I had always wondered where you understand as a leader the line that needs to be drawn between showing the youth the world around them and exposing them to more of the pain in the world that they needed to see.

On Wendesday we watched a movie from the international justice mission about the slave trade. Youth group wasn't supposed to be centred around this, it just kinda happened because we were talking about the movie "Amazing Grace" and its impact on the current state of the slave trade. As we continued the conversation we began to talk about slaves today and the trade that is out there.

After we watched the movie it was sad to see the moods of the kids. Their moods didn't lift, they were shown what a part of their world looked like and it obviously saddened them quite a bit. I was thankful for the compassion that I saw in their eyes but I knew that seeing this wasn't easy. I thought about it for awhile and I was worried that they had been exposed to the pain of the world to early but then I realized that this is the generation that is going to make a difference. If we don't start knowing what is happening in our worlds then we are never going to know how to fix it. Or how to make the world a better place.

So although sometimes seeing where the world is at, especially the third world countries is sad and heartbreaking I think its important. And its part of the mission of Jesus. To reach the poor and the oppressed, the downtrodden. He told us to go into the WHOLE world and preach the Gospel.

This is the mission that we must continue to hand off to the youth because it was a mission that Jesus gave for everyone. Its hard though as a leader to continually see and encourage this mission to be completed.

Reading

I have been catching up on my reading and I am currently reading through The Church and its Purpose. There are some really interesting points raised in this book, this quote stood out to me: "The purpose of the gospel is not simply that we should believe in the love of God: it is that we should love him and neighbor. Faith in God's love toward man is perfected in man's love to God and neighbor. We love in incompleteness, not as redeemed, not in attainment but in hope" pg. 33. I really like this quote because I think that it signifies something significant in the Church as well as something that is in the Gospel. We follow the Gospel in the Church as a foundational way that has been around since the time of Christ. The purpose of following this is not that we should become tied up in the matters of legalism but instead that we should love God.

That is the purpose of the Church. To love God. And when someone is loving God because of that love there is an over pour of God's love into other areas of their lives. Showing that loving other people requires that we love God.

This isn't easy though, sadly. And even sadder then that although we think that loving people should be easy in Church because that is where we love God, loving people doesn't always happen either. We are as the author of this book puts it, loving in incomplete love. We are not perfect people. But I am not sure that's an excuse. We get to caught in the Gospel and the law then loving God in Church. And because of that it causes us to love incompletely.

This week was rather slow. It snowed again so we didn't have youth group on Wednesday night because school was canceled.

Tuesday was normal staff meeting and then we did some paperwork, especially working on getting things together for the small group that I was leading. It was hard to find a time that would be able to work for all of the girls that we wanted to include in this small group. So we were trying to do as much attention drawing to this group as possible. We sent out postcards to the girls and I personally called each one of them to invite them to come.

It raised the question to me though of the business of schedules. How do you as a leader work through the many different crazy schedules of teenagers? It seems like every teenager has a list of twenty things to do with school and extracuricular activities. Which doesn't leave that much time for Church or Youth Group activities. Its a hard battle. Do you try and work with fifteen kids schedules, trying to plan something that they can all attend? Or do you set something in stone and then just see who shows up?

Personally I would opt for the second option but I am not altogether sure how this would work. I guess you would just have to take the chance that it wouldn't work for every kid. It seems like it is something though that every leader is going to deal with.

This week was pretty ordinary but I learned a huge lesson about leadership. I had never thought about how important it was to be able to have the leadership under you a gelled and unified force.

There was more time this week that was spent with the leaders together. After the group had met on Wednesday the leaders spent some time just hanging out and the subject was brought up about fasting together. The purpose would be just to dedicate time and energy into praying for the youth as a whole and the group itself. After talking with everyone about that I spent some time thinking about how amazing it was that a group of leaders had such a similar focus and vision. There has been a lot of work on the end of Tammie to unify the group and bring the leaders together with a similar vision and desire for the hearts of the teenagers.

I really admire the work that Tammie has done with the unifying though because I know that it was not easy to do that. Its a lot of coordination to get leaders all together at one time and then thats not even including bringing all of the youth together at the same time.

I like the way in which the group does work, one leader as a whole with a bunch of leaders underneath her. Its an amazing way of ministry.

Contemplative Youth Ministry

I finished the book by Mark Yaconelli, "Contemplative Youth Ministry". It was a good book, I liked how Mark tied in the importance of praying and reflecting on the ministry. Its even true in normal life because to often we want to rush ahead and not ponder the moment and what happened in that moment.

