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

Last Saturday I went out to Youth Specialties’ The CORE training in Maple Grove, Minnesota with several other youth volunteers from my church. The topic of Helping Hurting Kids is so very relevant to any ministry, so I was glad to have the training they provided. Here are my notes in case anyone is interested:

DOWNLOAD HERE

While at the seminar, I met up with Steve Blanchard of youthministryideas.net.

(I’m not really that little, Steve is just really that tall.) Great to meet ya, Steve!

[tags]Youth Specialties, The CORE[/tags]

Here’s an question that showed up in my Inbox from an unnamed reader of this blog:

I can’t seem to get my leaders fired up about being relational with our students. It’s so frustrating. We have over 150 students in our student ministry and I’m really feeling like I’m getting to the point of burn-out with trying to connect to everyone myself. I see the changes we need to make but I don’t feel like my leaders are ready or willing to make the necessary change. Do you have any suggestions?

What suggestions do you have for this fellow youth worker?

Here’s my response. Please leave yours, as well.

1. Try meeting with each of the leaders one-on-one (or as a couple if they’re married). Talk about their dream for youth ministry. What is their passion in youth ministry? What vision do they have for it? Why are they youth leaders in the first place? Model the relational side with them and create opportunities for them to exercise their giftedness and passion for students. If there is no passion, love or “spark” for students, then they really have no business being a volunteer. Try casting a vision with them for what you want the youth ministry to look like. Make them feel a part of the process. Then, when discussing the strategy and relationships becomes a part of it, they feel like they have ownership over it.

2. Make sure you say “no” to any unrealistic expectations. Your emotional health is more important than the youth ministry. Besides, if you’re burning out, you won’t do anyone else a bit of good anyway. The best thing you can do for the students is to protect yourself so you can continue working with them for the long haul.

3. Start the leaders off with little steps. First ask them to do something as simple as contact one student a week outside of church. It only takes 5 or 10 minutes, but that simple phone call/e-mail/IM communicates the world to them. After the leaders are comfortable with that, challenge them to contact every student in their small group each week. Later, have each leader attend one student’s extra-curricular game/performance during the semester. Before long, move them on to attending more students events. You get the idea.

Again, if volunteers are resistant to connecting with students, I’d seriously question their reasons for working with the youth group in the first place.

For several years now I’ve directed an Angel Tree camp for inner-city kids that’s arranged by some old college friends. We take one week in July or August to rent a Christian camp facility with money donated by government grants and just love on these kids. Most of them have never seen stars before and don’t know the difference between a horse and a cow, so being out in nature for a couple days is pretty life-changing for them. Our week of camp has experienced about 250% growth every year we’ve done it, which is awesome because each year we get to see more and more kids place their faith in Christ.

In 2005 I took several students in my youth group with me to help work as counselors (pictures here). Here are some of the tips I gave them for working with inner-city children. If you’re venturing to work with inner-city children for the first time, some of these might prove to be helpful for you, too.

CAMP TIPS FOR WORKING WITH INNER-CITY KIDS

1. Love on them, even when it’s tough. Set a Christlike example of Christian love.

2. Discipline! There’s no free time (too many fights occur with down-time), so take away minutes of swim time as consequences.

3. Campers are sent home for fights. No exceptions. We usually send one or two home during the first 24 hours. The rest shape up pretty quickly after that.

4. Be consistent and earn their respect. If you say something, make sure you follow through with it. No empty threats. (”If you don’t stop that there’s no dinner for you tonight!”)

5. Teams are split up differently every game in order to avoid any gang-like alliances.

6. They’re scared of the dark, even the teenagers. Be sensitive.

7. Never mention or talk about home with homesick campers. Avoid the H-word. Get them focused on all the fun things planned and remind them of all the fun activities they’ve enjoyed already.

8. NO racist or sexist comments, jokes or innuendos! Period.

9. Don’t try to act like an African-American or like a stereotype of them. Just be yourself. No “tough ghetto slang” talk.

10. Absolutely NO swearing. This includes “crap” and “sucks.”

11. Do not tease, make fun, or joke about another camper. See #1.

12. Show them respect. Listen to what they have to say. They have struggles and experiences you’ve never imagined. What can you learn from these children?

13. Being tired is not an excuse for slacking. There’s plenty of time for rest when the week is over. Give these kids 110% while learning to run on God’s strength.

14. Enforce sleep. Walk around the room at night until they’re all asleep and take swimming minutes for any talking/whispering/unnecessary noises.

15. Be tough, especially for the first couple days. I know this list might sound like it’s too hard on the kids, but they come from extremely hard city areas and will run you over if you’re not tougher than they are. Remember, you’re here to be their leader, not necessarily their friend. At the end of the week they’ll love you for it.

WHY YOUTH MINISTRY MUST BE HIGHLY RELATIONAL AND EXPERIENTIAL

Last Monday I attended a seminar by Todd Hall, Ph.D., and Mark Matlock’s Wisdom Works addressing issues of spiritual transformation in youth ministry. Why is it that what we teach just doesn’t seem to stick?

