Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. This is Ron Devries again. And joining me today on our Generation Spark podcast, which is called Spark Dialogue, I've got Anika Bangma with me. Anika, how are you?
[00:00:14] Speaker B: I am well. How are you, Ron?
[00:00:16] Speaker A: It's been a while since we've been together on a podcast episode, and I'm just really, really glad that you're back from maternity leave.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: That's right, you little one.
But happy to be back, having these conversations. They're so important. And thanks for having me today.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, you're welcome. And today we're going to have Amanda Rosenboom with us as well from there for GO Ministries. Hello, Amanda.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Hello.
Thanks for having me.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: It's our pleasure. We're so glad you're here. Just for the listeners to know this, these are a couple of my favorite people in ministry that I get to do work with in my work within the Christian Reformed Church and part of their frugal ministries, and of course, Generation Spark.
These are two great friends of mine and wonderful colleagues. And I'm just honored that both of you are going to be joining me on the call today.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: This is a fun one.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: This is a fun one.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: This is a fun group of people.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: It really is excited to be, to be here and spend the afternoon together.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: And we're going to get to know a little bit more about Amanda shortly. But before we jump into the topic of the day, I wanted to ask each of us to share a little bit about. I'd love for you to share a summer favorite pastime that you have now. It could be something that perhaps this has been a tradition that you do. And whatever that may look like, it could be a favorite drink. Maybe it's one of those cold drinks from Starbucks. Little shout out from Starbucks right now.
But what is your favorite summer pastime that you just love that you just. This is my thing. This is what I do in the summer. So anybody can start?
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll start. So again, I have a new little bambino this summer. So it has been a very different summer in a lot of ways because you can't do all the things while holding a little one. And so the, the thing that I've kind of missed, but I did get to do it once, but only once.
Stand up paddleboard. Oh, love my paddleboard. I've got an inflatable one. I can throw it in a backpack, go anywhere, go do anything with it. It's all a lot of fun.
Didn't get to do it as much this summer. Missed it a little bit. But that's that's a favorite for me for sure.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: So when did you start doing this? Because, I mean, I've watched people paddle board and these inflatable ones, they're easy to transport around, but I've tried it once. It is a bit of work.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: It is.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: So when did you start doing this? And I think that's an amazing thing to do. Yeah.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: The first time I ever did it was actually down in Florida probably about 10 years ago. My sister was in grad school down there and she and her husband ended up getting some paddle boards because they were by a lot of water all the time. And I went out for the graduation, visited them and ended up paddle boarding, fell in love with it and realized I needed to figure out how to do it up in New England.
And it was a lot easier to do inflatable because the water's a little farther away. Not, not super far, but enough that I need to drive to it. So the whole backpack with a paddle board and go was the way. Way to go.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Do they inflate automatically or do you have to buy a pump for this or what's going on?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: It comes with a pump. It's a little bit of work. It's the pre arm workout before you start actually paddle boarding before you start.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: The core workout of the standup paddle board. Okay.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Oh, that sounds amazing.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Great.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Amanda, what do you got?
[00:03:43] Speaker C: Yeah, well, where I am, I'm in west Michigan. And wherever you are in west Michigan, you're only 30, 40 minutes from Lake Michigan, which feels like the ocean in a lot of ways. And so we have beautiful beaches here. And that is my.
When I'm not on a served mission trip, which is where I spent most of my summer, if I can sneak away, I like to find a beach somewhere.
And this summer we found a dog friendly beach. And so we brought our dog for the first time to the beach and discovered that she loves the beach so much so that when we visit, she refuses to leave.
So you see those like TikTok and YouTube videos of people carrying a limp dog or like dragging a dog away from their favorite place. That was us this summer.
So we have to physically pick her up and carry her off and out of the beach. But I kind of feel the same way. I'm like, if I could throw a temper tantrum, I would too.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Yeah. So I'm a beach girl.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: What type of beach girl are you? Are you like a sit in the sand with a good book beach girl or in the waves? Where you at?
[00:05:02] Speaker C: No, I'm on the beach with a book usually, and my go to beach snack are Reese's Pieces.
Oh, Amanda melts.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's a book and a bag of Reese's Pieces and also no music because I'm there to hear the waves and the nature around me. So.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: This.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: I didn't know we were all water people because I'm going to lean into that too. Annika, you were going to say something.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Well, I was just going to say the one downside of the paddle board. Not so good for the snackage. No. Reese's Pieces on the. Yeah, it doesn't work so good, but yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Do you take your daughter on the paddle board with you?
