Reflections on "Anticipating the Kingdom: Engaging students in missional faith formation" with Todd Hobart
By Dr. Nancy Going, Director of Distributed Learning Children, Youth and Family Luther Seminary
Todd Hobart does an amazing job of a missional reading of his church setting, St. Matthews Lutheran in Renton WA. This essay is a draft that will be included in an upcoming book:
Missional_faith_formation.pdf
Reflecting on the “flat” cultural expectations in our world of user-generated content, one great take away Todd laid out is this table of what he calls “Open Source Leadership”
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Bureaucratic leadership
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Open source leadership
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Youth ministers are the source of vision and ministry ideas for the church
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Students, volunteers, and parents are the source for vision and ministry ideas
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Youth ministers require many decisions to run through them
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Youth ministers require relatively few decisions to be made by them
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Youth ministers use chaperones and students to accomplish goals
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Volunteers are not “chaperones” who are recruited by the youth minister, but are instead participants and innovators with students who create and implement ministry themselves
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Youth ministers seek to persuade people to give their time/talents/treasures to the youth ministry
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People give their time, talents, and treasures because they are invested participants, instead of disengaged consumers who must be persuaded
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Excellence, efficiency, and control are valued
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Openness, participation, and freedom to create are valued
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Consumers are made through this model
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Invested participants are made through this model
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These types were inspired by, and partially adapted from: J.R. Kerr, "Open Source Activists: The surprising impact."
What a critical and potentially faith-forming move for students and adults alike!
Posted by Rachel Schwenke on Thursday, January 19, 2012 11:10 AM