"Do you want to go camping with us during Songkran,"
our language helper asked. …
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About Adam
Husband of one wife, not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, not striker, not given to filthy lucre; but a lover of hospitality…
We understood 51%
May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Global Youth Survey on Sex Education
March 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment
A multi-national survey of youth was released on World Contraception Day. The published findings are quite alarming. The survey shows an increase in number of sexual partners and a decrease in knowledge about sex (36 percent of Egyptian youth surveyed believe showering after sex is an effective form of contraception.) The researchers highlight that only 55 percent of youth in Europe receive sexual education in school and only 75 percent in most of Asia and the USA. They cite the lack of sexual education that youth receive in schools as the problem. I find this quite interesting. If half of the youth in Europe and three-fourths in most of the rest of the world are receiving their version of sexual education and the numbers continue to rise, a broke system. Providing more access to condoms and more sex ed in schools is not going to fix the problem, and their research seems to prove that.
Change will happen among the youth of the …
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Worship: England vs. Singapore
March 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Resources are slim within global youth ministry. In preparation for my transition to full-time youth ministry in Thailand I have tried to do as much research as possible, most of it highly informal asking anyone willing to listen if they have any books, articles, or anything of the like to recommend that might help prepare me for doing youth ministry cross-culturally, or more specifically in SE Asia. The fruit of the search has mainly been books on Buddhism.
I was pleasantly surprised this week when I came across an article, in The Journal of Youth Ministry (JYM), on worship among youth in Singapore. The JYM always puts out great highly academic work. This article compared research done in Singapore with previous research done on worship among youth in England. (The article can be found on page 85 of Volume 10, No. 1 of the JYM)
The part of the article that stuck out to me most was the fact that youth from both countries saw the …
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Less Equals More
February 13, 2012 by 1 Comment
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Less equals more. Having the opportunity to minister cross-culturally has made me more aware of my own cultural. I have grown to understand my worldview better because I actively work to learn others in order to communicate Biblical ideas in culturally relevant ways.
Materialism is obviously a problem within the church here in the United States. Most are aware of this. I do feel I am more aware of the negative consequences because of the exposure to those living joyfully with much less in cultures where materialism is not a huge issue. I am surprised that our culture in the US is starting to perceive the negative effects. (Spoiler alert: while our culture might be beginning to see the problem, it still desperately needs help in identifying a solution.)
Take this TED video as an example.
The speaker states that we have three times more space than we did 50 years ago, but that across the board we are less happy. I …
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Obsessed with safety?…
February 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Do you know someone going on a short-term mission trip this year?
What are they doing to prepare for the project? I highly recommend that they watch episode 5 of this last seasons The Amazing Race as part of their preparation. I’ll admit I have a slight bias, not because I am a huge fan of the show (I prefer to fill my allotted reality TV time with Survivor) but because the teams were in Thailand. Reason enough for a recommendation via a Facebook Story (or status if you are old school), but the need for the blog post comes out of the episodes potential to help future participants do less damage in their attempts to advance the kingdom. An idea that takes more than 140 characters to unpack. All short-term mission participants go with the hope of having a positive impact, unfortunately that is a feat some fail to achieve. Much has been written about this issue of doing harm while attempting to help lately, mostly regarding …
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Service without Sacrifice
January 23, 2012 by 2 Comments
Do we make it to easy for youth to serve?
A few weeks ago I was in a gymnasium at a Bible College recruiting for YouthHOPE's summer internships and began pondering this question. There were nearly 25 organizations or churches gathered with the hopes of enticing a student, into working with them. The burden in this scenario falls on the churches and organizations. They work to present their opportunity to students in a favorable light (the best attempt, a church looking for a youth ministry intern brought a George Foreman grill and cooked bacon to hand out). I realize part of this is a result of the reality that Jesus predicted with the hands and harvest analogy; there always seems to be more work than workers, but part of it seems wrong. I think it is an extension of a flaw in how we teach students to serve in youth group; an extension that has the potential to follow students through Bible College and into the rest of their lives …
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Eternal Youth
January 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Apparently the title of this blog is also a slogan used by a 100 year old bank in Thailand. They define the phrase a little more in their advertisements saying, "Eternal Youth: always being young, never growing old." They use this slogan when they introduce forward thinking changes to the banking system. One has to assume this is because they are aware that the majority of the population associates innovation and change with youth. Few traits span the wide gap between Eastern and Western culture. Creativity of youth is among that short list. Therefore, it seems natural to both the Western and Eastern mind for a bank to introduce its ideas for innovation and improvement through the portion of the population between childhood and adulthood. Why then does it seem to be so unnatural for those within the church to attach value to the differences in thought patterns between its established leaders and its youth?
Do you look at this …
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Small Dreams
December 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A few months ago we had a brainstorming meeting trying to tackle our developing problem of having too much going on around the globe. It is a great problem, but we realize we have more requests from teams around the world for long-term workers to come alongside them than we could realistically fill over the next year or two. One idea that came out of the meeting was to catalog the opportunities and create a database online of job openings in global youth ministry. We ended up with not only a database, but also an interactive map.
Within days of it being up and running on our website we had someone fill out an application to serve full-time in Zambia. We obviously did not expect results this quickly. The speed of the application coming in was not the most exciting bit though, but rather the location. The applicant was a Kenyan feeling called by God to do youth ministry in Zambia. We had not anticipated non-North Americans applying. …
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Sex; Proceed w/Caution
December 6, 2011 by 2 Comments
Have you had the sex talk? With your child? With the youth you are discipling? With your youth group? You should.
