Classes

One class down, 3/4 of one to go. Our first class was called "Foundations of Youth Ministry" taught by Chap Clark. Chap wrote the book, "HURT" which offers an amazing and real look into the world of adolescents in culture today. We learned a lot about how to best work with middle school and high school kids. Too much to write about, but I'd love to chat about it if anyone is interested.

The class we are currently taking is called "Life of Christ" taught by Dale Bruner. Bruner is a scholar (to say the least) on the book of John and offers a compelling look into Christ, his words, his actions, what we can learn from his approach to ministry. It's refreshing to hear him talk about the gospel that so often becomes too familiar.

Amidst these two sessions we've had breakouts on different aspects of ministry and YL specific stuff. I'm going to have to spend some serious time processing and applying everything I've learned here.

Sacrifice of Praise

I grew up singing the song, "we bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord..." and didn't, until yesterday, understand exactly what the sacrifice of praise meant. Yesterday a New Staffer from Washington led us in worship. The night before, he found out that his wife lost the baby that she was carrying. While waiting for his flight home, Phil was around for one last chapel out here, and he wanted to lead worship. Completely broken and humble before the Lord, Phil still stood in praise. A sacrifice of praise.

It was a beautiful and painful moment for everyone.

New Staff Training 1

My recent adventures have led me home to MI, down to Guatemala, and now to Frontier Ranch outside of Buena Vista, Colorado. I, along with 240 other Young Life staff (mostly new staff) are here for two weeks of training. What does that mean? A lot of relational time discussing ministry in groups, two seminary classes taught by amazing profs (Chap Clark and Dale Bruner), and breakout sessions specific to different areas of ministry.

I am (again) rededicating myself to my blog as it is a good way to share what's going on, so my goal is to share some highlights from New Staff training. I'll update on the trip to Guate when I have a camera cord and can include pictures.

The hands down highlight of NST so far is the sessions on the "Roots and Fruits" of Young Life. If you don't know much about the history of YL, check this out. These sessions were led by Bob Mitchell. Bob's YL repetoire: came to Christ at Jim Rayburn's first tent meeting, hosted the first ever YL club, was Rayburn's club kid, went on staff, started YL in San Francisco, served as president of YL for ten years...........you get the picture. Remember that passage in Hebrews about being "surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses?" That's what these seminars felt like. Bob was intricately involved in the formation of this ministry and has walked with it through ALL its highs and lows. He told personal stories about Jim and demonstrated songs and skits from the first clubs. That alone is amazing.

In addition, he shared a set of historic values to which YL (and any ministry) needs to adhere to in order to sustain in ministry:

1. Focus on the incarnation of Christ.
2. Teach the Trinity.
3. Maintain scripture as the basis for message and ministry.
4. Reaching out to the non churched kids and building relationships of love with them.
5. Always communicate a spirit of adventure.
6. Keep a sense of humor--take our message seriously, but not ourselves.
7. Organizational and financial integrity.
8. Humility.
9. Commitment to quality training at all levels.
10. Spiritually nurture kids who commit to Christ (discipleship)
11. Equal opportunity for women in leadership.
12. Racial equality in ministry.

These are values left with us from a legacy of YL staff, but what will we do with them?

A fun story:

Before YL camps, Jim just took kids and sleeping bags out into the Texas wilderness. In Bob's words, all the kids pulled out their crappy bedrolls on the Texas rock, and Rayburn pulled out his air mattress. No one had ever seen air mattresses. So, naturally, the kids deflated it in the middle of the night. Rayburn's response "blow it up boys, and I'm not moving."

That's our history!