Training Opportunities

Veteran Cohort

Been in full-time youth ministry for eight or more years? Join this cohort, where you'll go through four preselected seminars and interact with people in a similar ministry stage as you.

Schedule

The Latest Research That Should Impact Your Youth Ministry

Chap Clark, Mike King

Seminar Series #5

Sacramento - Oct 12 3:30 PM-5:00 PM

This seminar will be a time of dialogue concerning new research, data, and issues that are and will have an impact on youth ministry practice, philosophy, and theology. Come, dream, wrestle, and add to an agenda that might include everything from new theories on brain development, learning theory, and the three stages of adolescence/emerging adulthood, to books and debates regarding incarnational/relational youth ministry, sociological research, practical theology, and some kind-of-out-there-but-still-pretty-cool approaches to the ministry call and task, such as narrative theology and creation theology. We might even get into how and why new ways of thinking need to be front and center in our ministry thinking and practice.

Youth Ministry in Your Second Decade and Beyond

Grant Byrd

Seminar Series #4

Sacramento - Oct 12 1:30 PM-3:00 PM

Starting out as a youth minister can be tough, but what about your second decade in youth ministry? That’s when you’ll face a whole new set of hurdles and struggles. In this interactive seminar, we’ll take a look at these hurdles, but we’ll also look at ways to overcome them and THRIVE during your second decade. Join us as we discover how to use your experience to make the second decade—and beyond—even better than the first!

Where Is the Church Headed, and What's Our Response?

Tom Sine

Seminar Series #3 - Super Seminars

Sacramento - Oct 11 2:00 PM-4:30 PM

Have you noticed the soaring gas and grocery prices? Overnight, we’ve moved into a highly volatile, new global economy and an increasingly uncertain future. Tom will enable you to identify some of the new challenges we’re facing in a rapidly changing world and church. More than that, he’ll invite you to ignite your imagination and join the new conspirators—young innovators and risk takers who are creating new expressions of church, entrepreneurial youth ministries, monastic communities, and urban cooperatives with the poor to engage these new challenges. Come discover the new ways that God can use your imagination and the students you work with to create the future—one mustard seed at a time. With leaders in the Veterans Cohort, we’ll start by soliciting your insights on challenges facing the church, the young, and those at the margins. Then we’ll invite you to spend the final hour in small creativity groups, creating imaginative new ways to address these challenges that you can then share and take away.

Seeing the Future: Learning to Exegete Culture for Creating Innovation in Youth Ministry

Mark Matlock

Seminar Series #1

Sacramento - Oct 10 4:00 PM-5:30 PM

Trends come and trends go, but every now and then a shift occurs that alters the way we think, live, and relate to God and to others. This seminar will help you understand what indicators to look for and will teach you how to build scenarios that allow you stay current in the ever-changing world of teens. Come prepared to interact as we put these anthropological tools to use.