Tomorrow morning, we leave before any human being should be out of bed. We’ll be heading off to Florida. Janell will be there for a while, but I’ll only be in Florida for 2 days before I go out of town to teach a class for a week. I’m looking forward to being with my students, but I do not at all feel very prepared for this class. I still have a lot of “on the fly” adjustments to my notes and other things. We’re also praying that we get our visas in time. I leave on Saturday, but we still do not have clearance to go. Maybe, I’ll have to wait until Tuesday to go. That would not be very good financially. Just another one of those waiting games. We’ll see how it works out. This time tomorrow, I should know if I’m going on Saturday or Tuesday. Hopefully, it will be Saturday.
Programming class
I’m spending my time preparing for my Programming class that I’ll be teaching in a few weeks. It is a class on youth ministry administration, so I am using a construction theme. I was working today on some graphics for introductions to sections, the cover of the notes, and for the Powerpoint. The picture to the left is something I came up with. So far, I don’t like the letters/font I used. I need it to stand out more. Anyway, this is what I have so far. The outline for the class goes a little like this:
Constructing a Plan for Youth Ministry Programming
- Laying the foundation: Prayer and Philosophy
- Developing a Team: Volunteer staff
- Sketching the blueprint: Calendar and long-term planning
- Finishing the details: Event planning
- Specific needs: Camps, Ministry Teams, Small groups, large groups, Worship
- Safety Procedures
Youth Emphasis Chapel
On May 5th, we had our first ever Youth Emphasis Chapel at the seminary. We invited Nahum Leon, a friend of Tim and Annette Gulick to speak about the necessity of youth ministry to the students and faculty at the seminary. If you speak Spanish, here is the MP3 of his conference. Nahum also shared in my youth ministry class, and we had a great time with him. He is a student and graphic designer, working on his Masters in Education and also working with paralideres.org.
Hopefully, this will be the first of many “Youth Emphasis” events we will have at the seminary. I am hoping to have a Youth Emphasis Week sometime next year, probably in October.
If you need other formats for the audio file, click here.
Some Students
Here are some other students of mine, who I will see in a few weeks. They are busy working on their class work in this picture. I’m busy grading their work that they’ve sent me. I can’t wait to see them again. It’s going to be a great time together, talking about youth ministry and learning together.
Youth Emphasis Chapel
We invited Nahum, a friend of Tim and Annette Gulick, to come and share at the seminary last Friday. He did a great job both in my class and in chapel. He came on Thursday night and spent some time at the house with me. Then on Friday, he shared. Nahum has a lot of experience working with the young people at his church in Toluca, and he has also been involved in the development of classes for training youth workers online with paralideres.org.
Change of plans
I received a phone call earlier today from Oscar telling me that he and Huberto can’t go to Guadalajara this weekend with me. The reason I was going to drive to the National Youth Union’s Leadership Workshop Weekend was to take them with me. So I got on the phone with Janell and she got me a flight out tomorrow afternoon so I won’t have to drive 7 hours by myself.
It turns out that another one of the leaders isn’t going to be able to go, either. So, 3 out of the 6 people who have been preparing to present are going to be there. That leaves me, Salomon, and Juan. We will be doing all of the activities for the 2 days we are there. It’s going to be a stressful weekend for sure.
In a few hours, I am going to pick up Nahum, a friend of Tim and Annette Gulick. He’s going to be speaking in chapel tomorrow at the seminary about the topic of youth ministry. He’s been helping out with Tim and Annette for a long time, and they highly recommended him to me as a speaker.
Prospective Students
I just got out of a meeting with two prospective students for the seminary’s youth ministry program. I had been in contact with one of them before, and it looks like both of them will probably be coming to the seminary in August. That is such a great encouragement to me because sometimes it feels like there is very little interest in the seminary. We’ll see how it works out, but so far, it seems great.
