More Prelude

The Prelude Gathering is coming up in just over a month. After registering, they sent us each 2 books, A New Kind of Youth Ministry by Chris Folmsbee. I've read the book, but didn't blog on it. The other book is Presence-Centered Youth Ministry by Mike King. We're to read these for the gathering, so I'll taking a break from my other books and reading Mike's book over the next few weeks. I'll also try to blog on it to help with my memory retention (which these days isn't doing too well).

--begin rant
On another note, I've been catching up on my reading of Group's youth ministry magazine. (check out youthministry.com for some good resources / articles). While I was reading the magazine, I had this overwhelming sense of being blasted with the consumerism side of youth ministry. I love the articles they always have, and they always get me thinking. But in some sense I'm getting a little tired of the overwhelming amount of resources that are out there. Resources are good and all and can be helpful in ministry especially when starting out, but in a market where more and more resources are hitting the shelves, companies have to market harder and harder for our youth ministry budgets (limited as they are). At some point it becomes a commodity like everything else in our consumer culture. What do we teach our youth when we continue looking for the latest and greatest resources to fill our shelves? I feel like I could probably spend a full time job just looking for something good and useful through all the fluff. Unfortunately the way my mind works, it tends to clog my brain instead of providing clarity. I think it would be great if someone could figure out how to provide quality resources to youth ministries, without leading us into the consumerism that plagues our world. Maybe it already exists and I haven't found it yet... or maybe just by providing this we continue to buy into consumerism...
--end rant

Prelude

In April, Tom and I and some others will be in Kansas City to be a part of the Prelude Gathering where a discussion among a number of youth ministers will be occurring to think and collaborate on the direction of youth ministry and God's story in our lives and the lives of the youth we spend our time with. Lookin forward to stepping away from things for a couple of days to thing long term as we discover where God is leading us in all this.

Ski retreat '08

After a very busy January and February, I think I'm back to having a little space to do some more blogging about things I'm thinking about related to youth ministry and my own life.

President's weekend was our annual high school ski retreat where we head out to Columbia's retreat center and have an opportunity to get away from the distractions to worship together and have some fun together. This year we had Tom Lynch come and share about God's story and how we fit into it, focusing on taking risks for the kingdom. This is a topic we've been talking through in our high school ministry since January. My hope here is that we can teach our youth what God's story is, and how their story connects with God's story. Part of the weekend is of course writing more stories about our community including the fun we had with a day of skiing /boarding on Saturday, and snow tubing on Sunday. Most of our youth have been posting pics on facebook, and they're great to see all the interactions they continue to have with each other. We've also had some of our youth ask to do a retreat every weekend. Oh to be in a time of life where that could happen :).

On a totally geeky side of things, I'm starting to get back into playing with Linux. There is a new (to me) distribution called Ubuntu which in african means 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. Its been a couple of years since I've had a chance to do any work with Linux, but I'm looking forward to playing around with this distribution to see if it could actually be a windows replacement as many folks out there are saying. Interestingly, there's a theological connection here as we talk about youth ministry. We are who we are because of who Jesus is, yet he has put each of us together in community for a purpose, and each of our youth ministries has a unique identity.

Coming up...

The Edge:
FNL: Back on this Friday at 8:30 in the Garage
BTE: This Sunday: Kristine is speaking (Last BTE is Dec. 9th)
Dec. 16: Christmas Party! 1-5, then come to Amahl and the Night Visitors!
Feb. 15-18th: Ski Retreat
March 7-8: Mark Matlock /Planet Wisdom Conference

Wired:
Unplugged: Dec. 9th is the last Unplugged of '07!
Dec. 16: Ice Skating and Christmas Party! 3-9
Jan. 21: Snow Tubing!