NYWC ’07 Day 4: A new vision

November 5, 2007 · 14 comments


look! i'm friends with tim from starfield, originally uploaded by jakebouma on flickr.

Before I begin, you should know that the picture above is way funnier if you 1) watch the Colbert Report and/or 2) know who Starfield is.

Today was a little more relaxed than yesterday. I went to two seminars and tonight's general session and also did a bit of reading on my own, which was nice.

The first seminar I attended was entitled "The Greening of Youth Ministry: Why Your Youth Group Should Care for the Earth", hosted by Peter Illyn of Restoring Eden. There weren't that many people in attendance, which made me both feel bad for Peter and sent the message (to me) that people still don't really think environmental concerns are a legit topic of discussion in Youth Ministry. I hope YS brings Peter back (this was his first time at the NYWC) and promotes his sessions more. One of the reasons environmental concerns are not addressed in youth ministry, as Peter pointed out, is that in our culture it's always associated with politics. "The issue," Peter said, "is not how we make environmental concerns non-political, it's how we make them non-partisan." Right on.

The second seminar I attended was "A New Vision for Middle School Ministry" with Mark Oestreicher (a.k.a. ysmarko), the president of Youth Specialties. It was absolutely fantastic. Marko combines information from sociology, psychology, brain science, theology, and other areas of study to fuel his own reflection on middle school ministry and his seminar was a well-presented distillation of these studies and observations. I am for sure going to get an mp3 of his seminar and give it to my confirmation volunteers; it was just excellent.

The general session featured Leeland and Starfield leading worship (both great bands) and Greg Stier as the speaker. Again, I was not pleased with his message at all. He is a passionate Christian to be sure, but his message was way off mark (in my humble opinion). Essentially he told us that the only thing that matters in youth ministry is "preaching Christ and Him crucified", and that youth ministry has "gotten off track" as of late. Aside from making sweeping generalizations, he preached "the gospel" from 1 Corinthians, and not one of the gospels. He didn't once reference Jesus' earthly ministry, referenced the resurrection once, and beat the cross and crucifixion to death (no pun intended).

I don't mean to bash the guy - seriously, he is totally passionate and committed - but his message is like the antithesis of what I want my youth ministry to be. In my paper Toward A Postmodern Youth Ministry: An Examination of Postmodern Youth Culture in Conversation with the Emerging Church I quote Pete Rollins, who says, "In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide." I felt like Greg was all about shoving food down kids' throats.

And finally, a quick rant. This convention makes CDs and mp3s of every general session and individual seminar available for purchase at the ridiculous price of $6 per mp3 and $8 per CD. Seriously, Youth Specialties? Not only did we already pay a bunch of money to attend the convention, but you're going to charge us more for something we potentially already paid for? In an age of $0.99 music downloads, you still feel that it's cool to charge me the price many Youth Specialties books for what's essentially a 90 minute podcast. Additionally, you're actually being biased towards bigger churches with the higher price: If I could afford to bring 5 people to the conference and we all went to a different seminar, I wouldn't have to buy as many seminar mp3s. But since I'm the only person here from my church, I have to buy more mp3s on a smaller budget. Doesn't that seem counterintuitive? I mean, it's not the end of the world, and it didn't "ruin" my experience, just something to think about (that means you, Marko, if you're reading this).

Tomorrow marks the conclusion of the conference and my return home, which reminds me - I need to pack.

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Tagged as: greg stier, mark oestreicher, national youth workers convention, nywc, peter illyn, religion, restoring eden, st. louis, starfield, Youth Ministry

  • http://redemptionjunkie.blogspot.com Heidi Renee

    It's great to get the birds eye view from you Jake – you're hitting the seminars I would have picked and can't wait for your Tony Campolo notes!

    Just so you know there is a company that YS contracts with to record and produce all of the mp3's and cd's of the event. It is an astronomical amount of work that has a whole crew of people who have to be at each of the seminars, setting up professional equipment in each room, monitoring it and then getting it back to the HQ to reproduce – it's a mammoth job and while podcasts of a church sermon are free/cheap it's because all of the equipment is already there and the place is set up for that kind of thing.

