This past week, GRTS started classes. I’m teaching Theology of Youth Ministry, on campus and Theological Foundations for Missional Leadership via our New England Cohort.

In both groups, I’m already discovering that we have thoughtful, experienced participants who bring a wide range of youth ministry experience… and questions to the conversation.

For both courses, we use Blackboard for ongoing, online discussion. I posed this question to one of our groups this past week. I thought I’d open up the question to a broader network of youth min types, so feel free to share your thoughts.

Answer, and I promise to bring your responses to class with me on Thursday.

From your perspective…

• What question should youth ministry be trying to answer?
• Why do you think so?

Dan Spors, who’s been working with us through Intersect while finishing up his MDiv at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary will join Parker Evangelical Presbyterian Church as their Youth Director.

We’re excited for Dan and his newest venture and… it’s always good to have friends in Colorado!

Check out the church’s announcement of Dan HERE.

This month we’re starting a nine-month cohort with a group of youth pastors in the New England area. We’re partnering with Grand Rapids Theological Seminary who is offering credit for those interested in taking this as a graduate course and audit status those wanting the benefit of the cohort.

The New England Emerge Cohort will engage with readings and our Explore modules under the course name MIN694 Advanced Topics: Foundations in Missional Leadership. The course content and structure reflect our continuing effort to integrate theological, contextual, relational values into the youth ministry conversation.

The opportunities with GRTS open up possibilities for additional cohorts in the future. If you are in the New England area, it’s not too late to get connected with this cohort. If you are in another region seeking ways to push the theological, contextual, and relational edge, maybe we can assist you in achieving your goals.

I’ve posted our syllabus. Also, take a look at our Emerge Cohort descriptions.
Also, feel free to contact us!

This weekend, I head to a camp near Allentown, PA where I’m meeting up with the Black Rock Congregational Church (Fairfield, CT).

Jeremy Taylor is the Sr. High youth pastor desiring to lead a group of his core students through a weekend that stretches their theological thinking and living.

He’s asked Intersect to teach our EXTEND student material, so I’ll have the privilege of hanging with his gang Thursday through Sunday.

Jeremy, like many youth pastors, is doing a great job of leading their students to ask the “why” questions of faith, seeking answers that move beyond Christian behavior, toward deeper theological understanding. An informed, theological ethic anchors Christian living and offers a more adaptable center than a Christianized behaviorism (do it because “you’re supposed to” or because “that’s the way Jesus did it”).

I’m excited for our time together with the Black Rock gang and for the conversations that will emerge.

The Intersect, New England Cohort is going to launch this August! We’ve got a great group of youth pastors who have signed on.

The other great news is that Grand Rapids Theological Seminary is endorsing the program, offering 3 credits of graduate credit for all those who complete the course, at no extra charge to the cohort fee. That’s close to $1000 dollars of graduate credit at no cost to you!

If you’re in the New England area and are looking to invest with a cohort of youth pastors over this next year, contact us or Brian Dietz, our New England Cohort Coordinator at (781) 862-8351.

Our first gathering is August 20-22, 2007. Participants will be doing some pre-cohort reading, so connect with the cohort as soon as you can.

Those taking the cohort for graduate credit will have additional projects. The course Syllabus will be posted shortly.

If you’re not in the New England area, talk to us about other cohort location possibilities.

Last night, I had the privilege of learning with the youth min team from Immanuel Baptist Church in Holland, MI. Youth pastor and friend, Alyn Goossen was in our Emerge Cohort this past year and it’s been a thrill to know him and be involved with his youth group.

We had a great time together and the team was more than gracious to respond to the exercises I suggested. One image that I came away with was the longevity that’s evident in the team. I met volunteers who have been serving in youth ministry for ten plus years and half the group was made up of former students who attended the youth ministry. It left me with a beautiful picture of how the church inter-generationally gives and receives… and gives again.

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Dan and I (Steve) had a great EXTEND weekend with Hopevale Church’s Sr. High!

The group has been great and we’ve heard some pretty cool insights by students. One frequent comment by a few students centered around their realization that God is full of mystery. Life with God isn’t about packaging a goal, a problem, or a life into neat categories. It seems like, the more we know God, the more we realize how much we don’t know.

This has the potential to be discouraging. Yet, in light of God’s transcendence, we also recognize that in God’s imminence, God is one who pursues us, eager to make Godself known.

In this tension of God’s mystery and God’s up-close pursuit…
God calls us to participate in relationship.
God calls us to participate in God’s activity in the world. (more…)

The next four days, Dan (our Intersect Intern) and I head to a Michigan camp to join a youth group for a time of thinking, dialogue, and processing about what it means to be connected with the grand narrative of God and how it gets expressed in our lives and community. We call this EXTEND.Christian Smith in his challenging book, Soul Searching, comes to the conclusion that while students are more sensitive to spiritual concepts, most self-proclaimed teenage Christians have a very limited or warped view of God and their relationship with God.

Smith says that most adolescents believe in Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism. In other words, there is a consistent belief that “God wants me to have a good life; God is there when I need God; yet overall, God is distant and not necessarily relevant in one’s daily living.”

Smith point out that teenagers are not the problem of society… but a reflection of society.

I interpret this to mean that when we look at teenage culture, thinking, etc., we must recognize that, as adults, we have somehow communicated something that has caused this sort of thinking. My point is not that we place blame, but recognize and own the fact that this is “our” problem, not “their” problem.

The purpose of Intersect’s EXTEND is to come alongside local youth ministries and churches to provide material, teaching, and interaction that helps students discover what they are connected to when they follow Jesus.

We believe that this must be rooted in good biblical theology that leads to a more holistic application and a deeper sense of identity with God, God’s people, God’s world, and God’s missional healing.

I’m excited to be training and teaching with Dan. We’ll be sharing the load and working closely with the youth pastor, Mike.

We’ll keep you posted on our weekend!

This week we finished our fourth of four sessions with our year-long Intersect, Grand Rapids Cohort. Our focus was on Mission and “Living through Calling.”

The week for me was really significant I have been journeying with ten other guys over the past year.

This journey included long chunks of time together, blogging over books and ministry issues, walking with each other through the surprises, disappointments, and horrors of life and ministry.

And it felt right.

I think it felt right, because this band of brothers took risks to be real, honest, and connected with each other. We took risks to reveal things about our lives and our ministries. It felt like we went places that few tend to go with other people.

It’s making me convinced more and more that the generic seminar doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of leaders in the believing community. Further, I’m more convinced that seminars and other venues that simply download information only serve to perpetuate the fallacy that information equals maturity or spirituality.

I’m tired of seminar-laced Christianity.

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This site will continue to morph over the next few weeks as we add more features.

We hope this will be on ongoing “meeting place” for everyone to catch up on where we are, what we are doing, and what we are thinking.

Also, my buddy, Dave Livermore, will be posting here once in a while. He brings a great global perspective to our thinking and I’m certain he’ll have some great insights for us to consider in the future.

As for now, watch for this blog to emerge over the next week. And, take a look around our Intersect website. We hope this will be a place of resource, encouragement, and connection.

As for the name AlreadyNotYet. We’re keeping this as we feel it captures the radical tension we feel in life as we dream forward… look back… and straddle the middle.

Peace, friends…