Tag Archives: extended adolescence symposium

books, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

a few cool things on The Youth Cartel store

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first, i love the new, clean look of The Youth Cartel site. adam felt our initial site (only 6 months old!) needed a facelift.

there are a few cool new things in the store worth a mention:

one’s a cool freebie: a “gospel of john” sampler of The Way bible. you can see the amazing design of this bible, and read some sample selections. it would be very difficult for me to be more pleased with this puppy. hope you’ll check it out, and consider getting copies for the high schoolers and young adults in your life (we really had young 20somethings in mind when we were creating the content, but that means that most high schoolers will dig it, because it is not juvenile or patronizing). for this free sampler, click here, and scroll down. you’ll see the download link.

then, a couple other things. when we were raising funds for the extended adolescence symposium, we offered mp3s of the day and an abridged ebook of that content, to people who supported the event at various levels. we’d only asked the presenters or permission to use their content for that purpose, so we’ve been telling others, as they inquire, that we can’t get them those resources.

but one of the youth workers who really wanted the mp3 and ebook contacted one of our presenters. to make a long story short: all the presenters were extremely gracious and have given us permission to make this stuff available.

you can download the mp3 of the entire day for twenty five bucks.

you can download the nice-looking ebook, expertly abridged (all written content from the event – just not all of it) by paul martin, for ten bucks.

or you can download both the mp3 and the ebook for thirty.

rock it — that’s some good stuff!

the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

YMCP, NYWC, and the Symposium

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what a week this is. tomorrow, i start a two day meeting with the san diego cohort of my youth ministry coaching program. it’s only my second meeting with this cohort, so we’re all still getting to know each other. i can’t wait — it will be a particularly great time, i’m sure. when we met last, one of the (many) things we did was brainstorm a list of topics they would like to discuss at some point throughout the year. two of the top subjects (we voted), were “balancing family and ministry” and “handling criticism.” well, it just so happens that my good friend and youth pastor (who also happens to be the youth pastor at the church we meet at, and a YMCP graduate himself), brian berry, has done a bunch of thinking on those two subjects. he’s done seminars on them at the NYWC and SYMC, and is writing books on both of them. so, brian is joining my cohort one morning to lead discussions on those two themes.

thursday, i head to atlanta for the national youth workers convention. i’m leading three things while i’m there:

– a panel on ‘the future of youth ministry.’ i’m moderating, but the amazing panel includes: brooklyn lindsay, steve argue, brock morgan, and andy tilly. friday, 4 – 5:30.
– a learning lab on ‘how teens think.’ sunday morning (yawn!), 8 – 9:30.
– a learning lecture called ‘toward a ministry of belonging.’ sunday afternoon, 1:30 – 2:30.

i have a crazy full schedule during the rest of the event — current and potential client meetings for The Youth Cartel, old and new friends, publishers and partners. in short: a blast.

then: monday: the extended adolescence symposium. yup, i’ve been blogging about this one for a while, and it’s finally here. two leading thinkers and a brilliant moderator, helping us understand the strange phenomena that is extended adolescence. it’s just a one day dealio — 8am – 3pm. and it will be nicely intimate (probably about a hundred of us); so lots of opportunity for conversation and questions. there’s still room, btw.

but here’s a cool thing (if you’re still reading this blog post all the way down here!). my good friend luke macdonald believes in this event. luke and i, by the way, shouldn’t be friends, my many peoples’ estimation. he’s in a very conservative, reformed church of the stripe that usually doesn’t trust me. but luke took a gutsy risk and joined the youth ministry coaching program last year. in the midst, i came to greatly respect, trust, and enjoy him.

anyhow: luke believes in the extended adolescence symposium, and wants to support it, even though he can’t attend. so luke texted me and told me he wants to pay for two tickets, and that i can give them away to anyone who can’t afford them. first person to comment telling me you want to come but can’t afford it gets them. let me know if you want one or both tickets.

church, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

why churches should care about extended adolescence

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i wrote a short piece on extended adolescence for churchleaders.com recently, on why churches should care about extended adolescence. here’s a snippet, from the middle of the piece:

Churches are realizing two things: teenagers leave after youth group, and there are no young adults in our church. Sure, there might be a lame and weird little young adult group of some sort; but in many churches, you know your average high school graduate wouldn’t be caught dead going to that group.

In response, churches around North America are creating young adult youth groups. Really, that’s what they are (of course, they wouldn’t call them that). And this, my youth worker friends, is only perpetuating and extending some of the very problems we’re discovering about how we’ve approached youth group for the past 40 years or so. Isolation isn’t the church; homogeneity doesn’t have much of a scent of the Kingdom of God. And creating these pockets of isolation only further removes the onramps to adulthood that teenagers (and now “emerging adults”) so desperately need.

