Do you know that laughter can add +8 years to your life (according to an AIG ad I read in Newsweek)? If that is true, we all need to stop taking ourselves so seriously and laugh it up a bit more…

Anyway, here is a joke in the AIG ad (pg. 67 of Newsweek pictured above). The next time your lead pastor asks you to speak or report or whatever to the whole congregation you can use this one to calm your nerves and lighten the room up a bit…

A guy joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence:

He’s allowed to say two words every seven years. After the first seven years, the elders bring him in and ask for his two words. “Cold floors,” he says. Seven more years pass. They bring him back in and ask for his two words. “Bad food,” he says. Seven more years pass. They bring him in for his two words. “I quit,” he says. “That’s fine,” the elders say, “You have done nothing but complain since you got here.”

I am so excited to share with you the following news…!

Press Release

Thursday, September 20, 2007—For Immediate Release

Sonlife Ministries Merging with YouthFront

Sonlife Ministries, Inc. has merged with YouthFront, Inc. effective September 1, 2007 in order to “maximize ministry effectiveness” of the two organizations. Formerly a Chicago-based ministry, Sonlife will relocate to Kansas City.

For more than six decades, YouthFront has brought young people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ through camps, campus ministries, mission trips, creative programming, and leadership development. For nearly three decades, Sonlife has provided Christ-centered training for students and adult leaders through training seminars, conferences, and creative resources.

YouthFront President Mike King and Sonlife President Chris Folmsbee share a conviction that “the youth ministry community is pregnant with expectation and desire for fresh and innovative approaches to youth ministry that are both creative and also theologically and ecclesiologically sound,” says King. Folmsbee adds, “We see youth ministry paradigms shifting away from an overemphasis on programmatic/event-oriented and information-focused styles toward a more robust and holistic understanding of Christian formation. The need is greater than ever to guide young people in discovering how to live as Christ in all areas of their lives.”

In 1943, YouthFront began its ministry as Kansas City Youth for Christ, and it has been written about extensively in youth ministry church history books as a catalyst for the development of youth ministry in North America. By the late 1980s, most churches had committed to having an active and intentional youth ministry. So in a revolutionary move for parachurch youth ministry organizations, YouthFront ceased all programming that conflicted with local church youth ministry and began to re-imagine a role that fully cooperated with churches in the development of Christian disciples.

YouthFront shall continue its tradition of developing innovative youth ministry around the world through its commitment to the development of youth ministry philosophy, theology, and practice. Mike King states, “Our mission to bring young people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ is best accomplished by modeling a passionate life and journey with Jesus; engaging in missional evangelism and discipleship. We believe that in order to facilitate transformational spiritual formation of adolescents, we must teach Christian practices and creatively develop environments where students encounter the presence of God. We are devoted to working strategically with those who are passionately committed to the Christian formation of young people—especially youth pastors, volunteer youth leaders, parents, churches, and denominations. These strategic partnerships are developed through deep relationships, training, content development, providing resources, youth ministry research, and quality programming.”

Sonlife will continue to move forward as a church-assisting organization serving youth workers by facilitating networks; developing and providing training; offering coaching, consultation, and spiritual direction; and creating resources and programs for youth workers and students. Chris Folmsbee believes Sonlife’s mission will be enhanced by merging with YouthFront, resulting in “a passionate and catalytic cooperation with God’s Kingdom.” As a ministry of YouthFront, Sonlife will gain access to more than 5,000 students who are deeply connected to discipleship and leadership development programs facilitated by YouthFront, along with direct youth ministry involvement with an additional 25,000 young people through camp and school-based ministries. Out of this environment, Sonlife’s strategy and effectiveness will be enhanced and strengthened.

Through the new YouthFront organization, all present Sonlife training and development programs for youth workers will continue, including Enroute, Shaping a Missional Community, Shepherding in a Culture of Change, Refresh, and Leadership of the Heart. All training experiences for students will continue, as well, including Merge, Awake and Reveal. “With YouthFront’s hands-on youth ministry environment, coupled with Sonlife’s expertise and training tools, we sit on the precipice of amazing opportunities to train an emerging generation of youth workers,” declares YouthFront COO Topher Philgreen.

