The folks at Student Life just put together this great video regarding youth culture and our response as church.

The video helps us take a momentary pause in the hurried-up world of young people and reminds us not to just blindly judge where the kids are at:

They respond: “You would say that I am a rebel, seeking out anything but the religion I grew up in…  but you would be wrong.

Because you don’t know me.”

And, after eight minutes, the momentary pause has passed and the fast paced world of today’s adolescents returns.

The implications… No time to waste. Let’s get going, church!

Our prayer for the Feast of the Ascension:

For king of all the earth is God; sing hymns of praise. Our Lord has been clothed with power from on high and taken up to heaven. He is the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way. We are overwhelmed with great joy, and praise God.

Sing praise to God, sing praise; sing praise to our king, sing praise. May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give us a Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

All you peoples, clap your hands, shout to God with cries of gladness. We are aware of all that Jesus did and taught. May the eyes of our hearts be enlightened, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call. We will be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.

Don Miller wrote about living your life as a better story.

If you imagine your life as a movie, however, you must avoid the pitfalls (and pratfalls) of aspiring only to living out the cliches.

Go for a mission statement, not the catch phrase.

Listen to the soundtrack over your own life, don’t project swelling violins over a remarkably unremarkable moment of life.

Commit to a sanctifying mandate; not randomly flitting from righteous cause to honorable deed to righteous cause.

Be a star, not a worn and retread character.

People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. They never “arrive” … It is a process. It is a lifelong discipline.

People with a high level of personal mastery are aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see that “the journey is the reward”.

— Peter M. Senge,
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of a Learning Organization

UPDATED:  The article Using New Media to Promote Vocations won first place for best feature article in a religious order magazine at the Catholic Press Awards in Pittsburgh in July 2011.  The judging panel commented: “The author sculpts an academically insightful, cutting edge article with solid applications for communication technology and vocation.”  That’s kinds cool, eh?

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Just below the banner is a directory of page links for this site.  Just updated the “published” page on the site (It was overdue)  The occasion?  Well, I got published again!

The National Religious Vocation Conference has a journal named Horizons and they recently published Using New Media to Promote Vocations written by yours truly.

I know, I know… I blog daily; how special can it be to get published in print?  It’s very special !!!   In my life, I have had nightmare stories of discouragement directed towards me to not write.  Getting published is still very much a miracle to me. Having you read this posting is a wonderment.

Thanks for your support and encouragement!

It used to be that you would spent five minutes registering for an event, and then showed up on the big day, went to a few workshops, snagged a few give-aways, and went home.

Social media changes all of that – - expanding one’s relationship with an event beyond being placed on a mailing list. Events and their planners can now have long-term, nuanced, shifting interactions with attendees. Jason Baer on Social Media Today offers a wide variety of suggestions on how to do exactly that. His most youth ministry friendly suggestions evolve around Intrigue and Invigorate.

Outreach and Discipleship – - begin to make the translations (and it is partly flawed) towards Evangelization and Catechesis.

And, there is also something challenging when we begin to think about discipleship as encouraging a relationship purely between the individual and the Creator, Jesus, and Spirit…  Discipleship must also include a relationship between those whom God created, for whom Jesus died and rose and sent His Spirit.

All that being said, this is a quick and lively presentation and worth the eight minute view.

Where are the kids you know fall…  and most importantly are YOU the only one within your parish’s youth ministry asking that question?  Expand the ministry, develop and train your core leaders!

If you were watching the twitter feed over on the left, you have have suspected that something was up and you were right.  I was away for a extended weekend to visit my son- who is stationed as an US Army Medic over at Schofield Barracks… in Hawai’i.

While doing so, I took a break from vacation and committed a busman’s holiday act, offering a training for Lisa Gomes, the director for Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Diocese of Honolulu. Two Daughters of Saint Paul (and fellow bloggers) reported on the event.

Anyway, as promised the full power point is available. There is a fair amount of presentation that accompanies these slides and that can found within a larger series of hyperlinks here.  There were also two videos: Will I from Rent and What’s Going to Happen?

Mahalo!

Jesus had a much different leadership strategy.

> He occasionally spoke to thousands confronting the status quo, refusing to pander to groups.
> He had a group/ tribe (about seventy in number) to whom require major commitment and giving them specific assignments.
> He shared his daily life with a smaller group (12,) entrusting them with power.
> He had an inner circle comprised of Peter, James, and John who were his closest friends and confidants.

Jesus’ leadership strategy evidently worked well. Within a generation, His followers turned the world upside down (see Acts 17:6). Within seven generations (318 A.D.), the emperor Constantine accepted his message and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. And here we are, almost two millennia later, still discussing it.  For more, read Michael Hyatt‘s observations.

Our prayer for this Sixth Sunday of Easter:

We shall not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. With peace we have been left, the peace of the Lord has been given to us.

God’s face shines upon us. His very Spirit has been sent in the name of the Lord. Through this Holy Advocate, we are reminded of the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ. We make our home in the Word of the Lord, it is our source of illumination.

May the peoples praise you, O God; may the nations be glad and exult. O God, let all the nations praise you; may all the peoples praise you!