Here’s why I care about this: just like I don’t want my 13 year old son to have the same faith he had when he was 8, I hope he isn’t stuck with his current faith when he’s 26. And, I feel the same for every teenager in my church. To be honest, I feel the same about every teenager in your church.

go here to read the whole thing.

join us in atlanta on november 21 for the extended adolescence symposium, where we’ll wrestle with these important issues with the help of three of america’s leading experts on the subject.

church, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

extended adolescence on the immerse journal blog

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i wrote a bit recently about why youth workers should care about extended adolescence for the immerse journal blog. here’s a bit from the middle of the piece:

Do you realize that adolescence in America is now considered almost 20 years long? The onset of puberty has dropped; but the bigger change is on the upper end. Adolescent researchers now consider adolescence to extend all the way through the 20s for most.

There’s a complex set of reasons for this, and they’re not all bad (I’m sure you can think about it and come up with several of those reasons). But here’s the tricky part for me, as someone who’s passionately called to youth ministry: my calling is not about keeping teenagers in adolescence! My calling (and I assume yours) is about raising up young adult disciple of Jesus who understand and own their faith. Really, my calling (and yours) is about raising up adult disciples, if we take the long view. I have no interest in investing my life into the idea of keeping teenagers where they are. Discipleship is about going somewhere!

How should this new reality impact our work with teenagers (let alone 20-somethings)?

What does this mean for the spiritual lives and faith formation of teenagers?

If creating a new ‘youth group’ for young adults, prolonging their isolation from the adults in the church isn’t in answer, but those students have no interest in going to cold and dry adult worship service, what options do we have?

How can we do ministry in the real world teenagers live in, but still be counter-cultural, providing onramps to adulthood?

click here for the rest of the article

and, join us as we wrestle with questions like this at the extended adolescence symposium in atlanta, on november 21.

blogs, church, thinking..., youth ministry, youth work

what’s your theology of development?

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i wrote a web article for the immerse journal blog back in july. then i forgot about it. so it was a nice surprise to see it show up there today! and, the funny timing is: i wrote this before we’d decided to do the extended adolescence symposium. it’s proof i’ve been stewing on this for a while!

here’s a selection from the article:

I was on the phone with a well-known author the other day, talking about extended adolescence. He was asking me questions—in a healthy, skeptical way—about my slowly evolving contention that while we need to acknowledge cultural realities and do ministry in their context, the juggernaut of extended adolescence is something we can and should undermine, at least in our own homes and churches.

After almost 30 minutes of conversation, we arrived at a key crossroads. He made a statement I find to be indicative of the majority opinion of American adults: “It seems to me that the problem you’re referring to comes down to the self-centeredness of young adults today. They’re extremely selfish and have no interest in taking responsibility or becoming adults.”

I paused and took a breath. Then I responded (trying to use “yes, and” language rather than “you’re wrong” language), “Yes, I can totally see why you would say that. Today’s young adults do tend to have a level of narcissism that wasn’t as dominantly present 20 years ago. But that begs the question of why. I suggest they’re narcissistic because they’ve spent their entire lives in families and classrooms and churches and marketing messages that consistently tell them, that everything is all about them. To blame young adults for being narcissistic is like blaming an attack dog for biting. We have isolated teenagers, and now young adults, and then told them their culture is better than ours. Why would they ever want to grow out of that stage of life? How could they?”

click through to read the rest. there’s some good stuff in the comments section, btw.

click here to check out the info on the extended adolescence symposium.

news, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

only three days left to order your ‘extended adolescence symposium’ mp3 or ebook

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i’m stoked. i wasn’t sure it would happen. but it did, thanks to some very gracious supporters who believe in what we’re doing.

so, yes, it’s official: the extended adolescence symposium is officially on.

i’m still a little in shock.

first, i thought it was such a crazy long shot that we could get our first pick of presenters. dr. robert epstein is a freakin’ grenade launcher. he has messed with my mind over the past year when it comes to thinking about adolescence and youth ministry and parenting. then there’s dr. jeffrey arnett, the dude who literally wrote the book (and came up with the phrase) on emerging adulthood. i think i’m a decent moderator; but when both epstein and arnett said they’d love to be a part of this thing, i knew we needed someone with much more significant mental chops. enter dr. kara powell. yup, her.