“This merger seems natural because of the alignment we have, not just between Chris Folmsbee and me, but also between the organizations that we have led,” says Mike King. YouthFront sees Sonlife’s innovation of a new wave of youth worker participation in training and formational experiences. Sonlife sees YouthFront as innovating new ways to do youth ministry and spiritual formation of adolescents. Consequently, merging together will allow each organization to realize greater ministry impact. Folmsbee confidently states, “I am expectant that God is going to do amazing things through our coming together. I believe we will look back a few years from now to identify many things God has done to strengthen the church through the development of youth workers and students.”

Objectives for this merger:

• To be more effective as a national youth ministry training organization, serving a wide variety of youth workers, churches, denominations, and organizations.
• To provide quality youth ministry resources to thousands of youth workers and churches throughout North America.
• To create and facilitate transformational Christian formation experiences for students and youth workers.
• To create an environment where youth ministry ideas, philosophy, concepts, theology, and practices emerge.
• Initiate youth ministry that will benefit hundreds of thousands of young people directly and indirectly; initiating deep Christian formation that leads to a life-long journey with Jesus Christ.
• Provide leadership development for the next generation of youth ministers and ministry practices.
• To act as a collective agency that empowers others toward deep and widespread regional youth ministry impact.

Management Infrastructure:

Mike King will continue as President/CEO of YouthFront. Chris Folmsbee will serve as CMO (Chief Ministry Officer) of YouthFront and President of the Sonlife division. Folmsbee will serve on the Executive Leadership Team of YouthFront, which makes all major decisions regarding mission, personnel, finances, and ministry priorities. Topher Philgreen will continue as COO of YouthFront. Matt Wilks, Director of Youth Worker Initiatives for Sonlife, will serve as Youthfront’s Director of Youth Worker Training and Initiatives. He will continue to build strategic relationships throughout North America and will lead a team of people to deliver quality and effective training to youth workers. Mike Novelli will serve as Director of Merge and will also focus on developing content and resources. Other support staff (i.e., administrative help, marketing, etc.) will be added to the staff of YouthFront.

YouthFront board member Dr. Dean Blevins states, “I believe that the next significant expression of youth ministry will be born out of a committed community of Christ’s followers who engage deeply in spiritual practices and formation, and model a new way of life and missional living.”

More than anything, we ask for prayer that this new venture will honor God, bring youth into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ, and fulfill our calling to cooperate with God’s Kingdom agenda. For questions regarding this merger or to seek more information about the ministry of YouthFront and Sonlife, please contact Andy Garlich at 800-770-4769 or AGarlich@YouthFront.com.

I just finished reading the book, Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement. Tic Long introduced me to the book a week or so ago. I hadn’t even heard about it until he mentioned it.

The author, Lauren Sandler, is a brilliant author. Sandler is the Life Editor for Salon and she has written on cultural politics and other areas of interest for some very credible publications — New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, LA times, etc. I found her writing very imaginative, a bit sarcastic at times and somewhat over the top at other times. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, however, and if nothing else it was a reminder of just how differently people define evangelical and just how different other choose to live the tenets of it out.

I found her to be a bit of an alarmist but others I have talked to regarding the book have found her quite the opposite. I found myself shaking my head in agreement at times and at other times squinting my eyes and tilting my head as I do when I am a bit frustrated with authors who write about something so important as our youth culture and its movements and then write from only (or mostly) one perspective.

While so much of what Sandler writes about is true (I have seen it with my own eyes and felt it with my own heart), so much of it is from a pocket of evangelicalism that is fighting to survive in the minds and hearts of its own adherents. I wish she would have had a few different experiences in which to view what I find to be a growing number of thinkers and practitioners who haven’t lost our connection to the evangelical tradition but are trying hard to assist in the emergence of a different kind of evangelicalism.

