i thought long and hard about the url, knowing that so many people struggle with the spelling of my name. but the easy options (marko.whatever) were all taken. so, in addition to markoestreicher.com, i bought markoswebsite.com. if you struggle to remember the spelling of my name, i hope you can remember “marko’s website [dot] com”. there are pages for the various things i’m doing these days, as well as my current speaking schedule, and an easy-to-use contact page. there are also links to this blog and my facebook page and stuff.

let me know what you think!

as you can see, i’m pretty full through may, but still have a shockingly empty summer, and plenty of space in the fall also.

if you would like to explore having me join you for a youth, youth ministry, or parent event, please contact tim grable, at tim@thegrablegroup.com

april
9 – 11 – youth ministry event for instituto especialidades juveniles, in guatemala city, guatemala
16 – 18 – reverb middle school conference in joppa, md

may
april 30 – may 1 – refuel youth ministry conference in ft myers, fl
3/4 – salvation army youth ministry event in orlando, fl
5/6 – lcms pastors and youth workers events, in midland, mi
7 – youth ministry gathering at calvin seminary in grand rapids, mi (i’m pretty sure this is an open event for students and local youth workers, but i don’t have many details on it)
8 – youth ministry network event in holland, mi

june
9/10 – mississippi youth annual conference (umc), in jackson, m

july
*nothin’. seriously. there are tumbleweeds blowing through my july calendar.

august
14 – 17 – youth camp for nc umc, oak island, nc
20 – 22 – youth camp for nc umc, oak island, nc

(btw, i have a couple days to kill between these two camps. anyone in nc or sc got something i can help you with?)

september
24 – 26 – jr pitch (junior high event for the evangelical missionary church of canada), in kitchener, ontario

october
1 – 4 – nywc in san diego, ca
15 – 17, jr high YAR (for the illinois great rivers conference of the umc), in carlinville, il

november
19 – 22 – nywc in nashville, tn

december
*nuttin’. once again: tumbleweeds.

i’m taking bookings for 2011 also, so feel free to contact tim about those.

here’s my current schedule:

january
forest home junior high winter camp, forest falls, ca, 22nd – 24th
salvation army youth worker event, mt hermon, ca, 26th
forest home junior high winter camp, forest falls, ca, 29th – 31st

february
world vision u.s. (consulting), federal way, wa, 2nd & 3rd
forest home junior high winter camp, forest falls, ca, 5th – 7th
christ in youth (ciy) “mega-church” youth worker event, destin, fl, 9th & 10th
junior high “disciple now” event, first baptist harvester, st. charles, mo, 19th & 20th

march
youth worker gathering and youth night, oakwood baptist church, new braunfels, tx, 17th
“seismos” youth worker gathering, canton, oh, 21st – 23rd

april
especialidades juveniles instituto intensive course, guatemala city, guatemala, 8th & 9th
“reverb” middle school event, md, 16th – 18th

may
ft myers youth worker network event, ft myers, fl, 1st & 2nd
salvation army youth worker event, orlando, fl, 3rd & 4th
lcms youth workers and pastors events, ann arbor, mi, 5th & 6th
western michigan youth worker gathering, holland/grand rapids, mi, 7th & 8th

june
mississippi umc youth event, ms, 9th

i still have space to add something in february, a couple things in march and april, and one or two things in may. then, i’m mostly wide open starting in june.

if you’d like to consider having me join you for a speaking engagement, please email tim grable: tim@thegrablegroup.com
if you’d like to consider having my join you for a consulting engagement, please email me directly: mark.oestreicher@gmail.com

about two or three years ago, i started dramatically decreasing the amount of speaking engagements i was taking. then, earlier this year, i stopped taking them altogether, in an attempt to focus more of my time and focus on ys and my family. but now, things have all changed, of course!

so, i’m trying to book speaking engagements for youth events, youth ministry events, or even preaching in churches, between now and the end of may. i know that’s a short window, and the speakers for most winter camps and other events in that window have mostly been lined up months ago. but, since i don’t yet know what i’m going to be doing with the rest of my life, i’m not comfortable taking speaking engagements in the summer or beyond. of course, if i don’t have something lined up by then, i’ll be really wishing i’d booked a bunch of things for the summer!

i also enjoy short-term consulting — either for a church or publisher or ministry, or even for any organization that might want an outside leadership perspective, or, specifically, some help thinking through youth and young adult issues.

if you’d like to talk about having me come to your gathering, or creating something, feel free to contact me (mark.oestreicher[at]gmail[dot]com). or, you can contact tim grable at the grable group: tim@thegrablegroup.com, or (615) 283-0039.

really, as i look back over the past year, i’m just stunned at how much god has been lovingly preparing me for this transition.