Do it early and often. Seriously. There are tons of resources out there. Books. Articles. Youth workers with tons of experience in a similar context you could ask for advice. Consult some of those, even if it is only for building your confidence, then the very next time you see youth you have some influence with begin the conversation.
Proceed, but please proceed with caution, because some that have gone before you in their attempt to provide Christian guidance to the next generation have actually done some harm. In their attempt to communicate Christian teaching about sex they have actually contradicted the basic tenants of the faith. Matt Chandler, the lead pastor of The Village Church, makes this point in a sermon a few years ago way better than I could with words. Take a moment to watch it, and …
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Why I’m Excited About this Week
November 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment
National Missionary Convention (17-20) – I first attended this conference as a Bible College student in 2006 with the sole purpose of finding a youth ministry internship outside of the States. I failed. That experience though created a greater passion within me for pursuing global youth ministry and eventually played a part in YouthHOPE’s creation of our internship program. I’m looking forward to sharing about our 5 global youth ministry internships, connecting with past interns, and recruiting more full-time global youth workers.
National Youth Worker Convention (18-20) – This has been going down every year since 1970, so everyone in Youth Ministry already knows what it is all about, right? Everyone except me that is, I’ve never been. I’m excited YouthHOPE has a presence at the convention this year, and really excited for youth groups to start doing The Hunger Strike Challenge (here is one reason why).
Extended …
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Presentation Matters
November 7, 2011 by 1 Comment
Youth Ministry is beginning to think globally. Mission trips and awareness programs have become a staple. Your youth group though, do they care? Do the youth God has entrusted you to disciple share His same heart for the nations? If not, I suggest it may be your fault. Not because you aren’t hip to the times and aren’t putting the issue before them, but rather because how you are presenting the information.
Check out this article recently released by Psychology Today.
As Americans, being obsessed with productivity and efficiency you would assume we would be more willing to give to a cause that offers us the best return on investment. We’d be most concerned with our money impacting as many lives in as many ways as possible. But an article recently released by Psychology Today states otherwise. Their research shows that Americans are actually far more likely to respond to appeals made on behalf of just one person.
My …
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Praying for Visas
October 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Will you join us in praying for visas? This is an exciting season for YouthHOPE.
We have a Chilean applying for an R-1 religious visa. He is hoping to join our development team and head up youth worker training and curriculum development, especially focused on the Latin American church.
We have a Canadian applying for a spouse visa. She and her husband are currently support raising and planning a wedding. They hope to work on the development team for a year or two before being sent out as Global Youth Workers.
We have a national Global Youth Worker from a creative access country in SE Asia applying for a visa to the US so she can join her husband as he travels back to the US for a few months of support raising.
We have a Thai national Global Youth Worker applying for US citizenship so that no government will ever be able to tell him that he cannot be in the same place as his wife and beautiful new son.
Missions is not …
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MTV has good Missiology
October 3, 2011 by 1 Comment
MTV embodies what YouthHOPE is all about. False, but not completely.
MTV is known for TRL, Carson Daly's black finger nails and The Real World. At least that is how I was introduced to them as an adolescent. I didn't (and still don't) like music, but my brother was bigger and therefore controlled the remote, so we watched music videos often.
MTV is known for many things around the world, mostly negative things within the Church. To some youth in Southeast Asia though it will begin to be known for advocacy on behalf of their peers. MTV Exit creates campaigns to stop exploitation and human trafficking. You could argue that they have ulterior motives, simply wanting to increase their brand and advertise in new circles and in new ways. Or that they actually contribute to the issue by their presentation of the female gender much more then they could ever help, so their campaigns must be viewed in the same light as cigarette …
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Is God inefficient?
September 22, 2011 by 6 Comments
No answers or advice for youth workers in this post, just an invitation to do a little pondering and potentially enter into a conversation. Honestly, it is a conversation I would rather not have. I am obsessed with efficiency and productivity. Seriously, ask my wife. We "have discussions" about aesthetics often. In my world the photos, paint, and wall hangings she spends money on or time and energy creating add little value to our home because they have no practical value. We "have discussions" about her getting the radio right before we start driving because it would be way more efficient to do that at the first red light. I have a problem.
Also, as the point person for YouthHOPE’s internships, I fear it could reflect poorly on the program we have been trying to build. (Because it could make them appear to be all about the participant and their experience, which is always a secondary issue in our planning.)
Two quotes from …
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Adolescence: Extend it or disregard it?
September 1, 2011 by 7 Comments
This recent story of a teen being charged with a felony for robbing an elderly man at gun point has gotten a lot of press. Mainly from people who think the punishment does not match the crime. He did only steal 7 cents. I am not interested in that debate though (mainly because I think it is rather simple, it does not matter if he stole 7 cents or 7 million cents. He and his mate held a man up at gun point. Just because they accidently picked a seemingly poor man has no effect on the heinousness of the crime. I guess maybe I am slightly more interested than I previously thought, as this parenthetical thought is expanding quicker than the average weight of adolescents in the US. Sorry, too soon? Anyway…)
The debate I am interested in is whether the defendant should have been punished as an adult or a juvenile. I think how a society answers that question has serious implications. I think how the Church answers this question has a …
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