Last Friday night I was watching the NBC Nightly News with my friend Jim Newberry. At the end of the program they did a short but very rich story on a guy named Bill Austin. Bill has given out more than 200,000 hearing aids to people all over the world… He seems like a very cool guy and the story is incredibly inspiring and deeply moving.

Check out the article and video here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18096548/

Perhaps you might find a way to merge this with your upcoming teaching to your students regarding compassion and justice. Actually, this story can fit into a lot of different teaching themes — calling, missional living, sacrifice, restoration, hope, etc…

There is an interesting article at CNN.com today about people who are choosing to give up their Facebook and Myspace addictions for Lent — sort of a 21st century way of observing the practice.

I think it is a great way to participate in the practice. I think it could really help those of us who might usually consider our time on the internet or email as nothing more than fun or work when really we have a similar adiction to it as others might with certain foods, sweets, coffee, tobacco, etc.

Here is a link to the article:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/03/29/
no.facebook.lent/index.html

Here is a link to more info on Lent if you are not that familiar with it:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09152a.htm

Lent is nearly over — but that doesn’t mean you can’t begin your 40 days now and ask forgiveness for being tardy! :>

Check out G-man’s top 20 youth worker blog sites you need to know list… I must say I follow a fair number of these myself. Thanks for the list G-man, and thanks for including me!

Chris

I have a friend named Tim who teaches at a high school near Toronto. He alerted me to this article (Teachers Spend Out of Pocket Average of $593) for some research that we are doing. It got me thinking that it might be very interesting to see what the annual out of pocket average is for church-based youth workers. So, if you have a minute comment back (or email me — chrisfol@mac.com) with your average out of pocket. I will compile the data and post in a week or so with the results.

I’m in Orlando today connecting with a potential employee for Sonlife. For some reason the hotel I am staying in had delivered to them the Sunday edition of the Orlando Sentinel today (Monday)! Somebody made a mistake somewhere down the line…

It actually ended up being cool. I found an article on brain-based teaching. I haven’t really heard much about brain-based teaching but it is very interesting. Click the image below to go to the online article…

The basic idea of this relatively new teaching technique is that teachers do their best to stimulate as many of the areas of the brain as possible in order to help the students better remember the lesson. Teachers also try to ensure they are stimulating both sides of the brain. The left side of the brain controls word formation while the right side of the brain controls abstract reasoning. So, instead of using a more rote method of helping a lesson stick with the student, teachers might lead the class in singing all 50 states and students might learn punctuation by running– slowing down at commas and stopping at periods. I guess that gives new meaning to run-on sentences, eh?  Anyway, I thought that the article was intriguing for several reasons. 1) I have a daughter in first grade and I am curious what type of new teaching techniques are emerging 2) we work with the children’s ministry at our church a bit and 3) I am always looking to the educational system to see what ideas I can rip for working with children and students within the context of the church.

I am not sure how different this method of teaching is then what most of us might simply call ‘experiential learning’ but I am sure there is a ton of help that the church can get from the educational system. Read the article…

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-brainteach

0707jan07,0,3186904.story

…you might find it helpful and it might stimulate you to think about new ways to work with your students. Let me know what you think. You can email me at chrisfol@mac.com.

A few months ago at the NYWC in Austin I did an interview with YS about my book, A New Kind of Youth Ministry. If you are interested in listening in you can go to Youth Specialties’ website and download the podcast onto your iTunes, or you can click the play button below and listen to it here.

I have not listened to the edited version but according to Matt Wilks, a friend and co-worker, I start out a bit slow and then ramp up — so be patient with me!

I am part-way through a book that I got for Christmas from my brother-in-law, Matt. It is called Gilead. It is a must read…

I am enjoying is mostly because it is one of those books that is easy to pick up and jump right back into after having to set it down for a bit. The author is a brilliant storyteller and paints such vivid pictures that you feel like you are looking on to the scene. Very few authors can do that for me.  Marilynne Robinson is the name of the author. She is a best-selling author of several other writings and Pulitzer Prize Winner.

So, if you have some down time over the Holidays and are looking for a book to read, try this one.  Let me know what you think…