NEW for 2009 – Youth Resources will become a membership organization.

Be one of the first to sign up!

Call for more information at 612-529-0198

Cooperative Urban Youth Worker Training

Youth Resources instituted a plan last year to pay for half the salaries of three urban church youth workers. This would be for small churches that do not have full time youth workers.  We could not find three churches that were ready to hire even a part time youth worker. One church did but they lasted only six months.

The infrastructure is not ready. Churches need to gear up to hire and effectively use youth workers and volunteers. Potential candidates for youth workers usually have little or no training.  So, in order to help get more individuals on the street working with youth, we will start a monthly training program with a quarterly rotation.

As a membership organization this will be your organization - you will feel a sense of ownership. The membership dues will be very inexpensive to build critical mass. We will provide free training thru a cooperative training network for volunteers, part time, full time, Sr. Pastors and others in youth work who are members for free and at a low cost for non-members. This will help you to be more effective, to feel encouraged, and to develop collaborative partnerships that will make a difference in the city by increasing the number of individuals working with our youth. 

We will continue our free lunch on the third Wednesday of every month from
11 – 1 at North Central University for youth workers – Members and Non-Members.

I asked a local pastor what he would be willing to pay for a membership to an organization that provided resources such as a cotton candy machine, pop corn popper, generator, LCD projector, free concert tickets, birthday gift cards, scholarships for urban youth worker conferences, and regularly scheduled training events.

He said $200/month.  We will be charging membership dues of $300.00/year. In order to do this we will raise approximately another $70,000 above the dues to underwrite administrative, material and training costs.

Membership dues of $300.00/year will allow you to attend all the training for no additional charge. We have a current grant from the Bremer Foundation to do a match for membership dues for North Minneapolis youth workers.   

In January we will start a schedule that is friendly to part timers and volunteers with Saturday trainings that will look like this:

            The first month of the Quarter: a half day Saturday training.

                          January, April, July, October

            The second month of the Quarter: a full day Saturday training. 

                          Feb., May, Aug., Nov.

            The third month of the Quarter: a large combined outreach activity. 
(The June outreach will be a camping weekend or week)   March, June, Sep., Dec.

The cost of the training will be $150 per quarter for non members.

Topics for Training:

•  Community building

•  In it for the long haul

•  Record keeping with integrity

•  Navigating  technology

•  Theology for your students

•  Short Term Missions: before, during, and after

•  Reaching outside the church for growth

•  Volunteering to meet others’ needs: The key to reaching your youths’ needs without you burning out!

•  The high cost of ignoring training

•  Raising support to fund your ministry

•  Interactive learning – get your bag of tricks

•  Becoming a high impact teacher

•  Five essentials for training volunteer teachers & small group leaders

•  Teaching youth to pray and having fun doing it

•  Your vision, your ministry tomorrow

•  Urban Youth Workers’ Strategy Seminar

•  Mentoring – making a life difference in your youth without you doing it all

•  First Things First - keeping balance in your life

•  Understanding the Hip Hop generation

•  Community engagement – assessing your context

•  Spiritual Gifts/Strength Finder: how does this impact your ministry

•  The importance of accountability groups &  mentors

(Our goal is to help each of our members have a mentor and an accountability group)

Sprinkled thru the year will be other training opportunities that we will make members aware of.  We will have some partial scholarships available for our members. At this time the calendar includes these events:  

Rock Solid Youth Workers Retreat:  January 9-11, 2009 - Scott Larson, Key note speaker, $225 registration fee, Carlinville, IL

Urban Reload:  $20, February 21, North Central University, Mpls MN

Urban Youth Workers Institute: May 14 – 16, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa CA

CCDA: Cincinnati, Ohio – September – Let’s take a bus!