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Not. Not the newest little daughter.
My seven year old, yes. Loves being on the paddle board with me. Yeah.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Very cool. Yeah. So I'm a water guy as well, so I think you guys both know that a little bit. But I do believe God had a bit of a sense of humor. We had originally lived in southwestern Ontario. We were surrounded by the Great Lakes in Canada, which loved. And we spend a lot of time out there. Moved to Alberta, which doesn't have the same kind of water bodies. But I'm a sailor and so for me, a pastime would be. I just love getting into my sailboat and just being out on creation and just such a incredible way of just getting away from things and just kind of using your skills and being out there in the water. For me, that's just. Just wonderful. I don't do it as often as I used to.
The summers seem to be busy with different things like serve. We'll get into that in a moment, but it's. It's a joy for me. Yeah, we. We all seem to love the water and I love swimming. I love getting in the water and just having fun there. I'm not a book reader on the beach. I want to get in there. I want to get into the waves and have a great time out there.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Very cool. Oh, this is so good.
Hey, we always do a shout out to a ministry that's dear to our hearts. And if you've listened to our podcast, you've heard a variety of different organizations and ministries that we've done shout outs to. For today's episode, we've asked Amanda to share a little bit about a ministry that she knows about that she's been connected to.
Amanda, would you like to share a little bit about this ministry that you shared with us earlier?
[00:07:28] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So it's a ministry called Mission Works and they are located in the Seattle, Washington area. And they are a multifaceted organization.
So they have a variety of tools and resources. They have Mission Connection, which are regional conferences. They do a lot of seminars and webinars, and I've been a part of those that are very helpful.
They have a mission guide, so if you're looking for a mission trip, they have a whole directory of mission trips that churches and people can go on. They also have some new tools. Mission Linked is a fundraising tool, Mission Armor. They have connected with some insurance groups and they can help you find insurance for mission trips. And then finally, Mission Excellence, which a lot of people would remember as standards of excellence. And they have seven standards that you should look for in any sort of mission program or mission project. And we are committed to those seven standards at their forego Ministries and the work in the missions work that we do. But yeah, they're just an exceptional organization that has something for everyone. Whatever you're looking for, they can either provide it for you or connect you to somebody who can get that for you.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Thanks, Amanda. That sounds like an incredible organization that can bless a lot of churches or individuals who are looking at doing submissions or at least even doing some research around that, which is going to be part of our conversation in a few minutes. So thank you for planting some seeds for us to digest as we start thinking about that.
Friends, if you're listening for the first time or you've been listening to us many, many times since we've started this podcast, just a reminder of why we do this. And so our main focus is always to try to conn life ministry, the theorizer and the practitioner into intergenerational conversations.
And so one of the things we think about often is what does that look like? How do we do this? And so a lot of our conversations are with experts in the field or people who have dabbled into different spaces in life around intergenerational practice or theory. And so today, as you've been hearing, we have the privilege to spend a little bit of time with Amanda Rosebone.
As I shared, she's a friend of both Annika and I go way back and we share a heart for mission in the mission field, which God, I believe, calls us to every day. But in some cases, we are very intentional in taking specific weeks or months or times in our life to dedicate to going into the mission field that God calls us into.
And so today, our topic, we're going to be looking at something that's dear to all three of our hearts. Something called intergenerational mission trips. And so I want to, first of all, thank you again, Amanda, for joining us and help us to get to know you a little bit.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Who is Amanda Roseboom, and why should we know her?
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Oh, man.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Yeah, Great question, right?
[00:10:35] Speaker C: Yeah, great question.
So my name is Amanda Roseboom. I'm the serve director at Therefore Go Ministries. My background is in youth ministry, so I've been with Therefore go, which is a parachurch missions organization.
