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A Few Youth Cartel Events You Won’t Want to Miss

July 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

So you’ve survived the Fourth of July, maybe a mission trip or two this summer, and you’re thinking about what Continuing Education events you want to go to this fall…

Well, maybe you’re not that organized, but with the quality of events that are being put together by the folks at the Youth Cartel, I think perhaps you should be getting yourself registered for some of their events! First is the Middle School Ministry Campference. It’s being held October 26-28 in Indiana. Not sure what a “campference” is? Let them explain it to you:

Some elements of the Campference will be like a conference: seminars on a variety of subjects, main sessions with great speakers who will encourage you and lead you to think in new ways.  But other aspects will take advantage of the uniquenesses of our tribe and the vibe of a camp:  dialogues and experiential learning, loads of fun, shared meals, and lots of killer free time options.

You can register for the event here.

Another event to check out is The Summit. It’s being held November 9-10 in Atlanta. The Summit is being called “a new kind of event.” Here’s some more info about the program:

There are other amazing youth ministry events. We love ‘em (they’re mostly run by friends of ours). But we at The Youth Cartel wanted to try something different, something we’ve been dreaming about for two years.

We’ve always been big fans of TED talks, and are creating an event with that vibe. We want our imaginations stirred. We want to dream together. We want to grab hold of hope. And we want to do all of this with you.

You can register for The Summit here.

Filed Under: Ministry, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , ,

How to Use Social Media on a Mission Trip

June 26, 2012 by 1 Comment

Yesterday I left Ashland with 10 students to Portland for a mission trip. This is the first joint trip of the Ashland Youth Collective, an ecumenical, progressive community youth group we are attempting to create here in Ashland.

As we got ready to head out, in addition to all the other things I needed to do before being gone for a week, I needed to get our mission trip blog setup.

I feel like social media is a great tool that youth groups and churches can and should be using when they go out on mission trips. It allows our family, friends and congregation members to join with us on the trip.

I wrote a series of posts on how I had done this specifically on a few trips, and if you haven’t checked those out, I encourage you to do so.

The only change I’m making on this trip is that I’m using Tumblr instead of Posterous. Since Posterous has been bought by Twitter, I’ve seen the service go down the tube. Their customer support has gotten worse, and I couldn’t even connect with their Facebook App to get our Posterous site connected to our Facebook page. So, Tumblr it is.

Have you used social media on trips before? What worked for you? What didn’t work?

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Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity: A Review

May 11, 2012 by 8 Comments

I’ve spent the past week in Washington DC at the “Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity” conference. It’s been awhile since I’ve been at a Continuing Ed event and it was a great chance to get to connect with some friends (old and new), do some networking and hear from some great folks. I thought I’d just share some highlights and then offer a few comments.

Best Presenter: Patricia Lyons
While I struggled at first to keep up with her pace and excitement as she shared about her conversion to Harry Potter, her presentation was definitely a highlight of the conference. She was a presenter who made a relevant presentation about how to read the language of our culture to communicate good news to children and youth today. Add to that the fact that she was hilarious and wearing a Harry Potter robe and had a wand…a great presentation.

Best Workshop: Michael Novelli and Rebekah Lowe – The Art of Bible Storying
Michael and Rebekah offered a wonderful interactive and participatory workshop after the conference officially ended. It was based on Michael’s work on bible storying (his book is “Shaped By the Story“). I think this was a great way to end the conference, where we actually learned about a new way of doing youth ministry (which I think is what many were hoping for at the conference). If you’re not familiar with Michael’s work, be sure and check out Echo. And Rebekah has done some amazing work translating his work specifically for children’s ministry.

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Filed Under: Emergent, Ministry, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,