MY SEMINAR NOTES:

• We are created in the image of God = relationally.
• Relationships have just as big of an impact on the brain as medications.
• In youth group, relationships have a greater impact than lectures/teaching.
• Parent relationships are vitally important for any other relationships in the future. The physical biology of the brain is affected by these relationships.
• Faith sticks to people through relationships. When we’re attached to someone, their opinions and values matter.
• Our souls naturally desire, or are hard-wired, for relational connections and it is through these connections with God and others that we are spiritually transformed to increase our capacity to love.
• Our brains use 2 ways to make sense of the world: head knowledge (slow) and gut knowledge (very fast).
• Knowing about God with our head is not the same as knowing God with our gut. We can intuitively know something that our mind does not understand. Emotion is a powerful system for knowing.
• Truth is validated through experiences. Experiences teach much more than studying something (Bible, Shakespeare, knowing what a cathedral looks like in a picture is different than knowing what it smells like in experience). Some knowledge only comes through experiences.
• Our emotions shape both our internal experiences and our experiences with God and other people. They give us a sense of what is meaningful.
• Our emotions are determined much quicker than head knowledge and determines how we think. Emotion is how we evaluate meaning in a matter of milliseconds.
• Emotion and meaning of values are processed in the same part of the brain.
• Gut level knowledge wins out when in conflict with head knowledge. A college professor can easily refute Christianity to a student who knows God only as head knowledge, but can never refute a student who knows God with their gut. Or, a student will commit suicide even if they know in their head that God loves them. Or, a woman will continually return to a man who will always reject her even she knows in her head what will happen.
• Gut level knowledge of God is influenced by experiences with significant caregivers (i.e. relationships).

MARK MATLOCK’S APPLICATIONS:

• Experience is Biology. It literally alters DNA and thought patterns.
• Realizing that experience in biology, we probably have more biologically wounded students than we think we do.
• Realize I may need to think differently about how I approach those wounds. “Jesus still loves you…” just doesn’t just it.
• Get kids to tell their stories by asking well-crafted questions. Get them to put it on paper.
• We need to increase the relational surface area of our youth ministries. Youth ministry has too long been a one-man-band. Students will otherwise create a series of negative connections together about youth ministries and the church.
• Parent/student relationships are key. Kids consistently say that parents are the most important.

MY APPLICATIONS:

• Youth ministry must be highly relational.
• Youth ministry must be very experiential.
• Significant spiritual growth happens through experiences, very rarely through head knowledge studying or teaching.
• We can’t think of an abstract idea of “fruit.” We can only think of instances of fruit, like an apple, orange or banana. Likewise, when we teach about “God,” an abstract idea, students need to learn it in experiential sensory instances.

Todd Hall and Wisdom Works are developing a tool to help youth workers evaluate spiritual transformation in their youth groups and provide resources for implementing change in weak areas through experiential means. Find more information about it here.

[tags]Wisdom Works, Mark Matlock, Todd Hall, STI, Planet Wisdom[/tags]

I graduated from PBU with a degree in youth ministry and filled up all my electives with counseling classes, but I think if I had to do it over again I’d reverse that and focus on counseling instead. Even though it was only four years ago, a lot of what I learned about youth ministry is out of date. Youth culture and thus youth ministry are constantly changing. I mean, there was no [tag]MySpace[/tag] generation even four years ago. But the counseling part of ministry I use over and over again almost every day. Even this morning I spent some time talking with a girl fresh out of high school who has a history of abuse and struggles with cutting and suicidal thoughts.

No matter what position someone holds in ministry — whether it be in music, youth, children, adults, administrative, whatever — as long as you’re working with real people, counseling is a very necessary skill. I’m not even a counselor but I talk with parents and students all the time and, after earning a little bit of trust, issues always come up.

I’m looking forward to [tag]Youth Specialties[/tag]‘ theCORE this year because apparently it’s supposed to deal with part of this issue by training youth leaders to work with hurting kids. Even though I was the administrative director for Teenhopeline.com and may have more experience than some, I still wish I had a lot more training than I currently do. We all need it. And the people we talk to probably appreciate it when we have it, too.

Here’s a bunch of video clips of the music at the [tag]National Youth Workers Convention[/tag] all rolled together as one. It includes:
– [tag]David Crowder Band[/tag]
– [tag]Hawk Nelson[/tag]
– [tag]Ceili Rain[/tag]
– [tag]Shane and Shane[/tag]
– [tag]Building 429[/tag]
– [tag]Jars of Clay[/tag]
– [tag]Jeremy Camp[/tag]
– [tag]Thousand Foot Krutch[/tag]

[tags]NYWC, Youth Specialties[/tags]

(CLICK THE THUMBNAIL TO SEE IT FULL SIZE)

I also have a good amount of video from the convention that I’ll make available online within a day or two, but for now here are some highlight pictures from the last day of the convention. Visit my photo album to see all my pictures from the convention.

Dana and me with Tic Long

Left: Tic encouraging a brand new youth pastor | Right: Lost and Found comedy

Left: Jeremy Camp leading worship | Right: Me and Dana

Left: Marko teaching about humility | Right: Tic

[tags]NYWC, National Youth Workers Convention, Youth Specialties, Tic Long, Lost and Found, Jeremy Camp, Marko[/tags]