Well, I’m preparing a bit for my time in Atlanta next week at the Gwinnett Arena.  If you want to register for this event, I’d recommend you do so because there is limited space and it’s filling up.  Here are some details for this training day you might be interested in:

Day Schedule:
8:30 Check-in/Registration Opens
9:45 Seminar #1: College Ministry: Understanding the Ministry and People
11:00 Lunch break
1:00 Seminar #2: Understanding College-age Pursuits
2:15 Networking and connection with other college ministry leaders
2:45 Seminar #3: Teaching and Discipleship Philosophies 

For registration info and full seminar descriptions click here.  Hope to see you there!

Well, hopefully some of you were able to tune into Mtv’s “College Life” last night.  As I said last week, I will be issuing some of my thoughts on the show each Tuesday for as long as this is on air.  I find the show authentic, revealing, and affirming as to what I’ve seen working daily with college-age people over the last decade.  So, in this series of posts I will be giving my thoughts on what I see as typical college-age issues.

Last night I was once again struck by the mix of maturity and immaturity in college-age people.  In fact, as you watch the show, I’d encourage you to watch with that lens: what is mature, and what is immature.  You will quickly see signs of both mature adult-like thinking mixed with immature adolescent thinking and action.  This dichotomy is important to be in tune with if you’re working in college-age ministry!  With that here are some glimpses into college-age life from the show:

Glimpses from Andrea’s life: with Andrea you see a certain amount of innocence when it comes to her relationship pursuits, but you also see how she manipulates as well.  The most important thing to realize with her is a search for identity in a relationships.  I would say this is an all too common, yet often unconscious, identity crisis during the college-age years.  We also see this in Josh’s life as well.  

Glimpses from Alex’s life: we see the typical pressure’s college-age people feel of everyone’s expectations being put on them.  In fact at the end of last night’s episode we learned that Alex withdrew from the show due to pressures.  We also see some very normal tendencies into college-age life: the ability to know in their head what they need to be doing and yet living by the minute and in actions fleeing from responsibility.  The new found freedoms in college life mixed with immature thinking leads to this dichotomy.

Glimpses from Kevin’s life: the ultimate “collegiate” (click here for an article I’ve written on this).  Kevin is surely enjoying his freedom and diving into the freedoms that college life provides.  He’s failing classes, “can’t do anything about it,” so therefore just let’s loose.  My experience has shown me that this letting go and enjoyment of freedom isn’t just tied to academics.  I’ve seen this mentality embraced because of the pressure college-age people feel to “do something with their lives.”  Most don’t know what they want to do, think they’re not going to figure it out now, so why not just enjoy the moment!?

Glimpses from Jordan’s life: oh, man, where do I start?  One way of viewing this is as the ultimate picture of the churched kid who is not prepared to face the world outside of the shelter of his parents or church.  Another way to view it is this kid has pleased everyone his whole life and is now revealing who he really is.  I’m not saying this is true for Jordan, but these types of kids graduate from high school with a “Christian patchwork identity” derived by their parents, not an authentic faith of their own.  The exploration that is taking place now is simply a means of finding out who he is, apart from the shelter of family.  I’m very interested in how his life progresses throughout the show.  I have my hunch, but I’m waiting to see…

A friend of mine, Benson Hines, just released a free e-book called, “Reaching the Campus Tribes: an opening inquiry”  The book reveals some of his findings after exploring college ministry in a one year country wide tour of 181 campuses in 44 states – and sat down with 100′s of people working in college ministry.  I met him when he contacted me for an “interview” about a year and a half ago.  Since then, he’s compiled many of his thoughts in this free downloadable e-book.  I’d recommend you at least downloading it and taking a look.  He sent it to me a few weeks ago.  It’s filled with pictures and insights into different campuses and offers some great insights into college ministry.  Click here to download.

Walt Mueller is an acquaintance of mine. I think we could say we’re friends, but that would only be based on a couple conversations. But regardless of how our relationship may or may not be defined, I think he’s a great guy. In addition he spends his days thinking through culture, youth, and how both tie in with and effect each other – offering us all good insights and thoughts into the times we’re in and how it may/may not influence our faith, families, and ministries.

He just posted an insightful blog about a recent Burger King commercial. What he’s saying may not be rocket science, but I could also say his brain goes places most of ours doesn’t.  I think he has some good insights, so I will refer you directly to that post…click here.

