Thursday, May 10, 2007

The End

My internship has now drawn to a close. Yesterday was my last official day as the youth ministry intern at youth group. It has been a great semester. I have learned and experienced amazing things and amazing people. I feel like I have been able to get the background and experience that I needed to understand that this is where I want to go after school. This internship was able to help me again realize and support the calling I feel that is on my life for youth ministry.

These are my final reflections:

Youth ministry is hard. All types of ministry are hard, they require physical, emotional, and spiritual energy. You have to pour yourself out to people, helping them along their own spiritual journeys and this can be taxing. It can be a thankless job.

But just as much as this job is hard, its also rewarding. Serving God and seeing him move in the lives of young people is amazing. The greatest reward this semester has been watching the kids grow in their faith. Its been developing relationships with them and helping them to see how much God loves them that has been the high light of my semester. Last night I was thinking about this being my last time there officially and I watched a couple of the kids closely thinking in terms of their growth and I was amazed. For one specific youth there has been slow growth. I have seen him move closer to God and begin leading. When I first began I was worried that there was not a passionate flame that was burning in any of the youth's hearts to be servant leaders but I was wrong. I have been able to see youth raised up to be leaders and now that passionate flame is burning and its only a matter of time before growth takes place.

I have learned a lot this semester about what it looks like to be a leader, the characteristics that a leader must have. I saw how difficult that it can be to be in a ministry positions because the whole world is watching you closely. But I have seen examples of both the youth minister and the senior minister taking their roles and setting examples of just how great ministry can be and they live their lives wholeheartedly for Christ, allowing their love for Christ to spill over into every area of their lives. Its been amazing to see. And amazing to have mentors who are so deep in their own walks with Christ. It showed me the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are going to be able to walk along with you in ministry and offer their advice and spiritual maturity on the issues that are being faced in ministry.

So, as I end this semester, I know that I want this job. I want to be a youth minister and have the opportunity to change and impact youth's lives. This internship has been challenging and confirming and I have loved every minute of it!

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Articles on the Millennial Generation

After reading the books I also read through three different articles on the millennial generation. These articles were:
The Net Generation Goes to College by Scott Carleson
Welcome to the Future: The Millennial Generation by Neil Murray
Implications of National Study of Youth and Religion Findings for Religious Leaders, Faith Communities, and Youth Workers by Christian Smith

All of these articles looked ahead to the future and what each author thought that the future could possibly bring concerning the millennial generation. These articles were fascinating. They presented a picture of what the youth look like and how we as leaders might be able to better reach them.

Scott Carleson dealt with the ways in which the millennial's learn and what is the best way that leaders can teach to effectively communicate with the students. Carleson sees a broad difference between the millennials and the previous generation, he sees that they both relate to the culture around them in very different ways. One of the comments that he made to their learning style really rang true for me, he said that "millennials don't read as much as the previous generation did. They prefer video, audio, and interactive media" (3). This is extremely important for leaders to know. As a youth minister you need to be able to know the ways in which you can best be able to reach your youth group and Carleson provides an answer for this question.

Neil Murray writes to the future employers of the millennial generation telling them of the observations that he has made of the millennials compared to generation x. He talks a lot about the amount of commitments and the schedules that are normal for a millennial to have. This is helpful in youth ministry as you try to understand planning and scheduling. This is also able to answer a lot of the questions that are raised after a youth minister notices the lack of frequency in attendence of the youth group. Murray says this about the busyness and the selfishness that encompasses the millennial's lives. He says "Their young lives are whirlwinds of activity centered on them, arranged for their benefit" (4). This can make it difficult though for a youth minister because their youth are already strung so tight with other commitments. It makes one have to face the issues of priorities.

Christian Smith wrote my favorite of the articles. This article was written for Princeton Theological Seminary after Smith had spoken at their annual youth forum. He writes about the culture that are youth are in and how that affects religion and the religious culture. He sees the central problem of the millennial youth as "teenagers benign 'whatever-ism'" (60) about life. This raises a problem with the church because finding out how to raise passionate disciples of Christ becomes hard when the youth are only whatever about life. This article clearly defined my own frustration with the youth group that I worked with because they too were only whatever about God and about life.

These articles helped me to not only understand the culture but also to be able to answer my own questions that had been raised in the internship.