Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Training Day

Saturday was our second annual YouthWorker Training Day here in Kansas City. This is a day for paid and volunteer youth workers which seeks to equip and launch them into a new year of ministry. This year, our general session speaker was Chris Folmsbee of SonLife. I have known Chris for about a year and it has been a blast interacting with him. He’s a thinker and he pushes me to think outside of my box. He did a fantastic job inspiring our volunteers to bring students into the presence of Jesus. As leaders we are not called primarily to program or hang out or have fun, but rather to show Jesus to students. This can happen in our programs, in our hang out times, and in our fun times, but it does not always happen. The questions become “why not?” and “what are you going to do about it?”

The day also includes two seminar sessions which are taught be local youth workers. These are sometimes really good and sometimes not so good. They are good when the presenter remembers… 1) the audience is primarily volunteers who help in ministries and 2) keep it short. The seminars are a real bummer when the audience is filled with volunteers and the presenter spends the entire time talking to them like they were the lead youth worker – or able to make final decisions. They are also a bummer when the presenter feels like they must communicate 3 hours of material in the hour they have.

Overall this was a great day and those from my team who attended seemed to be glad they did.

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