seriously, i designed this event for me! i want to learn from these people. i want to understand what’s going on in american adolescence. i want to more deeply think about the questions of why? and so what? i want to be challenge to rethink things. and, to be honest, i’m hoping to see a few sparks fly!

but the second shock was that people rallied to our kickstarter page and we have the majority of the funding we need to make this puppy a reality. i’ll try not to be hurt that no one opted in for the $500 steak dinner with me (sniff). i am a little surprised that no one wanted the $250 ‘lunch with one of the speakers’. heck, i think an hour with epstein or arnett or kara would, literally, be worth 5 times that, easily. but, hey, i’m not complaining. and mucho, mucho thanks to those who have pitched in, especially when getting the swag wasn’t your primary motivation (i know of many who just wanted to play a role in seeing this conversation take place).

next week, adam and i will launch a page on our website with regular ol’ ticket sales for this ain’t-been-done-before-and-might-not-be-again event. but, in order to get this thing approved on kickstarter, we had to come up with a couple non-event thingies. that’s where the mp3 of the event and the abridged ebook of choice quotes came from. but i only asked permission from the speakers to use their stuff for people who paid for it during the fundraising efforts on kickstarter.

in other words: the mp3 of the entire event, and the abridged ebook of selected content from the event will only be available until our kickstarter deadline this saturday, september 17. after that, we hope you’ll attend the event, but there won’t be any other way to get that stuff.

oh, and the regular ticket price will be $100. on the kickstarter site, you can still get ‘pre-sale’ tickets for $75. that price won’t be offered anywhere else.

so i’m just, ya know, givin’ you a heads up. (and, full disclosure, the money we’ve raised still won’t cover our actual costs.)

news, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

help the youth cartel with the extended adolescence symposium

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some time ago, i started to read and learn about the phenomena of extended adolescence. the short story is that adolescence, in the united states, is now considered to be close to 20 years in duration, from about 11 on the young end, all the way to about 30 (on average) on the upper end. of course, with the loss of high school graduation and the marker of turning 18 as fairly accepted ending points, the ‘normal distribution’ is very wide — there are young adults who are fully functioning as adults in their early 20s, and others who stay in adolescence into their 30s.

the inertia on this thing is around commodifying this ‘new developmental life stage’ — the upper end commonly referred to as ’emerging adulthood.’ culture at large, as well as businesses and churches, are quickly buying into this as the new normal. some are even saying it’s good.

but there are a few voices (in the minority) who are saying, “what a minute; maybe this isn’t good, and maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.”

i started to dream about an event where we could explore this tension, particularly around it’s implications for youth ministry and the church. i talked about it with my partner in the youth cartel, adam mclane, and he had a bunch of energy around it also.

we put together an A-list of who were would love to have — long shots, really. and we thought about how great it would be to offer it in atlanta the day after the YS national youth workers convention (monday, november 21). with the blessing of YS, i went after our long-shot A-list: Dr. Jeffrey Arnett, the author and academic who coined the term ’emerging adult’; Dr. Robert Epstein, author of Teen 2.0 and a leading dissenting voice; and Dr. Kara Powell, a brilliant youth ministry academic who we felt would rock it as a moderator (and youth ministry interpreter). somewhat to our surprise, they all said they would love to be a part of it!

so the EXTENDED ADOLESCENCE SYMPOSIUM was born… kind of.

the plan is for a one-day event, rich with presentations, dialogue, and moderated debate.

but we still had a significant problem: how to fund the thing. we’ve enjoyed seeing how kickstarter has become a very cool platform for people trying to fund creative ventures. steve taylor’s film adaptation of don miller’s book blue like jazz was, for a period of time, the highest funded project on kickstarter, after the film lost its funding and fans came to the rescue.

we’re not blue like jazz, or don miller, or steve taylor. but then, we don’t need to raise a quarter million dollars either. we only need to raise $6000.

we’re hoping you’ll help us. there are a cool variety of sponsoring levels, each with their own benefit to the donor. you can get an mp3 of the event, an abridged ebook of some highlights, a reduced price ticket, lunch with one of the speakers, a nice steak dinner with me and adam (!), or even become an official sponsor of the event.

but we only have a few weeks to nail down the funding, as the speakers have all graciously agreed to wait until then to see if we can pull it together. so september 17 is our deadline.

click through to our kickstarter page to learn more about the event and the various donation levels. spread the news — please — via your own networks (email, facebook, twitter, G+, etc).

we really think this thing could be significant in helping us all wrestle with this juggernaut of extended adolescence, and its implications for us in the church who care about teenagers and young adults.

will you help us? better yet, will you join us?