On Our Way To Crazy

I spent the past weekend at my first real youth worker training, the National Youth Worker Convention. And let me tell you, it was awesome. Everyone who works with kids in any capacity should get to go to something like this.

Over the course of four days, I took seminars on working with men, mission trips, building faith through questioning, games and group builders, the enneagram, transformational teaching, finding and training volunteers and reimagining confirmation. And then my brain broke.

They had a ton of great speakers, including Francis Chan, Mark Yaconelli and Tony Campolo. But the far and away coolest and most interesting was a guy named Francis Collins. Who is that, you might ask? He’s just the president of the freaking HUMAN GENOME PROJECT. He was fascinating… he talked about genetics and how they work and what the project does, but then he went and got controversial and it was awesome. He talked about what it means to be a believer and be okay with evolution, and how the process and the development of nature and animals and people speaks to the creativity and awesomeness of God. It was fantastic. Then he told us about having to argue his case against one of the countries toughest debaters… and showed a clip of himself on the Colbert Report that appears to have been taken off the website even though I JUST WATCHED IT YESTERDAY WHAT THE HECK IS THAT ALL ABOUT.

I came home with so many notes and lists of books to read and phone numbers of youth workers I met from all over the country. Sunday night I hooked up with a bunch of Florida catholics and had beer and barbecue with them before the Jars of Clay concert. I have so many new ideas for programs and lessons and volunteers.

It’s like camp. For grown ups. I hope next year I can take my staff with me… it would be such a great bonding experience, and we could divide and conquer the seminars. The whole thing was just so much fun. Do you work with kids? Want to meet up in Atlanta next year? It’s gonna be awesome!