April 27–30, 2009
Extended seminars are three-day courses, 75 minutes each day.
Participants should select one extended seminar.
A. Boys Learning to Love
Robert Dykstra
This extended seminar will focus on the triumphs and travails of learning to love among older adolescent boys (ages 14-18). It will consider their struggles with and special gifts related to relationships with others, with particular emphasis on how unique aspects of male psychology impact boys’ same-sex friendships and their entrance into dating and sexual relationships with others.
B. What Christianity Is Not
Douglas John Hall
In a world whose conflicts are too often inspired by religious fervor, it is imperative that serious advocates of every religious faith attempt publicly to distinguish the essence of their faith tradition from its misinterpretations and misuse. Unfortunately, the most dangerous examples of the latter are often the most popular! This course will be an exercise in ‘negative’ or apophatic theology, i.e., the endeavor to preserve the core of Christian faith by negating its most misleading interpretations and reputations.
C. The Church as Family System
Becky Hart
This extended seminar will examine the church as a family system in ways both large and small. How do we understand and work in positive ways with the dynamics of church life?
How do we become a leader in a system not of our own design? How can we be successful when the expectations for the youth in the family system are off-kilter? And how can we create and experience community life –giving ways as youth workers/pastors within the church family? Using the work of Viriginia Satir as well as real-life case studies in youth ministry dynamics, we will examine the church system and where we can grow in ministry as pastors and youth leaders in this very particular community.
D. The Postmodern Paul: Identity Politics and Freedom in Christ
Kang Na
Gathering around God’s Word in a world of ambiguity, plurality, relativity, and uncertainty, what insights might we gain for the 21st century from the story of God’s people? With an introduction to biblical interpretation, this course will explore a variety of biblical texts to see how our identity is rooted in liberty and rises to love. It will address the ways in which ethno-cultural diversity may interface with the gospel, particularly as Paul understood it.
E. A Preaching Life in the Spirit
Luke Powery
It has been noted that a preacher’s life should be an extension of the preaching moment, that is, a minister should “walk the talk.” If this is true, then what happens in and through sermons or “talks” is significant for the life of the youth leader. This seminar explores what it means to preach in the Spirit, not only in a sermon, but with one’s life. We will consider the significance of the expressions of lament and celebration for preaching and for the life of the preacher.
Electives are one-session courses that meet for 90 minutes.
Participants should select five electives, one for each time slot A-E.
1. What Jesus Will You Teach?
Reggie Blount
In the Gospels we find Jesus asking his disciples an important question: “Who do you say I am?” This very weighty question is still an essential query today. Exactly who are we asking our young people to follow? This course will explore various models of Jesus expressed in scripture and how these models can shape the spiritual life of 21st century youth.
2. Youth Ministry Amidst the Culture of Youth Violence
David Briscoe
Youth today are subject to increasing levels of violence in their communities, schools, and other social institutions. This exposure affects the spiritual development of the youth in our congregations. This course will empower youth leaders to recognize signs of violence and to design creative programs to counter this growing trend.
3. Beyond the Oxymoron: Longevity and Youth Ministry
Mark DeVries
For decades now, popular voices in youth ministry have extolled the virtues of a simple solution to most youth ministry problems: Get the students themselves involved in leading the program. Sounds simple, right? The truth is that the process for creating an effective student leadership ministry is almost always complex, messy, and time-consuming. This workshop will identify why most student leadership programs sputter and fizzle out within their first year and recommend a paradigm shift from student leadership to student apprenticeship.
4. Freed to Lead: How to Relate, Delegate, Create - on Schedule!
Kendy Easley
Are you constantly pressed for time? What do you need in order to become the leader God created you to be? How do you plan to affect the world? Are you part of a “missional community” or just a lot of meetings? This elective will equip you to focus your energies in doing most what you do best. “Take your everyday life, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life-and place it before God as an offering.” (Romans 12:1, The Message)
5. Empowering Mosaic Youth Leadership
Gabriel Salguero
This elective explores Christian practices for pondering the body as groups prepare for, engage in, and interpret mission trips and outreach projects. What wisdom might the Spirit whisper as mission team members get immunization shots, fill water bottles, lace up walking shoes, and pull out maps for the journey? Focusing on faith practices can shift mission trips from being episodic and event-focused to being woven into the larger fabric of a way of life, weaving human activities into God's redemptive activity.
6. Lifecasting: Teens Fishing for Intimacy in a Sea of Technology
Andrew Zirschky
Social media, text messaging, and other forms of technology-driven interaction are changing the way adolescents understand and experience belonging, community, and identity. From the crafting of extended online identities, to the redefinition of friendship, teenagers' emerging perspectives about what it means to be "social" have important implications for ministry. This course will explore the effects of social technology such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube upon adolescent notions of identity and belonging, and will consider opportunities for a faithful response by Christian communities.