    The company does make a profit, but they're just regular joes, sweet people who are just trying to make a living like us. YS gets nothing from the transaction (if I have my info straight) and the speakers get nothing either. It's just the cost of getting to each event with all of the equipment and the staff and putting 600+ recordings into "instant" usable media formats.

  • http://www.iamjoshbrown.com/blog josh

    everything you wrote the last couple of days is what i experienced back in the early 00′s. and ultimately why i haven’t been back since. sad to see that it hasn’t changed much though.

  • http://www.iamjoshbrown.com/blog josh

    well let me give 1 more disclaimer . . . i would imagine that for most of the audience, the convention hall with the products, the general speakers, etc is what they’re looking for. dare i say need. it’s sort of a retreat for them and a place that they go to be energized. i remember what it was like for me when i first went. the honest reality is that guys like you are probably the minority when it comes to seeing past some of the stuff. but it’s good that you recgonize that there were some great things there that you experienced as well as express concern for some of the other things.

    it seems like you didn’t like the big, entertainment, sells-job type of environments and preferred the smaller, more theological, relational environments. which matches your personality i would imagine.

  • http://www.iamjoshbrown.com/blog josh

    one more thing. sorry.

    reading heidi’s comment that makes sense on the money. but knowing how much it costs to run that kind of operation, why not hire some interns or create a site where conference attendees can post their mp3′s that they’ve recorded themselves. you could just have a big site ala a torrent site. and the files that are recorded could be easily uploaded. then anyone could go on there and search for the files they wanted to download. or even stream. it would truly be open source.

    or at the very least i wonder if they would be cool if you recorded stuff yourself and duplicated it.

  • http://www.ysmarko.com marko

    josh, sorry you had that experience and stopped attending. jake, i expect being here, you realize that our intention is to have people speak that you will disagree with. people walk out of tony jones’ seminars just as often as others are frustrated with greg stier. what a boring convention it would be if we agreed with everyone and everything, and if we only hung out with people who agree with us and are from our own tribe. i also, do not agree with much of what i hear preached or taught at the convention; but i sure do love that god surprises me with truth from unexpected sources.

    i promise you this: ys will continue to have speakers you will not agree with. if that means josh doesn’t attend, then i’m sorry for both josh and us and all the other attendees, because everyone loses by his absence and withdrawel. if that means other don’t attend: bummer. bad for all of us. but not enough to homogenize our approach. plenty of other youth ministry events out there that look that way.

  • Jake

    Wow… I woke up to more comments than I expected!

    Heidi: I’ll post the Campolo notes as soon as I can, and as far as the production goes, I will just keep it short and say I agree with josh‘s open source proposal. I know more than a few people who recorded their own audio at seminars.

    Josh: I agree that I am probably in the minority at this event and understand why you haven’t been back. I do see value in being here, though, and that’s mostly in making personal connections and – if nothing else – being exposed to and reminded of a style of youth ministry that is still very popular no matter what kinds of books I’ve been into lately or whatever. Overall, my frustrations and disappointments don’t outweigh my joys and learnings, and that’s a good thing. Let’s do lunch.

    Marko: Thanks for contributing to the discussion. I fully understand the rationale for diversity. This particular post (sans the mp3 rant) is not meant as a bash on YS, but rather my personal reflection on my experience, which has been fantastic overall. In fact, it’s probably been enhanced by the diversity. When I return to my next YS conference, I will bring much that I have learned this year, and I’ll have an even better time than I did this year. I’m going to post some more reflections of the whole conference sometime this week, but one of the things I’ll suggest is bringing in some more minority YM voices (Kenda Creasy Dean, Andrew Root, et. al.). Cheers.

