Tag Archive - Youth Ministry

My Saturdays Just Got Busier

November 12, 2008 in Center for YM, features, Global Youth Ministry, Latin America, Seminary, Youth Ministry with 6 Comments

We just announced over on our Spanish website that we’ll be starting up a certificate program in youth ministry (see the announcement – Diplomado en Ministerio Juvenil – in Spanish) in January.

The idea is to offer an informal youth ministry training for those who cannot study at the seminary full time. This program will meet on Saturday mornings for four hours starting January 10, 2009. We’ll have two locations – one at the Seminary and the other at a church in the south of the city.

The entire certificate program lasts for a year, with nine courses overall that each last a month. We’ll be taking June, July, and December off each year.

I’m praying for 30-40 students in the entire program, which will benefit many churches.

So, if you read this and know someone in Mexico City who would be interested, pass them the link with more information. If you don’t live in Mexico City or know anyone in Mexico City, pleas pray with me for this new way to train youth workers here.

A Cultural Observation

October 20, 2008 in Culture, Mexico with 0 Comments

This Saturday, Jon and I went to ExpoCristiana, a gigantic Exposition of Christian books, music, and everything else imaginable. We went with Huberto and some of the young people from his church.

While we were there, Jon and I made an incredible cultural observation: Mexican young people love bracelets.

I snapped these pictures on my camera phone for proof. We spent at least 10 minutes standing at this booth looking at the bracelets.

Bracelets Brazaletas

So, I guarantee that this is something I will use in ministry. I need to get some bracelets made up to promote the Seminary program and our website, or, the next time someone invites me to preach at a camp or something, I need to get some bracelets that have to do with the topic.

After all, you have to identify the culture to use the culture to reach the culture.

Technology and the NYWC

October 14, 2008 in Technology, Youth Ministry with 1 Comment

I couldn’t go to the National Youth Workers’ Convention in Sacramento this weekend, but because of the use of technology, I felt like I could have been there.

Adam did a great job with the use of technology, including live blogging, regular blogging, video wrap-ups, and twitter updates.

It got me thinking about the use of technology in ministry (something I think about often). We have to think of more ways to get to people. There are so many tools available to us now that we literally have endless opportunities to connect with, learn from, and share with people all over the world.

Even in Mexico, we are using technology in ministry. We had a pre-concert two weekends ago, and admission to this concert got you a free VIP pass to a concert that will will be happening this weekend. The VIP pass will be delivered by text message. Since everyone in Mexico (especially our target audience) has cell phones, they can just come to the door on Sunday night with the encrypted text message.

There are tons of ways to include new technology in ministry. I think it’s a new way to be more personal. The internet is more social now, so in order to connect with people, we need to use it more.

Weekend Wrap Up – Dimension Juvenil

September 29, 2008 in Center for YM, features, Global Youth Ministry, Latin America with 1 Comment

This weekend I had the enormous privilege of attending a youth conference called “Dimension Juvenil” with my students from the seminary.

It was two days of training, fellowship, and networking. We had a great time together. Some of the highlights were: traveling on the subway with my students, acting crazy at the concerts, learning lots of great things at the conferences, and meeting new prospective youth ministry students.

I met Josh McDowell (as you can see in the photo), and I caught up with some other friends of mine who are involved in training youth workers throughout Latin America.

Overall, it was a great conference. I had a great time.

Youth Ministry Convention this Weekend

September 25, 2008 in Center for YM, features, Global Youth Ministry, Mexico City, Youth Ministry with 0 Comments

This weekend I’m going to a youth ministry convention with all of our youth ministry students here in Mexico.

It’s a convention put on by our friends at Dimensión Juvenil, and I’m excited that our students are going to get to attend. Many of the breakout sessions that will be given are exactly what they need to help them with their ministries. I’m hoping to learn some stuff, too.

I’m also going to network and meet new prospective students. Please pray that we have opportunities to connect with people who might be interested in the youth ministry training we offer.

Inner City Missions

September 23, 2008 in features, Global Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry with 1 Comment

I love hearing about what people are doing around the world, especially in youth ministry. Twitter has been a great way to get to know so many new people (follow me here).

I got into contact with Colleen on twitter and began to read her blog (Inner City Missions Experiences). I decided to ask her some questions and put her answers here.

Colleen works with Metro Kidz Baltimore, a youth ministry within Charm City Church in inner-city Baltimore, Maryland whose mission is to share the love of Jesus Christ by serving and providing for various needs within the community.