- last december, when i was told i had to re-organize youth specialties, there was a week or so when i thought i was supposed to leave also. it created a massive panic within me, that, in hindsight, i wouldn’t trade for anything. even when i settled back into my role, i was left with a new awareness that my identity and my work were completely enmeshed, in a very unhealthy way. i was struck with the question: if i were to lose my job for any reason, who would i be? and, the really disequilibrating bit of that was that i did not have an answer to the question. sure, i had the cognitive answers. but they weren’t “soul answers.” i started down a path of unraveling marko from ysmarko (the persona, not the blog). this resulted in lots of prayer and thinking, lots of conversations with my wife and a few trusted friends.

- in march, i began a one year leadership coaching program with john townsend. it’s a 360 style thing, where a team of 8 of us meet with john for a whole day, once a month, and have regular interaction on a closed networking site in-between. i was asked to share, at our opening meeting, what i hoped to get out of this program; and, among other things, i talked about this un-entwining i needed to delve into. in the months since then, this team has walked with me as i’ve wrestled and prodded and queried and cried. really, i can hardly imagine what this current transition would be like for me had i not been processing all of this with that group all year.

- in may, on a ys leadership team retreat, i was deeply struggling with these issues. and, in an exercise our consultant led us through, i had an imaginary conversation with a 60 year-old version of myself, who was worn out and tired, and spoke to me (it was kinda freaky!), saying, “you have to stop!” for about an hour or two, i was interpreting that as meaning that i needed to quit ys! but in a side conversation with our consultant, i realized that i needed to take a significant step away from my “ysmarko” persona, at least for a season. i knew in that moment that i had to shut down my blog, cancel my twitter and facebook accounts, significantly reduce my travel, and pursue presence (both with my family, and with the staff of ys during that difficult season).

- in june, i was still regularly struggling with anxiety over the thought of “well, what else could i even DO with my life?” i brought this up in with my coaching team, and townsend wisely counseled me that my constant stiff-arming of the question (which i saw as a distraction) was actually keeping me from presence. he encouraged me (it was actually my “homework” for that month) to do what felt counter-intuitive: to focus on coming up with some answers to that question, so i could then set it aside for now. i went on a silent retreat, and i met with our consultant (who is also one of my closest friends), and came up with a handful of buckets of things i could imagine being life-giving for me, if a “post-ys” time ever become a reality.

- then, the last few months have been a roller-coaster ride. and i was very emotionally prepared (as much as one can be, i suppose) for the news that i was being let go. even three days before it actually occurred, i connected the dots and walked into the meeting completely knowing what was about to go down.

all of this was god’s grace. all of this was god lovingly preparing me (and, i think, in a sense, preparing ys) for this current season.

oh — one more: a week before i was let go, i got an email from a youth worker i’d never met. she’d been at the ys convention in los angeles, and wrote about a vision she’d had. she expressed that she was uncomfortable emailing me about this, and that she’d never done this before – especially with someone she’d never met. but she’d been standing in the back of a big room (general session), and suddenly had this vision of a man standing at the foot of a mountain, with hiking boots in his hands. he was looking at the mountain, trying to figure out how to best start his climb. then, he noticed that there was a picnic laid out on a blanket next to him. it looked so inviting, and he was conflicted about whether to attack the climb, or sit and enjoy the picnic. she knew the invitation to the picnic was the real deal – the loving invitation of god to sit and rest in god’s love. then, she wrote that she felt god telling her, “this is for marko — i want you to share this with marko.” she wrestled with this, and tried to dismiss it, as she didn’t know me, and thought the whole thing was just too weird. but, weeks after the convention (and one week before i was laid off), she took the courageous step of emailing me, telling me this story, and writing, in the most understated way, “i don’t know if this means anything to you right now or not.”

i was blown away. and that image of the picnic blanket laid out on a grassy hill, with cool fall breezes blowing, and yummy picnic food, has stuck with me in a profound way over this last month.

so, other than the cutesy play on words/sounds, that’s why this blog is now called whyismarko. i’m not done figuring all this out — that’s for sure! but, even when i do land in some other role, i want to be a new man and a new leader. i want to be confident in who i am as a child of god, a husband and father, and as a leader; and i want to lead from those places.

