DAY 2 (Saturday) NYMC

Got up early to workout in keeping with my new commitment. 7AM is 4AM my time. Ouch!

Great morning session. Rick Lawrence talked about how we need to "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Really focused on taste. We all got a ziplock bag with little packets of salt, pepper, malt vinegar, honey and dijon mayonnaise and were told to choose 3 to taste, then take one and ask God to give us some insight as to what that taste tells us about God.
Then we wrote down a declaration to God as to what we heard.

Station 2 lead us in worship. I like their style and ability to infuse God’s Word in the midst of their music.

Duffy Robbins then came and continued to talk about Tasting and Seeing that God is good.

I then headed off to Walt Mueller’s Trend’s in Youth Ministry Culture.
Basically he walked us through the idea that we need to look into the “soup” and stir it. The soup is our students culture. Paul looked at the soup of his time and used it as he talked to the people.

I loved the quote he used from Francis Schaeffer. If Francis had 60 minutes with a person he would spend 55 minutes asking good questions and listening and then 5 minutes leaving that person with something valuable. Good to think about. Too often we talk and we don’t listen. I need to listen more. This fits very well with the things I am learning in my coaching class and books I am reading on coaching.

I walked to Chipotle for lunch and they were closed!!! Ugh. So I went to an afternoon seminar. I caught Tim Schmoyer’s “Media workshop: Effectively communicating with Teens and Parents throughout the Week.” He gave his 10 ways he communicates using technology. The top 3 were his youth ministry website, video announcements and texting. Most of this stuff I know, but it was encouraging to hear and grab some good insights. You can check out what Tim does on www.timschmoyer.com Side note he also has a cool website called www.ministryquestions.com and is a great place to ask and answer questions about ministry.

I popped back into my weekend long seminar with Walt Mueller and then headed to dinner with Jason Ostrander, Dave Irwin and Kris Jones. We talked about a future ministry for middle schoolers. That’s all I can tell you for now, but it’s exciting!

Back to the evening general session. Kay Warren was the speaker. She gave some great challenges to us as youth ministers. Unfortunately I missed most of it. Dinner didn't quite work the way I had planned.


We then headed over to the 100th episode of the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast. It was the 2nd live one they had done with an audience. The first was at last year’s Group conference. The first 100 people got a free t-shirt and they had pizza. These guys are fun and funny. It was great to be part of it.