Here are my questions for her:

  1. How did you first get started in Inner City Missions?

    hanging-in-the-neighborhood.jpgBeing from Kansas, I had never had much exposure to the inner city, I grew up in a family where money was tight, but I never had to go hungry or go without the things I needed, so when I moved to the Baltimore-Washington Corridor it was eye-opening to say the least to experience inner city. The drugs, crime, homelessness, prostitution etc. it all just happens here and no one really bats an eye. Where I grew up these things would be considered eyesores.

    My first real exposure to the inner city was through working with the homeless. I met a man on Rt. 40 in Catonsville, MD who had just been dealt a rough hand, I passed him everyday and knew I needed to do something for him, so I went to the party store and bought seven party bags, yeah you know the ones, with big bright balloons, stars etc. and I filled them with food, personal hygiene items and notes of encouragement. Finally on the last day God really spoke to my heart.

    I had no idea what to do, what to say, how to even approach this man, I mean I am girl from Kansas, stuck in this big scary world out here…so I pulled my car into a parking lot and sat in my car for an hour, I cried out to the Lord and begged him to give me the words, to lead me and he did. I found myself sitting in a diner with this man for hours. He introduced me to the homeless population, and I completely submerged myself these people that others found hard to love I loved more than anything in the world.

    Two summers later I found myself in inner city Tampa, working with the Tampa Bay Dream Center, it was there that God laid it on my heart that I was supposed to completely surrender my life to missions. Two summers later I found myself spending nearly a month in Los Angeles (www.dreamcenter.org) and then finally in the summer of 2007 I found Charm City Church in Baltimore and God finally provided me with a place to serve, a calling and a path (www.metrokidzbaltimore.org).

  2. What is the biggest challenge to working with inner city kids?

    MemorialI don’t think there is just one big challenge to working with inner city kids, I think everyday provides a new challenge, most of the kids that we work with don’t know the meaning of true unconditional love and it’s hard for them to open up and allow you to love them, or to love you back. The other challenge is you never know what you’re going to walk into, you never know if one of your kids or one of their family members lost their life overnight, you never know if one of them has fallen into the gang and drug war that we are consistently fighting.

  3. What has been the highlight of your ministry?

    One of the biggest highlights of my ministry is success in our kids, watching some of these kids go from hard kids from the street to leaders within our ministry. As I write this I can think of five kids within the last month that have been given leadership roles within our Wednesday night Kidz/Youth program and to sit back and think about where a few of them were a year ago, makes my heart dance, and smile grace my face. I’ve gotten to watch kids come to Christ, kids be delivered from the city and kids develop into responsible loving and lovable young men and women. And at the end of a hard night to hear a kid say, “I love you Miss Colleen, thanks for helping me,” makes every hard day/night worth it.

  4. How can we pray for you?
    Right now, we have two major prayer requests one is for a miracle to happen in our neighborhood over the past few weeks the crime rate has gone up significantly there are nightly gun battles on the corner, the dealers are out in full force, murders are happening left and right and people are afraid to even come out of their homes.

    The other is for a financial miracle, right now we’re at a financial and church building crossroads and are really praying to God for a miracle.


I’d love to hear from other people involved in ministry. If you’d like to be featured here, please contact me.

The State of Youth in the US

September 3, 2008 in features, Youth Ministry with 0 Comments

I was doing some research for my talk today at Grace Christian School (the school I graduated high school from), and I came across a report that I had seen on Ypulse and had been meaning to read for a long time.

The Horatio Alger Report called, “The State of the Nations Youth” gives some information based on a phone survey of 1,006 students ages 13-19, and it touches on various topics that would be interesting to any youth worker in the US.

Some things I found interesting:

  • As recently as 2003, 75% of teenagers said they felt hopeful and optimistic about the future of the country. This year, however, barely half (53%) of students feel hopeful and optimistic about the future of the country a 22-point decline in five years.
  • 53% of those surveyed would describe themselves as religious.
  • Only 46% report that their parents have rules about how they can use the internet.
  • 64% of teenagers say that they spend some time each week practicing a sport for an average of 10.3 hours per week.
  • Almost four out of five students (79%) say that getting good grades creates a problem for them. Fourty-five percent say that it creates major problems for them.
  • 88% use the word “confident” to describe themselves.

You can download the PDF of the full report here.

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