For Volunteers
I get this question all of the time: “Should volunteers join the Network?” Here’s my answer: “Yes.” And then come the “but” comments… But it’s kind of expensive But they don’t need the same kind of networking But I can get the info and just pass it along to them But we don’t have the ...
New Board Members (and 1 Returning)
The ELCA Youth Ministry Network’s Board of Directors met last weekend in the Minneapolis area. It was a good meeting, and in the near future you’ll be hearing more about the conversations and dreams that came out of the conversation there. One of the tasks the board takes on in its annual fall meeting is the ...
The Cult of Personality
Is there any other CEO, other than Steve Jobs, whose death would bring about such an amazing public outcry of loss? Since his death, and especially right afterwards the response in the news and on social media was nothing short of amazing. The number of people on my Facebook friends list who changed their profile ...
Board in the Air
Even as I type this, members of the ELCA Youth Ministry Network’s Board of Directors are in the air or are traveling by car to for its annual fall meeting. We normally rotate sites for the fall meeting, and this year we’ll be meeting at the ELCA Youth Ministry Network World Headquarters (my basement) and ...
Offering
I had a “proud parent” moment this morning. Please indulge me while I share: Today, my wife Lori and our two boys, Nathan and Samuel, ages 8 and 10 were on a worship team, which meant that they were ushering and Lori was also reading the scriptures. Our boys had ushered before. They enjoy handing ...
Handoff
Mackenzie Grondahl is completing her work as the editor of the Network’s bi-weekly e-mail newsletter, effective after the next issue. We are very, very grateful to her for all the time and energy that she has given to children, youth and family ministers through the Network. Her important role will be picked up by Andy ...
The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts
There are moments when you suddenly realize that you are in the middle of an organizational “sweet spot.” Things click. Visions are realized. Goals are achieved. And you look around and say to yourself “I can’t believe that I’m here, in this spot at this time. I will always remember this time.” I’ve experienced that ...
10 Tips for New Youth Ministers
I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. To be honest, I’m not even sure what all of the questions are. And the longer I’ve been doing this, the less sure I am of what is ‘working,’ or even what the definition of ‘working’ is. However, I have been doing this work for 24 ...
Volunteering with the Network
I have said in the past that we take very seriously the evaluations that we receive from each year’s Extravaganza. We have a thorough process of going through the pages and pages and pages of data we collect after each year’s event. And then,m as we go through the planning process, we refer back to ...
Moving the blog…
We are relocating the “Network Blog” from the web site host at Infusion Corp, to this site at WordPress. There are a few reasons for this migration: The Infusion site’s blog functions, which work great for text, are kind of limited. I do another blog that is geared towards families in my congregation that uses ...
Network is a Verb 