The Youth Ministry Change Project looks interesting. Very Interesting. It's a year long program to be run by the people from the Vibrant Faith website, of whom respected expert John Roberto is a member.
It'll involve...wait, let them tell you...
The landscape of youth ministry is changing.
Anyone who’s been in youth ministry awhile shares some ongoing frustrations: Families are busy. Programs are not attended like they once were. It’s not clear that programs even work. What you have observed at your church is backed up by cross-denominational research: programs don’t build faith. Relationships build faith. For a long time we thought that relationships would form naturally through the programs. We see that it doesn’t happen often enough. Meanwhile, families slip away.
What if we worked together to go beyond programs as the vessel for relationships to a place where young people are connected through deep, sustainable, faith-nurturing relationships like never before?
The Youth Ministry Change Project gathers veteran youth workers from 6-12 congregations into a Networked Learning Community. Using a proven process that has lead to transformational, system-wide change in areas such as health care and public education, we’ll spend a full year together exploring one vexing issue from all angles. We’ll design solutions that meet the needs of our local congregations. We’ll measure our results, refine our ideas, and try again. We’ll learn from one another and will pool our learning into an ebook.
This year, we’re looking at developmental relationships. We know the types of relationships that kids really need. How do we really, truly do youth ministry that is built on developmental relationships instead of programs? How do youth know that they are KNOWN?
You can apply to be a part of the process or at least find out more here...
It seems intriguing to me and I hope someone from our diocese will be a part of this life-changing expereince...