Michael Novelli and I are heading to Atlanta on Friday to the National Youth Workers Convention.
We are teaching a session together entitled: Story, Experience, and Collaboration: New Approaches to Youth Ministry For more info click HERE.
Let me know if you will be there and would like to grab coffee!
I thought this was a pretty cool viral idea – let fans create it by upload pictures. I think this idea has potential for many different settings – I am specifically thinking about community gatherings.
Check it out HERE.
The clip above is a photo highlights video of our time at MERGE last week. We showed it Saturday morning in our final gathering together. Watching students and leaders respond to the video was a lot of fun, and instant nostalgia was definitely in full effect.
Every day of MERGE is packed with interconnected experiences from the time students wake up until the time they go back to the dorms at night. We’ve found that it’s really important to give them moments throughout the day to simply stop and reflect on what they’ve experienced over even the previous few hours. But it’s for more than nostalgia’s sake. At MERGE, we tried to help students become more aware of those moments in each day where they found themselves wrapped up on God’s amazing story, or made a real connection with God, learned something new, or heard from God in a specific way.
Then, we had the joy of sitting back and listening to students share those moments with each other. Some students used art to share. Others wrote spoken word pieces. Others simply wrote a letter to God, then read it for all of us.
For every image we captured at MERGE, and for every moment a student shared with us, we know there are countless more moments where God was at work in students’ lives.
We are grateful to have witnessed some of those moments, and to have been a part.
Tomorrow, we head up to Cornerstone University with Michael Novelli and the rest of the team for MERGE 2011. Students and leaders will arrive Monday of next week, and we’re so happy to have a mix of new and returning groups joining us. As we’ve said on the blog before (and pretty much any time we talk about it), MERGE is one of our most favorite things we do each year.
One of the main reasons is that MERGE is a chance for us to take all that we are learning about narrative, experiential learning and creative communication, and use that learning to inspire us to try new things, new ways of learning and gathering. It’s the kind of stuff we think about and help other organizations with year round. But at MERGE, we get to personally be with student ministries for a week and do everything we can to help them truly experience God’s story, and find themselves in that story.
Another reason MERGE is a highlight for us is that the entire week is shaped by the students themselves. We don’t have a central communicator for the week. No one tells students exactly what they’re supposed to learn. Instead, we provide a wide range of creative experiences and a learner-centered environment where we trust God will speak directly to students throughout the day. As they go through the day, we have specific times when students share with one another what they are learning and how God has been speaking. In doing so, the students become the teachers of one another.
It’s really an amazing thing to watch, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be a part of this event!
You can keep up with us throughout the week here, and on the MERGE Facebook page, or by following us on Twitter.
We sometimes get asked why groups should consider coming to MERGE. We thought the best way to answer that was to have a leader who has brought a group (and is returning again to this year’s event) share his experience with MERGE.
Steve Cornelius, Youth Pastor at Mission Covenant Church in Poplar, WI was kind of enough to take some time to answer a few questions we threw his way:
When did your group attend MERGE, and what was the impact it had on your students?
Summer of 2010. It was a great trip for the students. Like any trip with time in a smelly van and a week together, you bond. The students had a great shared experience that week. I think the greatest impact of the trip was what they experienced together. Whenever you can take a week to dive into the story of God, and let that be the focus, you are bound to have wonderful things happen. We have students that now have a working timeline of the scriptures.
Had you already tried storying in your youth ministry? How did your students respond?
We had tried storying in our group. We had actually used the very same stories that we use at MERGE the previous school year. Storying has been such a great way to communicate God’s truth with students. It was a little uncomfortable at first for the students and myself. Mainly because it was different than what we had done before. I think I had to have a small reality check as well, because storying took the focus off of me and put it back on the story.
You’re coming back again this year. Why?
For me, I have seen more positive impact from this youth event than any other. I am not in any way putting down other events for students, I just love what MERGE is about. I have students gripping the truth that their story and God’s story are connected. This changes the way they view the world around them. It has been a great change.
What value do you think there is for students to experience MERGE more than once?
I have several students who want to go again before they graduate, and I have also done back-to-back years of storying. It amazes me: the depth of God’s story, and how we always discover fresh truth as we explore it together.
We (Imago) are running the video production for a large youth event this weekend in Chicago called the Ascension Convention. We also did their marketing materials, presentation graphics and web site. Thanks to Kevin Koesterer at 29eleven productions for helping us coordinate and setup all the wonderful gear we get to play with!
This week, we’re headed up to Cornerstone University to do some prep work for this summer’s MERGE event. While the Early Bird Deadline has passed, if you register your group for MERGE by May 16, you’ll still save $40 per registrant. Also don’t forget about the referral program. If you’re already planning on coming to MERGE, and you recommend it to another church and they come, you’ll get a credit for $100 towards your group’s registration.
We’re excited to be in Grand Rapids this week on campus at CU. We do a lot of dreaming about MERGE throughout the year, but there’s something about being where the event is going to take place that really gets us excited and expecting great things this summer!
Just before the SXSW event started last week, Seth Godin blogged about his experience when he attends conferences and events:
Most conferences are organized around mass, not around individual interactions that last. It takes an effort to seek out conversations that matter.
I couldn’t agree more. For Seth, that means spending almost all of his time outside of the main gatherings. I often tend to do the same thing.
But the dynamic he’s describing makes me want to help create events that are organized precisely around the “conversations that matter”. At events that IMAGO produces or is involved with, we want people to have a variety of ways to find those conversations. Multiple entry points. Choice in the way they respond. But we don’t want them to have to choose between the structured and unstructured activities simply because they can’t find interactions that last.
Events can be better than that.
We are excited to be a part of the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago this week. This is our first year being involved with this event. We produced a short animated video for one of the sessions (with illustration help from the very talented Mark Demel), are a part of one of the half tracks on Saturday with Michael Novelli, and helped brainstorm some ideas with their team for the morning sessions. Let us know if you are at the conference and would like to connect.
It’s hard to believe, but MERGE is only a little over 4 months away! We keep getting more and more excited about the event, and are excited for the groups that have been signing up.
As we’ve been talking to a lot of youth workers who are considering coming, many of them have expressed a need for a little more time to get their groups ready to register, but don’t want to miss the price break at the Early Bird deadline.
Because of this, we’ve decided to extend the deadline until March 25. That gives you almost one month to make your plans, register, and still enjoy the best price possible.
Also, don’t forget about the two other ways you can save money:
1. For every 15 people in your group that you register, you’ll receive one registration absolutely free!
2. If you’re already coming to MERGE, you can earn a $100 credit towards registration costs for every church you refer to MERGE that ends up attending.
All of the registration details can be found here. See you in July!