These are the main points of the book that I liked and want to take into my own ministry someday:

• The importance of living life to the abundance. The message in this book was being able to create the hope and that path for the teens to walk in order to see and find that "the glory of God is shown in the man fully alive." This is probably one of the key things that I want tied into my ministry and its purpose/mission. That we are trying to reach teens to show them that there is a better way to life then what our world tells us. With Jesus they can become fully alive.
• Having relationships with the teens and knowing them not just in youth group. In this mentoring relationship there will be "noticing, naming, and nurturing. This will help the teens be able to express words for God and then developing ways in which they can individually praise and worship God.
• Having a supportive and encouraging ministry team that works alongside me. I want to have young adults who are going to be active and involved in the youth's lives. I want to include leading and teaching the young adults as well so that not only are they leading kids closer to God but they themselves are knowing and experiencing God on a deeper level.
• Mark talked about different ways in which we can pray and seek the heart of God. A lot of those practices being around from even the beginning of the Church, I want these practices involved in my own ministry.

This book was great. I whole heatedly recommend it!

Life continues at a fast pace. But with that pace I have seen a lot of really cool things this week.

Wednesday was exciting because Phil spoke about true humility. I had heard his message on it before and was super excited for the kids to be able to hear it. The message seemed to be received well, I have never seen the kids so attentive. Phil spoke directly to the heart of the issue in the same way I had heard him speak before. The message was powerful too because he had known about some of the talents that the kids possessed and challenged them directly to use those passions to bring glory to God. By having it be so personal I think it drove home the importance of the message and made it relate directly to each of the kids.

The one activity stood out as being really cool too. There were note cards passed around to each person and then you wrote your name on the card then the card was passed around the room for each person to write something on it that they appreciated about you. It was a great way to encourage the kids to be leaders and to learn the art of encouraging those around them. This seems to be one more tool for the development of leaders which to me is one of the main goals of youth ministry. Encouragement is such a huge tool in the development of anything, especially leadership.

Friday night we went to the Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, concert. Personally the concert was amazing, it was a powerful worship service. But not only was it personally powerful it was also amazing to see some of the kids come out of their own normal worship actions. Kids who normally didn't seem to care were at some points in the service passionately worshiping God. It was very cool to see.

My question lies from this service though, how do you as a leader take that excitement and the mountain high that you are on from worshiping God with so many people, and channel it to be used successfully? How do you take mountain top experiences and use them to continue to develop the leader in the youth?

Too many times in my own experience I have seen the mountain highs only being mountain highs were you are jazzed up on emotional energy. It is never channeled into something great like it could be. Its left just as it is. Thats a shame in my mind. And I cannot help but wonder how it can be handled better and how you actually channel that energy.

We have talked about starting small groups which I am excited about. I am going to lead the junior high girls, the topic is not certain yet. I am super excited about this possibility. I love the girls and the opportunity I had with them earlier in the winter with small groups.

I am continuing to love this stuff. I love the planning, the worshipping, the hanging out, the reflecting, and the praying that has to happen in this ministry.

Reading

I haven't posted a response to the reading that I have been doing in awhile. So I guess now would be a good time. I have been continuing to read through Mark Yaconelli's book "Contemplative Youth Ministry" and the last chapter was on the community surrounding the youth ministry.
Its interesting that I should be reading this chapter at this point in the week. I just had a meeting in which the importance of community and the importance of leadership was discussed and I think that it ties in with this chapter very well. There is a quote in the book that I really like (and not just because it has to do with Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
"Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that there is no such thing as an individual Christian. If we seek to share the life of Jesus with young people, we can't do it alone. Christians believe its only as we gather together that we truly embody the Spirit of Jesus. Together we become his eyes, hands, mind, and heart" (141) This plays out to be so true. How many times do we (and I am speaking from a congregational sense) expect our leaders to do everything? We want the youth leader to do all of the youth things herself/himself because thats just their job. But then you read a quote like this and its completely the opposite. Completely. We are called to embody the Spirit of Christ as a body of believers and if thats how we embody the Spirit then we should to be able to share the love of Jesus in the same way.
Ministering to youth cannot happen it alone. It's impossible. I guess I see this as both a call for the youth minister and the congregation of a Church that together they should seek to serve their youth. The minister cannot do it alone. The congregation should see this and support and help in many ways. But in the same breath I think that there is a call on the minister as well. He or she must be able to see that they cannot do it alone. Its not just a "suck it up and deal with it" thing, they must be able to see the need for community. For sharing the responsibilities and allowing other people to help. Only in doing this can we truly call ourselves the body of Christ.

And he has called us to community. He has called us to be the body and to serve together.