Month: June 2012

About a month ago a pastor named Les emailed me from Virginia Beach and asked me if I had any suggestions for training a bunch of youth ministers in Columbia. After briefly assessing the situation, I suggested that Les use my “sticky note training” from my book Connect, a training exercise which we provide on our FREE TRAINING TOOLS page on TheSource4YM.com.

Wes had read Connect and was excited that we provided the training for free (we have a video of me doing a part of this training on our site, and we provide a free ppt with a training script as well. It’s an easy training right out of chapters 4 and 14 of my Connect book). A few weeks later, Wes was down in Fusa, Columbia, teaching my “Connect” training in Spanish to a group of young people going into ministry. Here’s a snippet of his email to me after the training:

…You suggested using ideas from your “Connect” book and free training because those principles could easily translate from one culture to another.

Well you were right. I was in Fusa, Colombia last week and had the opportunity to teach at a Bible School there for college aged young men and women going into ministry. Some are going into youth ministry but most will be planting churches. They will be responsible for getting youth ministries up and running in their churches.

I taught for four days on pretty much everything I could think of related to youth ministry. I shared the model you created for the “Connect” book and we did the sticky note exercise.

It was one of the best parts of the week. It worked very well. They had a great time doing the exercises. I thought I’d send you some pictures and let you know your influence has spread to young men and women who will be ministering all over the country of Colombia in the coming years! Pretty cool!

It’s fun getting feedback from people who have used this effective training tool, helping equip youth workers to connect with kids.

For those who have attended my CONNECT training workshop or tried this exercise with your team, you probably have found that the sticky-notes always gravitate toward one side of the chart or the other, revealing a ministry’s strengths and weaknesses. Most often, church ministries are really good at connecting with kids on the right hand side of the chart, but lacking at connecting with young people on the left. Apparently the same was true with this group in Columbia. Les wrote:

I think the thing that connected the most with them was seeing how many students they had on the right side of the chart, “growing” & “in ministry”, than the left side.

Once they looked at it, they realized how little connection they had with the outreach kids.

Asking them how they knew where their kids fit on the chart was a challenge and got them thinking.

I was pleased to hear that the training exercise achieved its purpose.

We have Connect on sale for 25% off on our website right now. Grab it and take advantage of our free training!