youngadults.today

This episode is designed to help young adult ministry leaders navigate through the challenge of covid-19!  We visit with Brent Silkey and have a conversation about coronavirus and connecting with students, our communities, our ministries, and our congregations!  Eliza's post (Brent's wife) that we mentioned in the podcast.  Please reach out to us at www.youngadults.today with any ideas or questions as to how to effectively minister to young adults during this time! 

Mike is one of the Chi Alpha pastors at University of North Dakota. Many of you know him as MIKE MYZ – the hip hop artist who let us use the rights to his music for the intro to this podcast! So he’salready a huge part of this whole youngadults.today squad! Whether you’ve heard of him yet or not, you have heard his music just by listening to this podcast. Recently he released the EP called Desert. Pastor. Recording artist. Here with us in the studio today in a different way – this time for a conversation, Myz welcome!

Pastor Randy Jumper serves as the young adult pastor at First Assembly in North Little Rock, Arkansas! NXT YA/UNITE is a place where young adults inNorth Little Rock come together for a weekly service and grow in Christ together. He has over 20 years of experience in young adult ministry.  Here's an article Pastor Randy wrote to help those who are new to young adult ministry or might be starting something new:  I'm excited that you are going to be helping reach young adults!  You'll find it to be an exciting time of ministry and fun!  I know I love it.   A couple resources to start with.  Check out these websites:   Youngadults.ag.org  go down to the resources pages.  There are several articles we've written to help start and grow a young adult ministry   Facebook - become a young adult facebook member.  Find the links on the youngadults website. On the Resources page, under leadership, click Building the Ministry.  It’s a great resource for information!   Books you might want to consider reading:   College Ministry from Scratch by Chuck Bomar and College ministry 101 by the same author.   Practical Young adult Ministry from Group Publishing.   Lost and Found by Ed Stetzer   Sustainable Young Adult Ministry by Mark DeVries and Scott Pontier   Where do you start?  Most people will tell you relationships, discussion based teaching, and other basic info.  All that is true and important parts, but if you are like me, you want something to "do."     I know I need to be open to young adults, pray for the Holy Spirit to work in young adults, build meaningful relationships with young adults, etc...but what do I "do" to do that?  If I were you, I start with two simple steps:   Step One:  Make 5 lists.   Yep, get a piece of paper and a pen out and make some lists (OK, turn your laptop since nobody uses pens and paper anymore).  I regularly make some lists when starting a new area of ministry with young adults.  They are simple:   List 1:  Who are our young adults? Write down the names of all the young adults currently in your church and/or influence.  Your pastor may need to help you.  The size of your church will impact this list.  If you have a database system your church uses to record attendance, get help from it.  Because of our church size, we narrow it to young adults 17 - 30 and who have attended at least 2 times in the last year.  We annually go through this list.  But it started with a piece of paper and a pen writing down the names of real people we want to minister to and with.   List 2:  What is our church doing with young adults now? Don't write "nothing"!  You might be surprised. Start asking questions about what is going on in your church. Look at List 1 and see where YA's are now! I promise you they are there and already active in some place. Are young adults from list one Sunday school teachers for kids? Youth sponsors?  In the choir? Is there a small group for them?  Maybe a class? Do the YA's go out to eat every Sunday after church - do they sit together in the sanctuary? Are they on the Sunday worship team?  My guess is that at least 1 young adult is doing something, somewhere at your church.  This will help you better leverage them and others for future involvement and understand who is involved and who is a leader.  You might have an organic group of YA's already together, you just need to connect with them and mobilize them.   List 3:  What do you and your pastor want to see developed? What is your assignment?  Is it growing the church?  Evangelizing young adults in the community? Keeping your current young adults?  Providing fun activities only?  Discipleship only? Starting a Sunday school class? Starting a special service? If the answer to all those questions is a yes!  Then then narrow it down for what you want to accomplish in the first 3 months, first 6 months and then the first year.  Set an agenda for what you both are wanting to do for the kingdom.  When you know your assignment, you'll know the direction to take to fulfill that assignment.  Make sure you and the church leaders are on the same page.  There is nothing worse than achieving your goal - only to find out it was the wrong goal.   List 4:  Who is on your team? You'll need several people, especially some young adults from list 1, to join you in launching this ministry.  Young adults need ministered WITH, not necessarily ministered TO.  Get buy in and recruit some young adults and other people to help you do this and do this well.  I'd say get as many as possible on this team.  If possible I like the number 5 (notice the 5 lists!).  Five people is a good size team to manage and lead.  What if we only have 5 young adults to start with....no problem, use the 5 of them as leaders to start your group.   List 5: What is going to happen for the next 6 months   Take all this and build a game plan.  The President of the United States maps the first 100 days.  Most NFL football teams script the first quarter and even first half of football plays they are going to run. You do the same.  Script what you'll do for the next 6 months at least, and then work your way backwards with planning, recruitment and involvement. Script what is going to happen with young adults every week for the next 6 months. Some weeks you'll have more than others, maybe even no scheduled events or activities, but do something every week to minister to young adults (maybe all you do that week is Facebook every young adult in your church and tell them they matter to you!)   If you want to send me any of this to look through and offer my suggestions - not sure they'll be any good, but I'll try.     BONUS:  Change the Way You Eat   This isn't diet advice, its ministry advice.  Never eat alone if at all possible.  Every Sunday possible have a young adult over to your house for lunch or dinner.  Go out to eat with a young adult.  Go get coffee with them on campus.  I can't think of the last time a week went by and I was not eating with a young adult.

