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Using, not abusing, post-high schoolers

27 Apr

Am running an elective at Ynet this weekend. Ynet’s a great network for youth workers throughout Queensland but is being extended to support childrens and young adults workers as well.

My seminar is on using, not abusing, post-high schoolers. I’m trying to speak to a tendency I’ve observed that many churches will work hard to support their kids and high schoolers but then see their “ministry” to young adults as primarily

  • getting them involved in a Bible study group
  • asking them to run something around church (or at least start serving on rosters)

However, I’m not suggesting every church should have a “young adults” group. Rather, I think it’s just seeing these activities differently:

  • helping them to transition into growth groups (perhaps via a “young adults” group initially), where they are nurtured as Christians through hearing God’s Word and acting on it
  • equipping and supporting them as they explore how they can best serve around church

Not that happy with the seminar so far, but here’s the outline:

What are we trying to do?

Who are your ambitions?

What’s going on post-high school?

What do we seek from young Christian adults?

What is the real goal?

  • Conviction
  • Character
  • Competency

Looking after post-High Schoolers

Life-transitions and the power of peers

How Growth Groups help

Which Growth Groups help?

Shaping the Church’s future

When use becomes abuse

Training, not just training courses

People matter more than ministries

 
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Posted in Uncategorized

 

Where should a minister live?

15 Apr

Hoping that we’re settling on the Gold Coast for a good few years, and not wanting to risk constant moves, we’re thinking of buying a house. But where?

My thoughts so far:

Accessibility is probably more important than proximity to the church building. Honestly, not many of the members of our church live near the building. So it seems to me that being near is not as important as being easily accessible. There’s a major motorway running down the Gold Coast. At the moment it’s easy for people to get from that to our place, and so we feel accessible.

Living spaces matter. In our budget, the nearer we get to the church building, the less we get for the money. But this applies to accessibility too. There’s a place my wife and I love and that has ideal living spaces for entertaining and for running a family amidst ministry life. But is it too inaccessible? Which leads to…

Perceived distance matters. The place we love is probably not that inaccessible. There are other places that are further from the church but people view them as reasonably accessible. In comparison, when we show others in ministry the location of our “ideally laid out house for doing ministry” they usually view it as too far. Because it’s up in a corner where people don’t usually go.

Am I right? Are there other issues to consider?

 
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Posted in Family

 

Explaining ourselves to the world

13 Apr

Have been given an opportunity to speak on IVF to a conference of IVF scientists in May. Seemed a great opportunity even if the best outcome is simply a few more scientists sympathetic to Christians thinking through infertility treatment.

Had a trial run presenting at Griffith Christian Students yesterday, and again on Thursday. The hard thing is trying to explain Christianity, so that the Christian perspective made sense. Do you focus on our different framework, and get accused of not being specific enough? Or do you speak of the specifics and risk being heard as a nay-sayer?

My first attempt? I spoke about what it means to be human, how Christians view suffering and what we hope the future will bring. The result? Too much content.

Thursday I think I’ll briefly mention those three key beliefs and then move quickly to how that makes us different:

  • we focus on relationships, not probabilities and outcomes
  • we see the person, not the function (an embrionic human, not a human embryo)
  • we want to undo the consequences of the fall, not generate a whole new humanity (we see medicine as art-restoration, not exploring a lego-kit)

We’ll see how attempt 2 goes.

(By the way, I’m indebted to the very helpful thinking of John Wyatt in his New College Lectures.)

 
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Posted in Ethics, medical, pre-evangelism