Ok, this is completely random, crazy, maybe even stupid.  However, I think you’ll find it fascinating.  How in the world he can do this, I don’t know.

I wonder what people could do in your college ministry if you’d just give them an opportunity.  I couldn’t embed this video, but you have to watch it.  I got chills watching it and yes, my eyes welled up a bit.  Here’s to a little wholesome inspiration…Click here.

Today, in leu of tax day, Simply Youth Ministry is offering 15% (today only) on orders of $99 or more. You can use the promo code: TAXDAY to get the discount. Anyway, thought you might want to take advantage of it – especially if you are thinking of getting some resources any way.

Well, in case you didn’t know Mtv just launched a new show called, “college life.”  In the very beginning of the show it started by telling us as the viewers what our role was: to watch 4 freshman “make sense of college.”  The tagline for the show is, “This is not reality.  This is real.”  The show is filmed by freshman students at the University of Wisconsin.  The students film their own lives as they enter into college.  If you want to know what it’s really like, get insights into life at college, what it’s like for a freshman leaving and trying to figure out college life – this is certainly the show to watch.  On CollegeLeader we have articles pertaining to some of these issues as well – click here for those.

The premiere of “college life” introduced us to 4 freshman, two guys and two girls, and walked us through their first 3 weeks of college.  Here’s a bit about each cast member:

Jordan: mixed race family with his mom being jamaican and dad being canadian.  He comes from a religiously conservative upbringing.  All his friends are white, but as he says, “it’s all I’ve ever known, so it doesn’t bother me.”

Andrea: She’s a proclaiming conservative Christian and is very proud of her virginity.  People tell her that college is going to change her, but she feels confident she has the proper accountability.  

Alex: She’s from a very small town in Texas.  She received an academic scholarship and says she just wants to learn as much as she can.  She hinks it’s cool to be at college and is looking forward to meeting people.  

Kevin: From St. Paul Minnesota.  College to him is keeping his “grades up for his mom.”  He’s looking forward to the “collegiate” lifestyle of partying.

Immediately after talking about her accountability at school, Andrea walks up to a random guy she sees and gives him her phone number.  In the first 3 weeks she also met another guy who came over to her dorm room to watch a movie with her.  It will be interesting to see what happens with her.  She’s also involved in a complex relationship with an ex-boyfriend from high school.  He loves her, but she just wants to meet new people.  This not only gives some great insight into some of the immaturity that can take place in college-age relationships, but also about the exploration that’s pursued with other people.  I’ve said many times that this is a key part in identity formulation. We’ll talk more about that in another blog.

Alex, the academic girl.  She hopes to double major in journalism and international studies in order to one day incorporate her love of writing, intrigue with people, and desire to travel, into a journalistic occupation following college. In the show we gain some insights into her mind as she is bombarded by a guy who likes her.  At a party he is claiming her as his boyfriend because he doesn’t like the fact that she’s talking to different guys.  As for her she just wants to meet new people.  She ends up totally emotional, frustrated, and makes a statement that she’s “worthless” and will never be able to find a guy who truly loves her.  Confusing, but real emotions felt by many college freshman.

Kevin is the typical “collegiate” that I’ve written about in past articles.  His dorm room turns into party central, with about 15 people playing drinking games.  He gets busted with alcohol, gets written up and told that if he’s caught again he’ll be expelled from the school – no questions asked.  Exactly two hours later his room is packed with people again, drinking.  He struggles with school and receives a 33% on his first math exam.  He realizes it’s his fault because he never payed attention in high school.  His rationale is to now skip political science class to study for math.  But all this is really secondary to him…he’s more interested in sleeping all day so he can party and hang out at night.
 

Jordan isn’t into the collegiate life much and isn’t even interested in the big football game against Ohio State.  In fact, during the game when everyone else is excited and filled with school spirit he goes shopping with some female friends.  It will be interesting to see his college life and what parts of college he is attracted to.  My hunch is he’s going to go through some internal confusion!

I recently got an email from someone working with Disney asking me to post about their new upcoming film “earth.” It’s in partnership with Discovery and will be in theaters soon.

I’m not sure why they asked me, but I watched the trailer and it looks interesting. Of course I love the Discovery channel and love watching shows about creation, so this might seem a bit more interesting to me than you. Regardless, it could be worth seeing if you’re a movie goer. Probably better to see this than some other things out there…