A New Kind of Youth Ministry

The last few weeks I’ve been asked repeatedly if I am going to start blogging again and my answer has been, “I hope so.”  A few weeks back YS ranked my blog in the top 10 youth ministry blogs which has driven crazy traffic to my site.  Again, thanks YS. I’m sure new onlookers have been disappointed to say the least.

The truth of the matter is that nearly all of my creative energy over the last year has been going to other more demanding projects.  Since joining Barefoot my priorities have been on organizational reculturing and, therefore, some of my other desires have taken a back seat.  Blogging (both macro and micro) has not been as urgent as redeveloping Barefoot into being on its way towards greater health, sustainability, growth and ministry impact.  I am having crazy amounts of fun working with Barefoot as we invent and rework many new and existing products.  Over the last year…

• We’ve acquired a youth ministry magazine and and re-launched it as the Immerse Journal.  With the help of Mike King, Tim Baker and a host of great writers we’ve gotten off to a wonderful start.  We hope to have an iPad version in the next few weeks.
• We’ve Redeveloped what was formerly “Credo Magazine” into “Credo Journal” with the help of Michael Novelli and Imago Media.  This journal is sweet.  One of my favorite projects to date. We’ve completely changed the way students might think of “doing devotions” into more of tool to help them develop a more holistic and robust way of life. You can see a sample HERE.
• We’ve released a few new books including, Bleed-Out, Sacred Community, and In-Transit.  We have three more releases coming this fall.  One is a reprint of Lesslie Newbigin’s, A Walk Through The Bible, another is a book called, Sacred Hope and the third is a book called, Be Un: Reverse Your Life.
• We’ve launched www.slant33.com and have gotten great feedback on its innovation and usefulness, thanks to our wonderful contributors.  We continue to hear stories from youth workers who share the articles/posts with their volunteers and, therefore, are pushing their teams to think more theologically about youth ministry.  Look for the next evolution to www.slant33.com in the next few months!
• We’ve added 15 new or returning cities on our $5 youth ministry training tour.  This year we will be covering three very important topics in our training seminars – small group ministry, evangelism, and the art of mentoring.  You can get more info about the seminars and locations near you HERE.
• We’ve clustered a wonderful series of other youth ministry training workshops.  As a part of our Barefoot Training, you can attend one of our great workshops on narrative youth ministry — what we call a transformational approach.  Most of the training content comes from my most recent book called, Story, Signs and Sacred Rhythms.  Pick up a copy of the book HERE and then contact my friend Paul to host our training in your church and/or community.  We’ve kept the cost of attending these workshops below $30 so that you can bring your entire youth ministry team.  We hope to be in around 60 cities this year.
• We’ve dramatically reworked our Sunday School Curriculum.  We are now using a much more experiential learning/learner-centered model than in years past.  We hope that this new approach not only helps the leader with a more conversational/formational approach but also has a long lasting impact on the learners.  If you don’t have SS content for this fall yet, I’d snatch it up now.  You can learn more about it HERE.
• We’ve got three or four new ministry tools coming out this fall including a new series of digital books called, Reverb BookShorts.  We are partnering with Mike King and Youthfront on the development of these.  We also are launching what we are calling, Bloom Books.  These are seriously simple books for your students with everyday practices for a flourishing faith.  Each of these books includes a leader/facilitator guide for an experiential retreat.   We are in the midst of redeveloping our subscription based website called, Barefoot Online into a more robust site which includes new and revised content, a whole new look and a host of youth worker training.  Finally, we will be releasing the first in a series of three (maybe more) books for parents of adolescents called, The Parent Journey.
• We’ve been working on our A World unBroken project and it is coming along nicely.  In 2011 we’ll be releasing a whole group missional living project which will include 1) a book for youth workers (authors such as Scot McKnight, Mark Oestreicher, Kara Powell, Ian Cron, Mike King, Jason Barnhart, Pamela Erwin, Mae Elise Cannon and more!) 2) a missional journal for students and a 3) DVD with a bunch of great resources such as animated film shorts, curriculum, promo videos, etc.  You can check out one of the promo videos HERE.

So, most of my creative energy over the last few months (almost a year, really) has gone into the above.  Of course, the team at Barefoot is responsible for the implementation and execution of all of the above.  I work with an amazingly talented group of people who understand and our passionate about what it means to serve the church by helping youth workers guide students into spiritual formation for the mission of God.

All that to say, I think I’ve gotten my life and schedule figured out enough to start blogging again.  I’ve said that a few other times but honestly, I feel like I now have some creative energy I can put toward my blog and other projects.  Maybe if I hustle and write some good content I can keep my top 10 status on the YS ranking!

If you want a quick visual overview of all that we are doing at Barefoot, go HERE.