1. Student Leadership: Panacea or Predicament?
Mark DeVries
For decades now, popular voices in youth ministry have extolled the virtues of a simple solution to most youth ministry problems: Get the students themselves involved in leading the program. Sounds simple, right? The truth is that the process for creating an effective student leadership ministry is almost always complex, messy, and time-consuming. This workshop will identify why most student leadership programs sputter and fizzle out within their first year and recommend a paradigm shift from student leadership to student apprenticeship.
2. Freed to Lead: How to Relate, Delegate, Create - on Schedule!
Kendy Easley
Are you constantly pressed for time? What do you need in order to become the leader God created you to be? How do you plan to affect the world? Are you part of a “missional community” or just a lot of meetings? This elective will equip you to focus your energies in doing most what you do best. “Take your everyday life, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life-and place it before God as an offering.” (Romans 12:1, The Message)
3. Self Care and the Realities of Ministry
Becky Hart
Using several tools for self-diagnosis, we will examine our health – emotional, spiritual and physical – as youth leaders and ministers. How do we care for ourselves and for our loved ones? What changes can we make to enable greater health as we pour out our lives in the service of young people? This very practical course will include materials from the Alban Institute, Richard Swenson’s book Margins and Kevin Harney’s Leadership from the Inside Out.
4. Faith in God or Faith in Faith?
Kang Na
Taking cues from Pauline convictions about the meaning of Christ, this course will explore the contours of a faith that is more courageous and riskier—and thereby perhaps more authentic to the gospel—than piety or religiosity. We will consider the ways in which churches may have encouraged religiosity in a way that has clouded rather than clarified the faithfulness of God and our faith in Christ.
5. Saying No is Not Enough: Sexuality, Teens, and Religion
Kate Ott
In this course, we will explore the education teens receive on sexuality related issues in and the theo-ethical arguments that support sexuality education in faith communities. We will review the research on what does and does not work with regard to types of sexuality education, including assessments provided by teens. We will then move to a constructive response and develop plans for how to teach sexuality education more effectively in our own faith contexts.
6. Adventures in Missional Hermeneutics: Philippians and the Christ-Shaped Life
Ross Wagner
“Missional hermeneutics” describes an approach to biblical interpretation focused on the ways in which the Bible evangelizes us with the transforming message of the gospel and forms us into Christ-shaped communities that share intimate fellowship with the triune God as co-participants in God’s reconciliation of the world. Through an exploration of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, this elective seeks to equip participants with tools for their own on-going practice and teaching of missional interpretation.
1. Soul-Tending
Tom Stephen
Feeling a little off-balance? Drained by the competing demands of church, home, and life? This track is designed to help you recenter and refill the well of your own spiritual life. A practicum focusing on reflective exercises rather than a typical class, Soul-Tending takes the place of two electives and includes a personal exercise for Wednesday afternoon. Select the Soul-Tending Track for both Elective C and Elective E if you wish to participate.
2. Youth Ministry Amidst the Culture of Youth Violence
David Briscoe
Youth today are subject to increasing levels of violence in their communities, schools, and other social institutions. This exposure affects the spiritual development of the youth in our congregations. This course will empower youth leaders to recognize signs of violence and to design creative programs to counter this growing trend.
3. Should I Stay or Should I Go Now: The Spiritual Discernment of Following Your Call
Amanda Drury
Whether you have been in your current position for ten days or ten years, chances are you've questioned whether or not you are serving where you are supposed to be serving. This course addresses tough questions like, "How can I know if I'm following God's leading or just quitting?" "I know ministry is tough, but how much does God expect me to put up with?" "What practices can I incorporate into my life to revitalize my current ministry?" "How do I know if I need to pursue a new calling or just take a vacation?" Come and learn spiritual discernment in following your call.
4. Saying No is Not Enough: Sexuality, Teens, and Religion
Kate Ott
In this course, we will explore the education teens receive on sexuality related issues in and the theo-ethical arguments that support sexuality education in faith communities. We will review the research on what does and does not work with regard to types of sexuality education, including assessments provided by teens. We will then move to a constructive response and develop plans for how to teach sexuality education more effectively in our own faith contexts.
5. Adventures in Missional Hermeneutics: Philippians and the Christ-Shaped Life
Ross Wagner
“Missional hermeneutics” describes an approach to biblical interpretation focused on the ways in which the Bible evangelizes us with the transforming message of the gospel and forms us into Christ-shaped communities that share intimate fellowship with the triune God as co-participants in God’s reconciliation of the world. Through an exploration of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, this elective seeks to equip participants with tools for their own on-going practice and teaching of missional interpretation.
