A Conversation about Ministry to/with the Next Generation of Leaders

A converstion about ministry To/With the next generation of Leaders
Christian Community Development Association 2005
Indianapolis, Indiana

Rudy Carrasco and Jeremy Del Rio.

The first ten minutes spoke about mentoring and the birth of leaders. Jeremy hit on the concept of Jesus' model of ministry. Jesus was a risk taker who invited Mathew the Tax collector - a political appeaser and also Simon the Zealot who was Jihadi. Jesus Christ was more of a risk-taker by investing in such people. Along with Matthew and Simon, he invested three years into the lives of other disciples who had no theological or regular education. They were disfunctional, were not at all the cream of the crop, and yet Jesus still invested 3 years in them - teaching them the various aspects and ways of minstry.

Later in Scripture, Paul says to Timothy "Let no one look down on you because you are young." Jeremy suggested that part of modeling leadership takes place by being a mentor. Letting them know the difference between right and wrong. Even Peter made mistakes like cutting the soldier's ear while Jesus was being arrested.

Jeremy explored why Jesus started his ministry from the age of 30. Untill that time Jesus was learning the culture and the languages of the people where he was living. He lived in the ghetto and saw all the wrong doings happening at that time. Jeremy also covered a very important point that Christ invested a the whole lot of his three years of ministry educating the diciples and transforming their live. This time helped ensure their ministries would later on impact the world.

In his talk, Jeremy was focused on youth as leaders right now.

The second topic was covered by Rudy on the Emergent Church and on how leadership actually emerges. He gives a slight intro about the whole emergent church concept. I a lot of liberal churches, the same conversation is going on. Where liberalism is not working, they are switching on to the emergent church method.

Rudy Carrasco was the assistant of John Perkins, who said, "There are two types of leaders, an appointed leader and a leader who leads."

He also talks about how a person/ youth worker is not only responsible to reach out to people in their culture only.

When you become a leader there are going to be times where people will hesitate to follow our veiws and ideas and not back us up, what do we do in such situation? We move on because we know that we can always win them over with our actions and, when they come back to us, we must not keep grudges or be vengeful. Rather, we need to set aside those issues and look to things ahead with the love of Christ.

He also talks about Andrew Sear (director of TechMission, and executive member of CCDA). We as leaders should step up even though if we are doing it for the first time - even if things are not working in our ministry.

In ministry, we must be culturally aware. He talks about one of his examples where he was working with Mexican kids, but after a couple of years he saw them saying go away. During that time, there were African American kids who were looking up to him as a mentor/elder. Rudy highlighted that you never know who is following you.

In order to understand and reach out, we need to belong to their world and need to know the four corners of it. One cannot afford to get freaked out by reading his/or her kids My Space website.

This Cd is a great help, whichis relevant to issues of today, as we sometimes wrestle with the topic of being an elder/mentor. Both Rudy and Jeremy have done their homework and presented the apt stuff in this about leaders and leadership. I find it as a great resource.