—–

and now, the technical stuff: i’ve reset feedburner, and the 500 or so of you who were subscribed to the old blog shouldn’t experience any problems. but if you do, just drop that feed, and subscribe to this one. with the help of a friend, all the old ysmarko stuff should be here, but it might take a week or so for all the images to work. and i’m sure there will be technical glitches we haven’t foreseen. if you still have a link on your blog to ysmarko, i’d greatly appreciate it if you would update that to this URL. i’m still not going to re-start my twitter account; but please do feel free to tweet this new URL.

i’m very stoked about reconnecting with the conversation, thinking, and fun we’ve had on this blog in the past. i’ll not be posting with the frequency i once did, because i refuse to become obsessed with this thing. but i expect i’ll show up here a few times a week for now, and see where it goes.

remedy.fm, btw, looks like a pretty cool resource for youth workers to know about. they stream music, and have a bunch of other shows, both live and in podcast form, for teenagers, and for youth workers (on that podcast page, “the er show” is a youth worker show). some of the shows are music-based, and others are youth issue call-in type shows. check ‘em out, and it might be something you want to point out to teenagers.

i’ve been blown away by the number of blog reviews youth ministry 3.0 continues to receive. really, very humbled. but a few of them stand out. and this is one of them — written by Alaina Kleinbeck, on the blog/website youth e-source (an LCMS youth ministry site):

I have a not-so-secret contempt for books that talk at the reader. Books that tell you everything that is wrong and why you should be fixing it and how this person and that person is doing it better than you. This is the core the self-help book market. It’s frustrating to me as an avid reader because I want to talk with the author. I want to talk about the material. I want to read the research and the author’s assessment. I want to make my own assessment.

A book is a conversation, not a tool for condescension.

Mark Oestreicher’s Youth Ministry 3.0 embodies the conversation model of ministry books. His book is revolutionary not only in content, but also in style. Oestreicher runs a blog (ysmarko.com) that he used as a sounding board for his thoughts and ideas for this book. Blog readers who commented on his inquisitive posts shaped and affirmed his writing and he then included their commentary throughout the book. This type of book would not have been possible ten years ago. It represents a major shift in the way youth ministry is resourced–from top-down publishing house and denominational presses informing the parish worker to youth ministers creating and contributing material from their local ministry to share en masse. The resourcing shift isn’t surprising considering the parallel decentralization in almost every other avenue of communication in the 21st century. Yet Marko’s book is of the first printed books in the youth ministry field to widely embrace social media as a means of resourcing. Social media addicts everywhere are rejoicing.

For those of you who are still in love with the printed and bound word, Youth Ministry 3.0 reaches you without making you feel like you are 35 miles behind the pack. It is, after all, a book.

Youth Ministry 3.0 finds its purpose early within its pages. Marko says, “I’m hoping to describe what I’m seeing and experiencing and feeling about where we need to go so we can continue being true to our calling” (p. 26). He’s in the position to hear the voices of thousands of youth workers, and so his thoughts on the future are valuable and weighty. Before speaking of the future, he walks the reader through a history of youth culture with a simple framework. He looks at the three tasks of adolescence–identity formation, autonomy, and affinity–and traces the emphases that youth culture (and thus, youth ministry) has placed on different tasks. He skillfully honors the past and fuels a fire for change.

A recent study reported that Christianity is the self-identified religion of 10% less of the adult population in the United States than 18 years ago.1 It is easy to see why youth workers are clamoring for a renewed vision for youth ministry. Youth workers desperately want to bring their faith to teens and families in their community, and what we’ve been doing is not working. We need a new vision for youth ministry. We need a new way to bring Christ’s redemption to His people. YM3.0 brings shape to that vision.

Marko’s vision is exceptional in that he casts one so lightly; he doesn’t force a vision but rather provides a context for creating your own vision. He makes it clear that each ministry has to be as unique as the people who embody it. He places expectations on the youth workers not to be cutting edge, but to be cognizant of their particular surroundings, to be connected to the people they serve, and most importantly, to be grounded in Christ’s mission on earth–bringing mercy and grace into places of pain and sin. Latest and greatest is out. Down to earth (as in Christ came down to us, let’s live/speak/serve/forgive as he did) and connected is in.

A short read, YM3.0 isn’t the end of the story. It doesn’t purport to have all of the answers, but encourages a process of discernment to find them. Marko doesn’t propose a model that works in every situation, but gives permission for a potpourri of youth ministry models. He invites the reader to engage in the conversation. You can join the conversation with other youth workers online on his blog, ysmarko.com, and other youth ministry blogs or here on thEsource. I look forward to hearing from you. But most importantly, I hope a reading of YM3.0 will put you in conversation with the people in your ministry, youth, parents, and adults. They are the ones that matter.