  • http://www.ysmarko.com marko

    jake — i wasn’t so much responding to your post (and your previous posts) as i was to josh’s comment about why he hasn’t returned. that said, i would LOVE to see you post about what you have learned or enjoyed at the event also.

    kenda has spoken a few times — she did a general session last year. we love her, but she greatly limits her speaking engagements. andy root has spoken also (not mainstage, but seminars). rodger nishioka. rollie martinson. karen sloan. doug pagitt (different tribe than the others, i know) did a mainstage. brian mclaren did also, and many seminars. of course, mark yaconelli many times (and will continue to). i’m not writing this to be defensive at all — it’s actually quite frustrating to me: it’s WAY easier to find speakers on the conservative end than the mainline end. and we would love to hear your suggestions.

  • http://www.iamjoshbrown.com/blog josh

    marko. i hope you didn’t misunderstand me. i’m not bashing YS. in fact, i usually recommend it about once a week. an youth pastor will email me or call me and i’ll tell him he needs to check out your resources or i’ll recommend a particular one. i’ve even recommended the conference to friends.

    it’s just not for me anymore. i hope you don’t think i was bashing. i was just trying to make the connection that YS is what it is. a diverse group with different needs and wants. your point about tony j illustrates that. i was just saying for someone who is into smaller, relational things like jake’s personality . . . it might not be the best fit. that’s why i haven’t been “back” although i still consider myself a part of the extended family.

    sorry if it came off otherwise.

    anyway . . . sorry to hijack your blog comments jake.

  • Jake

    Josh: No worries… good conversation happening.

  • http://www.ysmarko.com marko

    josh, it’s cool, man. I’m just discussing. maybe I misread things. jake criticized greg’s talk (rightly. I did on my blog also.). you responded that that kind of thing is why you stopped coming. which is why I responded as I did about our value of heterogenaity. where jake was (or you were) commenting about small, intimate gatherings as opposed to larger gatherings, I don’t see in the post or your initial commments. but, again, maybe I’m just brain dead (actually, I KNOW I’m brain dead!). that was all – I thought you were saying you stopped attending because of speakers like greg.

  • Carol

    Hi Jake,

    You will have to tell Cindy and I about your conference highlights and the cool stuff you want to do at St. Mark. I enjoyed reading your updates. I was especially to glad learn that your current situation was good from your private consultation!

    Talk to you soon.

    Carol

  • http://stuartdelony.wordpress.com stuart delony

    that picture is so amazingly wrong on so many levels. great job man!

  • Ray

    I have never been on this site but somehow landed on this blog through that great internet tool Google. Please dont take this wrong because I’m admitting to being on the outside looking in and I’m not in a youth group and I’m not a big fan of church and all. I’m just curious, I dont know what this Greg said at the talk but I saw your criticism about him bringing up the cross and focusing on it and whatever. After spending a few minutes on your site I’ve noticed something that might have been what he was getting at. I have yet to find anything about how I could be saved. I see nothing about how I could have Jesus as my Savior or how I might could find out. I see lots and lots of cool articles about stuff I dont understand. I see all sorts of pictures and comments and links to more stuff I dont understand. Personally, I dont care how “cool” or “unoffensive” a youth leader is. I’d want mine to tell me how to get to heaven and what Jesus did on the cross and then help me tell all my friends and family and so on. Apparently, it seems like knowing how to get to heaven would be a great thing and sharing it would only be logical. I’ve also read that Jesus Christ himself commanded his believers to share the message of salvation and teach others to do the same. Of course I could be wrong, this doesnt look like a Christian youth website so maybe it’s not. In which case I understand your rejection of the death of Jesus Christ as the payment for all sin being the most important issue in any individual’s life. I’ve found nothing on this site to make me think otherwise. But it might be on here somewhere. If it is, it’s obviously not that important here though just like you mentioned.

  • http://www.rethinkingyouth.blogspot.com Brian

    Hmmm…Ray’s comments above really speaks to a division in how many of us approach the Christian faith. Some see it primarily as a religion focused on the afterlife, and others of us see it as focused on a relationship with God through Christ in the here-and-now.

    Jake, I’m actually posting to say how much I enjoyed reading your article on postmodern youth which I only came across when I saw the link in this posting. Some very thoughtful and helpful information there. Thanks for sharing.