Hope Block

Classes have gone pretty well. We have two days left basically – the last couple sessions have dragged a little bit, but that’s probably more my state than the class’s. It’s been really cool to see how the tracks, though taught by different people have all flowed together really well.

My first track was on Christology, focusing specifically on who Jesus is and how the church’s view of Him has taken on different nuances and emphases at different times. Following that was a track on Pneumatology (Holy Spirit) that was pretty much awesome. I chose that class because I feel like He’s probably not had enough of my attention in life. Kind of by default I just haven’t always given the Spirit a lot of thought. I think many in the churches where I’ve been have been afraid to talk about the Spirit – don’t want to get labeled wrong. So, anyway, I took the class and it went really well. A lot of exciting stuff that basically boiled down to being attentive to the Holy Spirit, willing to listen, and responsive to what He wants.

Closely related to that them was my next course, Vision Catching and Casting. That class was led by the director of Stadia church planting ministries and was really good. I always like talking about vision and dreaming about what God hopes and dreams for His church. Also picked up some really good tools for communicating the vision that I do have for youth ministry. (Pretty excited actually about putting it into practice.)

Right now, I’m in a Cross-Cultural Communications class. The content is aimed more at foreign missions workers, but there is a lot that is applicable to youth ministry. There is definitely a cross-cultural element to working with students, especially groups of students.