Brad has been a college ministry pastor for over 30 years! He is the director of a multi-staff campus ministry called Chi Alpha in North Dakota at NDSU and MSU Moorhead. Their movement sees over 700 students each year with over 140 small groups! Brad is the author of the best books on groups we’ve read “Small Group University”. He and his wife Kay Lewis are friends of ours – we really admire them a great deal.

Today we’re joined for this episode by Timothy Ateek! TA became the Executive Director of Breakaway Ministries in 2016. Prior to moving to College Station, TA served as the Student Ministry Pastor of Austin Ridge Bible Church for five years and as the Executive Director of Vertical Ministries in Waco for four years. TA and his wife, Kat, have three boys Noah (9/09), Andrew (10/11), and Jake (9/17). TA earned a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and is a proud member of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 2003. In addition to serving as the primary communicator at Breakaway, TA travels to speak at various churches, camps, and retreats throughout the year. With the lasting impact Breakaway left on him from his time as a student at Texas A&M, TA considers it one of his greatest joys to now serve a new generation of students in the same way he once was served.

Dr. Jolene Erlacher founded Leading Tomorrow in 2014 with the aim of equipping churches, businesses, schools, missions agencies and other organizations for effective inter-generational leadership in an evolving culture.  Her passion for equipping a new generation of leaders emerged from various leadership experiences in education and ministry. ​​ Jolene is also the author of books including: Millennials in Ministry as well as The Daniel Generation.   @joleneerlacher | @leadingtomororw | www.leadingtomorrow.org  @youngadults.today | www.youngadults.today

Rev. Dr. Sam D. Kim is the Co-founder of  180 Church , near Union Square in downtown Manhattan. Dr. Kim is a  Yale-Hastings  Scholar at the  Hastings  Center exploring the crisis of physician burnout in academic medicine and health care from an ethical perspective in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. He was appointed as a research  Fellow  in Global Health and Social Medicine at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and part of Harvard catalyst, where he explored and taught on inequities surrounding health, immigration and social policies. He is a recipient of the Lifelong learning  Fellowship  at Yale Divinity School and Yale Medicine, which aims to to close the gap between faith and science, and is awarded by the  John Templeton  Foundation and  AAAS . A passionate advocate for the immigrant and the most vulnerable He was invited to the White House to join a conversation involving dreamers during the Obama Administration. He played a key role along with other clergy in advancing policies supportive of Dreamers and urging passage of DACA, and has continued his tireless advocacy ever since, including recent persuasive writing on behalf of more just  immigration policies . Also, one of the prominent evangelical Christian leaders who opposed an executive order banning refugees from the seven predominantly Muslim countries covered by  CNN  and the  Washington Post. He is a regular contributor at Christianity Today  Exchange , Bible App at  youversion  and the Billy Graham Center at  Wheaton College . He writes on, the  church,culture  and  evangelism. Hubs to Lydia, Dad to Nathan and Josh and best pals with his dog Brownie. I met Sammy Kim at a young influencers mentoring day this past summer. I’m telling you all – get ready to LEARN today, we’re gonna have some fun!

Pastor Brent is the director of St. Paul Chi Alpha as well as the founder of 30 For Freedom. St. Paul Chi Alpha exists to transform the university, the marketplace, and the world by giving students the opportunity to find Jesus and follow Him for a lifetime. The mission of STPAULXA is hope + justice. 30 For Freedom is a movement that exists to end sex trafficking in our lifetime and we will talk about that on today’s episode. Brent is a husband to Eliza and dad to three wonderful kids! @BrentSilkey | @30ForFreedom | @saintpaulchialpha

Today, we are joined by Dr. Kara Powell!  Kara is the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. Named by Christianity Today as one of “50 Women You Should Know,” Kara serves as a Youth and Family Strategist for Orange, and also speaks regularly at parenting and leadership conferences. Kara is the author or coauthor of a number of books, including Growing Young, The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family, Sticky Faith Curriculum, Can I Ask That?, Deep Justice Journeys, Deep Justice in a Broken World, Deep Ministry in a Shallow World, and the Good Sex Youth Ministry Curriculum. @karapowellfyi | @youngadults.today 

Today we’re joined for this episode by Pastor Nate Ruch for a perspective on young adult ministry from a Lead Pastor !  Nate is the Lead Pastor of Emmanuel, a multi-ethnic, multi-generational church gathering at several locations every week. Nate, along with his wife Jodi have been leading Emmanuel since the spring of 2013. Nate has earned a doctoral degree from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and previous to serving as the lead pastor of Emmanuel, he worked at North Central University for ten years as a Vice President. Prior to NCU he served for ten years as the Youth Pastor at Emmanuel. The desire of Nate and Jodi is to lead the church into reaching those away from God, growing in faith and living lives of purpose. They love helping people step into God's possible for their lives. Nate and Jodi have been married since 1994 and have four incredible sons, David, Jeff, Tim, and Josiah. @nateruch | @emmanuelccmn | www.emmanuelcc.org