Explorations and Adaptations in Ministry
This fall, YouthHOPE has been exploring ways to partner, equip, and multiply youth workers here in Fort Myers. While the majority of our focus has been overseas, 2020 has allowed us to temporarily shift our vision to local leaders in our area until the team can travel again.
At the beginning of October, the YouthHOPE team welcomed 11 participants from 6 different ministries to an exclusive preview event on our New International campus. This event debuted two modules from our newly revised Youth Ministry Leadership Training (YMLT) curriculum to local youth workers in the area.
Rebekah Saum, Regional Liason to Africa and the Americas, headed up this event to partner with local leaders invested in youth as well as equipping them with useful tools to utilize while working with young people. The new curriculum is entirely based on a dialogue education approach to learning that strengthens the learning and community at our training.
“It was super cool to see several different ministries excited together with such hope for the great things God can do through young people when they love Jesus,” noted Scott Ribble, the YouthHOPE Director of Operations.
This preview event was to introduce local leaders to our YMLT program and invite them to a limited capacity three-day training program that will be hosted the first weekend in November.
We are encouraged by the doors that this preview event has opened during this event for smaller events within local areas that will lay the foundation for global partnerships in the months and years to come.
This event operated within the local regulations regarding safety during the current pandemic. As participants arrived, temperatures were taken, the meeting space was thoroughly sanitized before and after the event with access to hand sanitizer and handwashing areas. Participants who felt ill were encouraged to stay home.
“Our desire is for the local church in the US to believe this training is valuable for their ministries and then “pay it forward” by funding a training event globally in places that are unreached and under-resourced.”