that. I just want to do whatever I can to help build up the Kingdom, not get rich off other people’s ministry budgets (or the lack thereof).

Attached below are my notes from a seminar I attended, “Resuscitating Sunday School: If you have to do it, you might as well do it right,” by Marv Penner. I recorded the audio on my Mac, too, but I’m waiting for permission to see if I can make that available to you all or not. Guess we’ll find out.

Resuscitating Sunday School notes

My wife took some pictures during the general sessions, but I’ll get them up later. It’s late, I’m tired and I’m getting up early for an 8:00 AM seminar.

Tomorrow my wife and start our 11 hour drive to St. Louis for Youth Specialties’ National Youth Workers Convention. We’re looking forward to a wonderful time of rejuvenation, relaxation, inspiration, education and of course the exhilaration that comes from hanging out with thousands of other youth workers. This will be my sixth convention and I’m ecstatic! Of course I’ll be blogging through the whole thing, so be prepared for frequent updates. Is anyone else going?

My wife already posted her list of seminars she wants to attend. In past years my schedule usually seems to change at the last minute, but here’s what I’m planning on right now anyway.

Friday, November 2

• 10:00 AM — What Monks Can Teach Us: Helping Students Discover the Ancient Art of Listening to the Voice of God, by Dave Ambrose.
• 1:00 PM — General session #1
• 4:00 PM — Resuscitating Sunday School: If You’ve Got To Do It, Do It Right! by Marv Penner
• 7:30 PM — General session #2
• 10:15 PM — So You Want to Get Published, by Jay Howver

Saturday, November 3

• 8:00 AM — Smoke and Mirrors: How Marketing Shapes and Manipulates Your Students and What You Can Do About It, by Walt Mueller
• 10:00 AM — General Session #3
• 2:00 PM — The Heart and Soul of 3Story: Students Reaching Students, by Jenny Morgan
• 7:30 PM — General Session #4
• 10:00 PM — Comedy Club with Bill Arnold, Dave & Brian, Thor Ramsey and Taylor Mason.

Sunday, November 4

• 10:00 AM — General Session #5
• 1:30 PM — Lessons on Leadership, by Tic Long
• 3:30 PM — Building Bridges: Helping Parents and Their Teenagers Have a Better Relationship, by Andy Braner
• 8:00 PM — General Session #6
• 10:15 PM — Late Night Live: The Skit Guys, Bob Stromberg, Lost And Found

Monday, November 5

• 11:00 AM — General Session #7