Recently in Youth Ministry Category

I had a great day yesterday at Waverley Abbey on a one day conference entitled "Where have all the young people gone?"
As this is firmly within my exploration ahead of writing the Diocesan Strategy for youth engagement, I thought I'd go along! It was useful to spend a day with Church leaders and Youth Workers who were also exploring this, and to hear what Andy Peck and Martin Saunders were bringing to the discussion.

The day was basically a theological exploration, a cultural and statistical look at the present, then exploring responses, ideas and opportunities. All good stuff and especially helpful to be reflecting with people from a variety of denominations.

As per conversations with a couple of people, I said I'd upload my piece on 'How to recruit Volunteers' so here it is. I also said I'd link to the National Council for voluntary youth services through which you can find if you have a local County CVYS.

Mention was made during the day of the Methodist resources around volunteering, and I mentioned the Oxford Diocesan handbook. Martin mentioned the Jan/Feb edition of EA that has an article on "The Missing Generation!" Oh and if you want to explore a bit further the idea of working with a digital generation, this is an excellent article from Tim Davies.

If there is anything else people wanted, please shout.

This article by Helen McNutt acts as an excellent foil to the vitriolic lynch (media) mob that re-grouped to to preach hatred, judgment and demonisation, given that the Bulger case is back in the spotlight.

I'm grateful to Chris for the pointer to this article which also put me in contact with a film called The Fear Factory, a film which aims to raise the debate about crime and young people out of the realms of rabble-rousing ill informed soundbites.

"The self-fulfilling prophesy that's doubled our prison population,
demonised our young and costs us billions...
Welcome to the Fear Factory"

The coalition behind the film have a blog here.
More info when I have found an opportunity to watch the film

"Youth ministry doesn't have to spend a fortune or put on a rock concert to be effective in reaching junior high and high schoolers for Christ. Personal relationships, adult mentors, honest conversation, and opportunities to help others create an atmosphere where students feel they belong, and eventually are able to believe"

Trawling the web this morning I came across this article about transformational youth ministry It usefully reduces and demystifies faith based work with teens to five key points. Article is here, thanks to Chuck Warnock.

'Professional development' and vegetables are two things that youth workers are not always very good at (apart from the vegetarian ones who tend to be better at at least one of them) as they get squeezed out by the pressure of time and chips. Huge generalisation I know but it makes a good intro to the Youth, Mission and Culture Lectures that I am about to heartily endorse! Anyway, the info .......

"The Youth Culture and Mission Lectures are a response to the increasing numbers of youth workers studying youth ministry and theology at undergraduate or postgraduate and the desire by so many to keep their heads in that field once they have graduated. Pete Maidment, Diocesan Youth Officer for The Diocese of Winchester and one of the founders of the lectures, says; 'The lectures provide an opportunity for people to pursue a deeper, theological and grounded understanding of youth, culture and mission, accessible to those who have already begun to explore the academic bedrocks of youth ministry as well as those who haven't had the time to study and who are eager to take their thinking deeper.'

Dates and Locations:

18th March 2010:LICC, London
25th March 2010:St George's Church, Leeds

For more details click the link above or read the press release thingy: YCML Press Release Nov 2009.doc. Oh, or use that trendy BookFace social notworking thing, here's the link

I'm delighted to see that Dave Walker has been given a residency at Youth work magazine where his cartoon sideways take on things will be musing and amusing about our trade.

If you have an ideas for him to explore he'll be at 'Youthwork the Conference' looking like this:

Or you can comment your idea to the relevant blog post here

Quite a few Dioceses are facing huge financial challenges brought on by the recession and having to make some difficult decisions. Whilst I fully understand the difficulties of this I am very concerned that youth work seems to be an immediate target for cuts, with at least two Dioceses making Diocesan Youth Adviser posts redundant and then creating a new combined youth and children's (and in some case ... and something else) post.

At the very least this reduces support and development of youth work/ministry by 50% but in reality I think, much more. Youth work and Children's work are very different skills, it's unusual for someone to have both and I have seen many many more examples of these combined roles being occupied by children's practitioners than I have by youth workers. Futhermore Children's work pulls in more numbers, more 'feel good factor' and more volunteers meaning that even people trying to balance the roles will be (in my opinion) pulled in the children's work direction.

I believe that this idea of an obvious saving being made by lumping support, advice and training for all young people from 0-20 under one category is unrealistic, unhelpful and unworkable (in effective delivery). Cutting deeper and therefore removing all support for work with young people is obviously even worse.

Yes, I know I am biased BUT I passionately believe that any further steps back from the Churches engagement with adolescents is to fail the young people we should be serving AND to miss out on how much we can learn from them.

I have just written the following statement in support of one project that looks like being axed. I know another Diocese that is looking at where it will cut (and there will be others). So if it's anyway useful, feel free to quote me as saying .......

"I firmly believe that our mission with, to and among young people is critical, both for the teenagers of our country AND indeed for the life of the church(es).

In the post Christendom landscape, and current cultural climate where adolescents are frequently scape-goated for societal failings, the church standing along side young people and engaging with them is both prophetic and vital. I believe we should be the advocates, the listeners to their stories and the brokers of spiritual conversations where young people can explore meaning, identity and purpose. We have much to give and importantly, much to learn from teenagers.

In the last few years many factors together have led to many churches being completely disconnected from teenagers. Diocesan support of existing work AND pro-actively helping churches to re-engage with the teenagers needs to be a priority of our resourcing, time and energy. We are good at working with children, and experts with the elderly; but in danger of failing to help, nurture and engage with the adolescents in our parishes and deaneries.