I have just finished reading Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0. I have to admit that I am a little confused as to exactly what I want to take away from this book. The first four chapters are not that impacting if you have been in Youth Ministry for any length of time. The last two chapters really throw a bone to those who are ready to step out into the next big wave of Youth Ministry. The problem with the wave is that it is unpredictable and has no boundaries. So, for those who are hoping to make the next big wave in Youth Ministry be careful as you go here. There are some things that you have to be aware of when it comes to making those shifts.

1. You have to be able to communicate exactly what you are doing
2. You will have to get buy-in from you Sr. Leader
3. You will have to train your team to think totally differently about ministry
4. You will have to risk total failure, which you better have enough change in your pocket to go there

While I agree with what Marko is presenting and can see the shift in our student culture and in the way that we are going to do ministry alongside them. I want to throw a word of caution out to those who are fairly new to Youth Ministry. Make sure you know where you are going and how you plan to get there. Because those you want to reach will be there, but those who are leading the church will not understand if you just start cutting programs and don’t communicate in depth where you are headed.

My only real big fear is that we are creating a system that is not measurable for those who live under a microscope already. Youth Ministries have for centuries shown us what the church will look like in the next ten years and I think we need to be innovative but cautious as we lead down that path.

Marko – thanks for a good read and a challenging voice to the way we minister to students on a daily basis.

Title: Youth Ministry 3.0: A Manifesto Of Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, And Where We Need To Go by Mark Oestreicher.

Pages: 155.

How it was obtained: Ordered it with some other youth ministry books.

Time spent on the “to read” shelf: None. I read it right away. (I just didn’t write my review right away).

Days spent reading it: 1 afternoon.

Why I read it: I’m a youth pastor, so I figured I’d like to hear what Mark Oestreicher had to say about where youth ministry needed to go. Mark Oestreicher (aka Marko) is president of Youth Specialties, a leading company in youth ministry resources. I heard about this book through Marko’s blog (www.ysmarko.com).

Brief review: Youth Ministry 3.0 is Marko’s attempt to talk about the previous, current, and future direction of youth ministry. The book includes a brief discussion about adolescent development, a brief history of youth ministry since post-WWII, and then a few suggestions on how we can take youth ministry to the next step.

The center thesis of this book seems to be that youth ministry has gone through two phases already, and is about to enter the third phase. Phase one was driven by proclamation. It was centered around evangelism and teaching. Phase two was driven by programs. “Bigger is better” would be a favorite slogan. This phase focused on discipleship. Many churches are in this phase right now. But as youth ministers we know there is something wrong. Kids are dropping out at ridiculous rates (it is not uncommon to hear statistics that 80% of kids drop out of church after high school, this number seems to be inflated, but you get the picture). We know somethings wrong, so what do we do? Marko proposes phase three which would not be driven by any particular motivator. Instead it is present (or incarnational).

So the question is obviously how do we get to an incarnational ministry from a program (or even proclomation) driven ministry? Marko offers up a few solutions. We can focus on smaller groups, and literally have a youth group for each sub-culture in our youth. We could focus on making our youth ministries a place for a supra-culture–where everyone comes together and no one group is better or dominate over the other groups. Finally, we could have hybrid of the two. Perhaps a large group for some events, and a small group for others.

Honestly, Marko’s ideas are aimed at larger groups. Although he addresses the question of how smaller groups can incorporate this kind of thinking (on pgs. 95-96) it seemed forced. Seeing that I work with about 20-30 students, many of his ideas on how to move to Youth Ministry 3.0 seemed impractical or unnecessary.

I’m not convinced Marko has the solutions, but at least he is willing to think outside of the box to create some discussion about this topic. It is important to wrestle with, and I think this book has created great discussion and thought on where we need to take youth ministry in the upcoming years in order to stay relevant to a culture that changes every single day. One great thought Marko has at the end of the book is that youth ministers need to begin to consider themselves missionaries. We are becoming more and more distant from the culture we are attempting to reach. In order to be effective we need to begin thinking like missionaries. We need to begin studying youth culture like we would other cultures around the world. (Should youth ministers begin to take missions courses in college? That’s probably not a bad idea…)

Every youth leader should read this book and wrestle with the thoughts, problems, solutions, and overall structure of their youth ministries. There are many great little gems in this book. I underlined a lot of it as I read and digested the ideas. It only takes about 2 hours to read through. The book is short, the typeset and spacing are large. It is definitely worth the investment.

Favorite quote: “We must live incarnationally, positioning ourselves humbly and openly on the somtimes cold, dark, and scary stairwell to the underground of youth culture.”

Stars: 4 out of 5.

Final Word: Challenging.