CURRICULUM & RESOURCES DISCUSSION TABLE REPORT

THE BLAZE CONFERENCE – MONTREAT CONFERENCE CENTER – JANUARY 7, 2014

RESOURCE WEBSITE COMMENTARY

Core Realities: Nine Biblical Principles that

Mark Healthy Youth Ministries by Mike

Yaconelli.

http://media.zondervan.com/media/samples/pdf/9780310255130_samptxt.pdf

Different ways to look at building Youth Groups

The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson

http://thecirclemaker.com/about Inspirational about “circling prayers” … Praying “circles” around something or someone

Sun Stand Still: What Happens When You Dare to Ask God for The Impossible

by Steven Furtick

http://www.sunstandstill.org/ Audacious faith – if something is on your heart, it’s there for a reason; by the senior pastor at Elevation Church

Nooma videos by Rob Bell http://nooma.com/ Good for discussion-starters

The Story – Teen Version http://www.thestory.com/Store_ProductDetail.aspx?pid=9350913A5935EA06

This is a curriculum that can be cross-generational.

Love Does: Discover A Secretly Incredible Life in an

Ordinary World, by Rob Goff

http://bobgoff.com/lovedoes/ From Amazon.com: “Paradigm shifts, musings, and stories from one of the world’s most delightfully engaging and winsome people. What fuels his impact? Love. But it's not the kind of love that stops at thoughts and feelings. Bob's love takes action. Bob believes Love Does.”

Way to Live, by Dorothy Bass and Don Richter

Resource/Teaching Guide - http://practicingourfaith.org/pdf/WTL-

LG_110504.pdf

Referenced by Mark Yaconelli in the first night’s worship, the value of this book is that a teen and an adult are paired to write each chapter.

RESOURCE WEBSITE COMMENTARY

Stick Faith from the Fuller Youth Institute

http://stickyfaith.org/everyday From Amazon.com: Churches are waking up to the reality that almost half of their high school students struggle deeply with their faith in college. Offering special high school 'Senior Seminars' or giving seniors a graduation Bible and hoping for the best are too little, too late. In response to this problem, the Fuller Youth Institute conducted a national study to answer the question: What can youth workers do to help students develop a lasting faith in God? By following high school seniors into their first three years of college to gain an understanding of the transition from high school to college, they found their answers. And Sticky Faith Curriculum for Teenagers enables youth leaders to impact to their students with a faith that sticks. This 10-session book and DVD study gives youth workers a theological and philosophical framework alongside real-world, road-tested programming ideas. The study is designed to help high school students develop a solid foundation that endures through the faith struggles they will face in college.

Doing Girlfriend Theology, by Dori Grinenko Baker

http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Girlfriend-Theology-God-Talk-Young/dp/082981616X

Foreword by Rosemary Radford Ruether -

http://www.ncgs.org/Pdfs/AnnualConference/2013/DoingGirlfriendTheology.pdf

Good for Story-telling and Building relationships

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed

Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith

World, by Brian D. McLaren

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Moses-Buddha-Mohammed-Cross-

ebook/dp/B007BGQ9OW Video of the author discussing his book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mdosTcYBnk

From Amazon.com: McLaren uses the metaphor of great religious leaders crossing the road to converse about key matters of faith. Yet he seems to make the strongest case for fostering tolerance of other religions, while implementing Christian doctrine and maintaining Christian identity, through a single personal story. His brother offers to move some furniture into his new apartment and decides to play a practical joke, flooding the bathroom with several hundred balloons. McLaren must enlist the help of a neighbor boy to invite a virtual parade of children into the apartment to carry away the balloons. The resulting friendship between the Christian author and the Muslim boy provides an essential life lesson about loving our neighbors and tolerating their differences.

RESOURCE WEBSITE COMMENTARY

Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is

Telling the American Church By Kenda Creasy Dean

http://kendadean.com/almost-christian/ (includes Study Guides to each chapter)

From the Publisher: Based on the National Study of Youth and Religion--the same invaluable data as its predecessor, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers--Kenda Creasy Dean's compelling new book, Almost Christian, investigates why American teenagers are at once so positive about Christianity and at the same time so apathetic about genuine religious practice. In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"--a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less.