1. What Jesus Will You Teach?
Reggie Blount
In the Gospels we find Jesus asking his disciples an important question: “Who do you say I am?” This very weighty question is still an essential query today. Exactly who are we asking our young people to follow? This course will explore various models of Jesus expressed in scripture and how these models can shape the spiritual life of 21st century youth.
2. Young Adult Fiction for Pastoral Care
Robert Dykstra
This elective will introduce a number of contemporary young adult novels and their authors to demonstrate how fictional accounts of adolescent struggles serve as a powerful resource and guide for pastoral care and counseling with adolescents and their families.
3. The Courage to Hope: Caring for Marginalized Youth
Greg Ellison
“Hope” has become a catchall term in public media, a buzz word in political commentary, and a common theme in theological discourse. However, developing and maintaining a hopeful disposition may prove challenging for stigmatized populations who feel muted and invisible and for the caregivers who seek to aid them. This elective aims: to equip caregivers in more adequately responding to the primary threats to hope that contribute to feelings of muteness and invisibility in marginalized youth; to assist caregivers in identifying and creating adaptive survival strategies that can lead unacknowledged populations to envision more hopeful and generative futures; and, to enhance the caregiver’s skills of self-criticism and self-care and maintain the caregiver’s hope. Young African American men will serve as the primary lens through which to investigate the problem of threatened hope, muteness, and invisibility.
4. More than a Song: Worship as Resistance
Luke Powery
Many times contemporary worship is presented as synonymous with music or songs of praise. This elective suggests that worship is “more than a song” and inclusive of one’s entire life before God in the world. We will be challenged to explore the relationship between Christian corporate worship and social witness in the world with particular attention to the relationship between worship, suffering, and justice, as a way of discovering the potential of worship as an act of resistance to social injustices.
5. Lifecasting: Teens Fishing for Intimacy in a Sea of Technology
Andrew Zirschky
Social media, text messaging, and other forms of technology-driven interaction are changing the way adolescents understand and experience belonging, community, and identity. From the crafting of extended online identities, to the redefinition of friendship, teenagers' emerging perspectives about what it means to be "social" have important implications for ministry. This course will explore the effects of social technology such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube upon adolescent notions of identity and belonging, and will consider opportunities for a faithful response by Christian communities.
1. Soul-Tending
Tom Stephen
Feeling a little off-balance? Drained by the competing demands of church, home, and life? This track is designed to help you recenter and refill the well of your own spiritual life. A practicum focusing on reflective exercises rather than a typical class, Soul-Tending takes the place of two electives and includes a personal exercise for Wednesday afternoon. Select the Soul-Tending Track for both Elective C and Elective E if you wish to participate.
2. Should I Stay or Should I Go Now: The Spiritual Discernment of Following Your Call
Amanda Drury
Whether you have been in your current position for ten days or ten years, chances are you've questioned whether or not you are serving where you are supposed to be serving. This course addresses tough questions like, "How can I know if I'm following God's leading or just quitting?" "I know ministry is tough, but how much does God expect me to put up with?" "What practices can I incorporate into my life to revitalize my current ministry?" "How do I know if I need to pursue a new calling or just take a vacation?" Come and learn spiritual discernment in following your call.
3. The Courage to Hope: Caring for Marginalized Youth
Greg Ellison
“Hope” has become a catchall term in public media, a buzz word in political commentary, and a common theme in theological discourse. However, developing and maintaining a hopeful disposition may prove challenging for stigmatized populations who feel muted and invisible and for the caregivers who seek to aid them. This elective aims: to equip caregivers in more adequately responding to the primary threats to hope that contribute to feelings of muteness and invisibility in marginalized youth; to assist caregivers in identifying and creating adaptive survival strategies that can lead unacknowledged populations to envision more hopeful and generative futures; and, to enhance the caregiver’s skills of self-criticism and self-care and maintain the caregiver’s hope. Young African American men will serve as the primary lens through which to investigate the problem of threatened hope, muteness, and invisibility.
4. “The Mystery of the Gospel”: Discerning the Signs of the Times
Douglas John Hall
The author of Ephesians 6:19 uses the unusual expression “the mystery of the gospel” in referring to his calling as an evangelist. Apparently for him, unlike many who claim a specifically evangelical message and mission, “gospel” is not a fixed message but one addressed to specific contexts in a changing world. Jesus counseled his disciples to “discern the signs of the times.” What are the “signs” of our times, how do we go about “discerning” them, and how does “gospel” engage them?
5. Empowering Mosaic Youth Leadership
Gabriel Salguero
This workshop will introduce a leadership development program committed to: 1) developing the next generation of healthy multicultural leadership; 2) mentor younger leaders as they follow Christ into a life of service: 3) equip those leaders with tools to understand their context and ministry within the larger global diversity; and 4) enable them to lead people of faith in practical and effective responses to the challenges facing their communities. We envision young leaders emerging as agents of transformation in their context.