Cutting posts in this area of Church life and mission is damaging in the now, and may prove disastrous in the long term"

OK, here's a LOAD of stuff that has appeared on my radar! There is probably more information here than you need, but each piece is like a different blade on a swiss army knife* ..... not all of them have an obvious immediate use, but somehow somewhere it may be perfect for someone to be able to do something with. Message reads:

Young People & Youth Work in a Digital Age: Conference & Open Space event - Thursday 24 September 09, 10 - 4pm at the Catrin Finch Centre, Glyndwr University, Wrexham

Churches engagement with 14+ young people consultation in Oxford (also on 24th September) national discussion being hosted by Oxford. More details from me

Network meeting for employed Youth Workers in the Diocese: September 25th at Oakwood Challenge near Wokingham, book in through Carolyn

Youthwork The Conference November 20-22 Eastbourne 'Transform- Knowing the word knowing the world'
Youth Alpha Conference 2010 18-19th February London

Buckinghamshire

Free "Protective Behaviours" Training Protective Behaviours.pdf
Free Sign language training for those working with young people, 10 week course from October through to December.

Oxford

Growing Leaders Youth Edition Training: Abingdon on September 26th
Next VERTIGO event is on October 17th

Berkshire

Fusion Studentlinkup DAY Saturday 19th September 11am - 5pm @ Greyfriars, Friars Street, Reading, RG1 1EH "This day is designed to equip, encourage and inspire students" details here

*small device that Boy Scouts used to carry

I'm on a major trawl to find what resources people are using, and would appreciate your list (and the age range you use them with). I'm especially curious about material people are using with tweenagers?

Thank you :-)

On the top-secret hush-hush e-mail forum of the network of the Advisers of Youth Work to the Dioceses, there is a bit of a canter happening at the moment on the advantages and disadvantages of employing a youth worker (a talk a church has asked for). As ever, the collective wisdom of our wonderful community of practicioners has been useful. In a tangental thread to this someone has posted a list of bad reasons for a church to employ a Youth worker:

1. We can't get anyone else to do it so we thought we would employ someone.
2. It is the Vicar's bright idea, but no one else really thinks we need to.
3. There are no young people in our parish, community that we are
in touch with - but the local Baptist (change denomination as applicable) church seems to have lots of young people and we need to keep up.
4. We don't really know what we want - a bit of this a bit of that- so far our working title for the role is "Children's, Youth and Families Pastor and Community Evangelist and Outreach Worker with special responsibility for the Choir and Fresh Expressions of Worship Co-Ordinator"

respect to the legendary Ali and please add to the list ........
(for a more serious piece on important steps before employment click here)

I have now finished reading Youth Ministry 3.0 by former blogger Mark Ostreicher and thought it might be an idea to pen a few lines in relation to the UK context of youth ministry.

Ostreicher charts youth ministry over the last 65 years and describes two distinct phases (which he tags Youth Ministry 1.0 and 2.0) and helpfully explores this alongside the key cultural influencers of that time, the primary focus of youth culture and the resultant drivers and themes emerging from Church and/or para-church sponsors at that time.
The book then describes the 'crossroads' that Youth Ministry is at and attempts to articulate in a similiar matrix, what Youth Ministry 3.0 needs to be. The latter part of the book playing with the questions of what this might actually look like.

This gives:

Youth Ministry 1.0 (1945-1960's) as seeing young people primarily concerned with Identity and the Church focussing on 'Evangelism and Correction' driven by Proclamation.
Youth Ministry 2.0 (1960's - new millenium) as seeing young people chiefly investigating 'Autonomy' with the Church focusing on 'Discipleship and positive peer groups' with Programmes as the driver.

leading to:

Youth Ministry 3.0 (now) as young people's primary concern as affinity with the need to focus on "Communion and Mission" driven by, in fact .... not been driven, but concerned with being present.

I think this is a useful book to chart the journey of youth ministry (although some is a more U.S context, although we experienced some of the influence in the UK) and to contextualise an authentic approach to youth ministry in our current paradigm.
This fits very well within the canon of authentic-relational-contemplative ministry being experimented with and written about by Root, Creasy Dean and Yaconelli. It's practice that I see happening in the UK although is a long way still from filtering into the majority of small traditional church groups.

The strengths of the book though is that it makes the case for it's espoused model in the context of a journey of learning and cultural change, using personal experience and blog-conversation to both earth and explain it.

I also really liked the diagram on page 110 looking at phases of deconstruction and reconstruction and I'll be using this in training I think.

Well worth a read

Youth ministry uber blogger YS Marko is calling it a day and withdrawing from Twitter, FB and blogging!

Marko and I met at Soul Survivor back in 2005 (or it might have been 2004?) and discussed our respective fledgling blogs. I've been a regular reader of Marko's blog since ... especially as he is among a very small number of Youth Ministry bloggers who post very regularly AND use the blog for reflection and discussion. I've linked to his blog over forty times in the last five years! Marko is bowing out of the blogosphere as part of re-prioritising his life and time, fair play!

It'll be weird not tuning in each day Marko! Every blessing for the future.
(It looks like I didn't finish my review of YM 3.0 in time eh!)

Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) is holding a training event called FYT Live! in Birmingham on July 4th 2009 at Christ Church, Selly Park, B29. The cost will be £10. Attendees will be introduced to the current work of FYT and undertake two workshops of their choice. Workshops include:

• Responding to Challenging Behaviour


• Church on the Edge


• Participation


• Spirituality and Young People


• Youth Work After Christendom


• Working with Those Outside the Church