The World’s Religions, by Huston Smith

PBS Video – Bill Moyers interviewing Smith - http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Moyers-

Wisdom-Faith-Huston/dp/B0056G1AMU

Book: http://www.harpercollins.com/book/index.

aspx?isbn=9780061660184

Huston Smith's masterpiece explores the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the native traditions of Australia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Emphasizing the inner—rather than the institutional—dimension of these religions, Smith devotes special attention to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and the teachings of Jesus. He convincingly conveys the unique appeal and gifts of each of the traditions and reveals their hold on the human heart and imagination.

Echo The Story, a 12-week video series

http://wearesparkhouse.org/teens/echothestory/?domainRedirect=true

The series seeks to engage the Bible using storytelling, creative reflection, and dialogue.

RESOURCE WEBSITE COMMENTARY

What We Talk About When We Talk About God, by Rob

Bell

http://www.robbell.com/newbook/ From the publisher: Rob Bell does for the concept of God what he did for heaven and hell in his book Love Wins: He shows how traditional ideas have grown stale and dysfunctional and how to return vitality and vibrancy to lives of faith today. Pastor Rob Bell explains why both culture and the church resist talking about God, and shows how we can reconnect with the God who is pulling us forward into a better future. Bell uses his characteristic evocative storytelling to challenge everything you think you know about God. What We Talk About When We Talk About God tackles misconceptions about God and reveals how God is with us, for us, ahead of us, and how understanding this could change the entire course of our lives.

When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with

God, by T.M. Luhrmann

http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Talks-Back-Understanding/dp/0307277275

From Amazon.com: Tanya Luhrmann leaps into the heart of evangelical faith. Combined with scientific research that studies the effect that intensely practiced prayer can have on the mind, When God Talks Back examines how normal, sensible people—from college students to accountants to housewives, all functioning perfectly well within our society—can attest to having the signs and wonders of the supernatural become as quotidian and as ordinary as laundry.

The Boy Scout Handbook http://www.bsahandbook.org/aboutbook.html

Traditional and time-honored, now in its 12th Edition, this is an interesting alternative ministry approach, with many parallels to YM, and practical skills-practices to construct a life.

What Would Jesus Say, by Lee Strobel

http://www.amazon.com/What-Jesus-Would-Say-Strobel/dp/0310485118

From Amazon.com: Lee Strobel (also author of "The Case for Christ,") has written an engaging book in which he speculates what Jesus might say to some of the most controversial pop icons of our day -- ranging from Madonna to Bart Simpson to Rush Limbaugh. The author isn't putting himself in the place of Jesus, but instead going to the Bible for insights into what Jesus might say to these folks.

Bluefish TV Study called “I Am”

http://www.bluefishtv.com/Store/Youth_Group_Video_Bible_Studies/1976/I_AM_with_

David_Nasser_and_Chris_Tomlin

From the website: A four-video Bible study for youth groups on what a real relationship with God looks like.

Group Magazine http://groupmagazine.com/ Traditional, tried and true to many YM workers

Family Fun magazine http://family.go.com/parenting/ Great adaptable idea source for children

RESOURCE WEBSITE COMMENTARY OTHER SUGGESTIONS

Study in the Christian mystics N/A This was the personal odyssey by one member because “the church doesn’t do it, but needs to.”

Have your kids or students rewrite “The Ten

Commandments” or other key Biblical texts, using their own

language

N/A

Who are you in the story? N/A Re-read key stories and ask for reflections on who the students identified with, and why, in the story.

Snapchat, an app; used by one participant in a

“Snapchat Scavenger Hunt”

http://www.snapchat.com/ From Wikipedia: users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. These sent photographs and videos are known as "Snaps". Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps (as of December 2013, the range is from 1 to 10 seconds), after which they will be hidden from the recipient's device and deleted from Snapchat's servers.

Participants:

Jonathan Ashworth

Karyn Cherry

Amy Jackson

Marc Mullinax, (Convener/Recorder)

Al Townsend

Meredith Townsend