Yesterday I went to a South Coast/Illawarra/Southern Sydney area youth ministry networking day. It was good (thanks to Andy Stevenson and Youthworks for organising it). I suggested an idea I had a while back to a few of the others, and it might just get off the ground. I’d love thoughts and contributions from you.
Fact 1: In the area I minister there are several great intensive leadership training camps and courses aimed at volunteer youth leaders. Things like Leaders in Training (LIT) and Katoomba Youth Leadership Conference (KYLC), as well as a range of smaller regional events.
Fact 2: Whilst intensive leadership training is great, I think it’s important to keep our leaders growing throughout the year. Week to week it can be easy to always be focused on organising the next event, or writing the next talk. My hope is to spend half an hour of the weekly leaders meeting on growing the Christian character, knowledge, and skills of the youth leaders, before we become immersed in week-to-week details. (By the way, half an our a week, for 36 weeks of the year is 18 hours spent developing leaders over the year! It would surely be time well spent.)
Fact 3: At the moment I don’t have enough time and creativity to effectively plan half an hour of leadership training each week.
Fact 4: I don’t know of any published material I can just pick up and use. There are lots of good resources, but many of them are not really formulated to be used in half hour bits, or for training youth leaders.
Therefore…
The plan is to gather a few people and together write one year of youth ministry training material that can be used in half hour blocks at a weekly youth leaders meeting.
So…
What do you think of the idea? If such a resource existed, would you use it?
What areas do you think should be covered the training material?
Or perhaps you have some resources you have already developed that could be contributed?
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9 comments:
great post!
Fact 1: roger that
Fact 2: good idea. it must be a privilege having a weekly meeting.
Fact 3: okay
Fact 4: you can always do a chapter a week from some good youth ministry books. can easily read and discuss in 30 minutes.
The plan is to gather a few people and together write one year of youth ministry training material that can be used in half hour blocks at a weekly youth leaders meeting.
sounds good.
What do you think of the idea?
Great idea.
If such a resource existed, would you use it?
I'd be interested to see it. Other than taking some ideas, I wouldn't use it. We don't have weekly meetings. Ours are monthly.
What areas do you think should be covered the training material?
Or perhaps you have some resources you have already developed that could be contributed?
---------------
Brief outline of what I'm writing:
3 years worth of material.
Although it could be done in 1.5 years.
we have 4 sunday arvos in a row for training 4 times a year.
i encourage people to do 2 a year.
101 - intro material. life of leader. role of leader
102 - teaching Bible to small group
201 - follow-up, work with parents + programming
202 - teaching Bible to large groups
301 - understanding teenagers
302 - masters - going the long haul - and leading leaders.
progress
101 - written, run twice
102 - written, run once
201 - writing - running
202 - part written - run term 4
301 - outline done
302 - rough outline done
i'm keen for our material to be specific to our context... but stax of it is applicable to others.
tim let me know if you want a more detailed ooutline of the series and i'll email it.
peaceout
it must be a privilege having a weekly meeting
How do you not have a weekly meeting? At the moment we meet half an hour before youth group starts to work out any final details and pray together. I don't think youth group would really work without it.
My intention is to change our weekly meeting from half an hour to an hour to allow some traing time.
Fact 4: you can always do a chapter a week from some good youth ministry books. can easily read and discuss in 30 minutes.
Dave, what books would you suggest that have chapters that can be read and discussed in half an hour?
Thanks.
How do you not have a weekly meeting?
i think it might be part of being big??? it's difficult to get everyone together.
we have lots of commuters... so before youth is tricky - we have lots of leaders who run small groups before youth.
we do have 5-10minute meetings afterwards... but i'm conscious of not making them go too late into the night!
our monthly meetings have been great.
spend some time together. year 7-12. and then split into juniors 7-9, seniors 10-12.
Dave, what books would you suggest that have chapters that can be read and discussed in half an hour?
i haven't done it much... i write a bit of my own stuff...
but we've used stuff from tim hawkins on life of the leader. from leaders that last.
i think all of the following books have chapters that can easily be read and briefly discussed in 30 minutes:
Tim Hawkins: Fruit that will last & Leaders that will last.
Doug Fields: Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry (and maybe some of the chapters from 'your first two years')
Al Stewart et al: no guts no glory
Moser: changing the world through effective youth ministry (wouldn't use the creative one for training - go ideas... but not worth using as a training material - i find youth evangelism a little disappointing - but i'm sure there's some good stuff in there to throw around)
i don't agree with every single thing in each of the above books... but i think it's good to help people read things critically. but on the whole... each of those books has some great stuff.
i have a stack more of books... but the above would probably be the ones i'd use most.
is that helpful?
how's this all going?
I'm getting a few notes and things together. You'll seem more posted in the future.
i'm really enjoying this great youth blog, thanks guys.
I've just moved church, started college and also started a new yth gp at my new church, apart from only having myself and one other, what i miss having from the yth min at my old church (st faiths narrabeen) has been the midweek leaders meeting. We met for an hour on wednesday evening (6:30-7:30)(most leaders had bible study that night straight after). It was great to train the leaders (~25) and plan the upcoming night and pray.
Our yth min came up with his own curriculum and we worked our way through that each week.
If you want more info just ask and i'll see what i can do.
Thanks for your encouragement with the blog Duke.
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