Training Opportunities

Open Source

Participate in the development of the content and direction of your seminars. Several seminars from each category, as well as two CCCs will be Open Source, allowing you to contribute prior to the event on the NYWC site.
Create NYWC by city: Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Nashville

Schedule

Developing Our Own Curriculum

Mark Oestreicher

Seminar Series #4

Pittsburgh - Nov 2 1:30 PM-3:00 PM

Hello, seminar attendees! Here’s the scoop on this Open Source seminar: My hope is that all of us will leave this 90 minutes with an actual teaching/small group/interactive series of middle school curriculum. I’m thinking something in the realm of three to six sessions. (Although, if we have a good amount of people who are highly involved, we might be able to make it longer. Hey, maybe we should shoot for four sessions per NYWC city, which would give us a 12-week series at the end. Then I could send out the whole batch to everyone who participated. What do you think?) Since it’s Open Source, I’ll need your collaboration on the basic plan now. And then I’ll need it again as we approach the Convention—to pull together potential ideas for the teaching series.

Creating a Theology of Cultural Engagement

Walt Mueller

Seminar Series #4

Pittsburgh - Nov 2 1:30 PM-3:00 PM

As you know, the Open Source Seminar format is a new thing at NYWC this year. I’m excited to be a part of the trail-blazing team on such a crucial and timely topic for youth ministry as cultural engagement. Our ministries will stand or fall based on the approach we take to this topic in the course of our daily interactions with kids. Now we get to work together on shaping how we’ll spend our (all-too-short) 90 minutes together. At this point my goal is to challenge each attendee to think through the spectrum of contemporary approaches to faith and culture, while evaluating not only where they do fall on the spectrum, but also where they should fall. Then, I’d like to look at some basic skills for cultural engagement, along with practical examples and perhaps some practice of each. Since 90 minutes is a very short time to address any topic with much depth, I’d like to use our ability to social network together after the convention to do some stuff individually that we can then process together. This could include some short directed readings and interaction with each other on what we’ve read, tackling a single or a variety of cultural expressions (films, TV shows, books, magazines, and so on) and then interacting on each while discovering ways the cultural piece informs or can be used in our ministries, and so on. In other words, our time of interaction won’t end at the 90-minute mark!

Technology and Youth Ministry

Joel Lusz

Seminar Series #3 - Super Seminars

Pittsburgh - Nov 1 2:00 PM-4:30 PM

This seminar is designed to help youth leaders use technology in today’s ever-changing world. It will include tips on effectively using the Internet, creating videos, lighting, sound systems, and so much more. We’ll also discuss how to use technology on a limited budget, what other youth leaders are doing, and practical steps for taking your ministry to a new level—starting now.

Expanding Your Creativity for Kingdom Purposes

Mark Matlock

Seminar Series #2

Pittsburgh - Nov 1 8:00 AM-9:30 AM

How can we accurately assess the spiritual development of students? This has been a perennial challenge for youth leaders. In this seminar Mark will lift the hood on a new assessment tool—“The Wisdom Index”—used for assisting in the discipleship of teens, and allow you to be a part of developing the measure and applying it in your youth ministry. Be a part of developing a tool that can help youth workers disciple teens across the nation.

Your Students Can Start Changing the World...NOW

Seth Barnes

Seminar Series #1

Pittsburgh - Oct 31 4:00 PM-5:30 PM

The world’s needs have never been greater. We see the headlines daily: AIDS! Sex-trafficking! Poverty! How do we respond? Do we retreat to our suburban fortresses, or do we raise up world-changers who risk as Jesus did? We’ll look at case studies of young people who’ve changed the world and the youth workers who helped them. We’ll explore ideas for turning your teenagers into activists who bust out of their comfort zones and make a difference. We’ll cover the five essential components of radical discipleship in a comfortable world.

The Look of Youth Ministry: Design, Graphics, Web and Logo

John Falke

Early-Bird Seminars

Pittsburgh - Oct 31 10:00 AM-11:30 AM

Unlock your youth ministry’s look with these relevant and innovative marketing techniques and Photoshop tricks. Take your visual appeal up a notch (or two) and attract more students than you thought possible.

The Present Future of Youth Ministry: Rethinking Traditional YM Models

Mark Helsel, Brock Morgan

Critical Concerns Courses

Pittsburgh - Oct 30 6:00 PM-9:00 PM

Pittsburgh - Oct 31 8:30 AM-11:30 AM

What should youth ministry look like today and what will it look like in 2020? Culture is changing by the second and the issues students are dealing with are like no other generation before them. So how do we respond? And are we actually willing to adapt? Are we willing to change our youth ministry methods and truly care for the hearts, minds, and souls of our students and do the work that's not currently being done? Drawing on 34 years of combined youth ministry experience Brock and Mark will share their own successes and failures and give insights into the future direction of youth ministry. This new and insightful course will be fun, interactive, and very practical as we dig into the current and future youth ministry trends, explore the current state of teenage spirituality, and share new ideas you can easily apply in your ministry setting.

Extreme Makeover Tech Edition: Building a Better Student Ministry Through Technology

Jay Delp, Joel Lusz

Critical Concerns Courses

Pittsburgh - Oct 30 6:00 PM-9:00 PM

Pittsburgh - Oct 31 8:30 AM-11:30 AM

Today's teens and technology revolution continues to march on! You can stay in step or wander off out of sync. This course will get you up to speed and stretch your existing use of technology in your ministry with students and staff. In addition to diving into Web 2.0 concepts such as blogging, podcasts, and social networking, we’ll explore presentation software, communication and media tools, and teach you to create your own videos. Help make this course meet your needs by joining the Open Source network prior to the event. You’ll connect with the presenters and other attendees and help shape the course to meet your needs. In this course, you'll receive a truly creative smorgasbord of technology, techniques, ideas, and resources (with a generous smattering of freebies sprinkled throughout, including a free CD-ROM of media content for each attendee).