I've been here for about 10 years, and before that I was in the local church setting. I was a youth pastor and an administrative pastor for a bit of time. And so it's just something that I've always loved and gravitated towards was youth, particularly teenagers. And my work with Therefore Go and with SERVE is domestic mission trips, which I also feel that there's a great importance on, particularly with young people. We hear a lot about the mission trip to Africa or to Mexico, but mission starts with your neighbor. And if you can't or aren't or were not willing to serve your neighbor, then I don't know that serving around the world is where you should start. I think it starts at home.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for that.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: This is a. I am deeply passionate about this kind of missions work and ministry because you don't have to go far to find someone in need or even another culture or another language. The world has come to us here in the United States and in Canada as well, and we can. There's a lot of service opportunities and multicultural opportunities in our own backyards. So I love highlighting that and bringing that to the focus.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: So before we go too deep into that, because we are going to take a deep dive in there.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: You have an opportunity to tell the listeners about the ministry called there for GO Ministries. And the reason I bring that up is because we went through a rebrand a number of years ago, and we. We have a long history connected to the church. And so give us a little bit of background. What is there for GO Ministries and why should this matter to the church?
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So therefore go ministries, our organization began in 1919.
So we have been around for about 106 years now.
We have not always had this name. We've operated under a variety of names.
Before Therefore Go, we were Youth Unlimited. A lot of folks knew us as that. Before that, we were Young Calvinists Society Federation, Federation. And before that it was like Young Men's Society of Reformed, long acronyms. But everything we do is with the local church, and it usually involves teenagers. So we are a nonprofit ecumenical Christian ministry organization. So ecumenical, we work with all denominations and we love our ecumenical identity of working with a variety of churches from a variety of denominations. But everything we do is we challenge youth and emerging adults to commit their lives to Jesus Christ and transform this world for Him.
So everything we do is in partnership with the local church. And throughout our 106 year history, we've always been tied to the local church, whether that's hosting youth conventions or providing curriculum or resources for churches. We've done magazines, we've done soul care retreats for youth workers.
We have even done guided trips through Israel for pastors and youth pastors. But currently, the main way that we foster transformation in our world and connect with and come alongside local churches is through our SERVE program.
And SERVE is an eight day domestic mission trip for teens in the US and Canada. So what that does is that introduces students to spreading the gospel through mission, through missions, missional living. But we're also confronting issues of biblical justice. And then all of our trips are hosted by a local church and are led by volunteers from that local community and congregation. And so when we do come in to a community, we are there with locals and with churches who do this work the other 51 weeks of the year.
We don't want to swoop in and cause a lot of chaos and then leave. We want to make sure that the ministry that we're doing is rooted in long term partnerships and in long term relationships. And that's where the missions work begins, is with the relationships. We hope to get some actual physical work done along the way too, and be a helpful presence. But to do it outside of a relationship is, I think, where short term missions has gotten into trouble in the past.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I love about the Therefore Go ministries.
The fact that we, we build on those relationships that the local church already has in place.
And I'm going to jump in here, I'm going to say I was one of those local churches at one point who was hosting one of the SERVE trips for Therefore Go.
And prior to our local church hosting, there had been a lot of questions about the roles of the churches in our town. And after our first year hosting, I don't know if you remember this, Amanda, we had a headline in our local newspaper that said something about restoring the hope as to what teenagers can do with a big old picture of our church on the front of the page.
That was just a huge transformational story for our community. And how SERVE really helped us do that in a really Meaningful way, the local church, but with a little extra gusto behind it due to the serve trips.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: And that's the fascinating thing about this incredible work. Right. When we think about SERVE as a ministry that supports and encourages and helps churches host and send young people.
Right. It isn't just an impact on the young people. Right. There's a move into something that there's a shift in the DNA of a congregation and this is something we've noticed for many, many years. And Anika just highlighted that a little bit. And it's not just the congregation either, it's the community.
Right. And that is beautiful. And I think that's what God calls us to when we think about this, when we think about this work that's in front of us.
But again, Therefore Go helps churches do that and do that well. And some of the things that whenever I talk to churches or ministry leaders or people about Therefore Go, one of the things that has always stood out to me and I've been part of the team for while and, and when I wasn't part of the team, we always saw it as a well oiled machine that supports the local church and does its work really, really well to help the church do this, this incredible work. And so I'm just going to pause and say thank you team for doing that really well because I just need you guys to be reminded of that.
Yeah. And it dovetails beautifully with what we at Generation Spark do. Annika, you just want to share that.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So at Generation Spark, whenever we are interacting with a church, whenever we are coming alongside a church, it is our prayer, our goal. Though at the end they will be able to say that we've done three things.
One, that we've helped them form meaningful relationships, meaningful relationships between the leadership of the church, but also these younger mentee age students, young adults and older mentors having meaningful relationships, that those relationships are developing across intergenerational spaces. Young and old together.
Two, we pray that this is going to promote intimacy with Jesus as we learn together, as we open our lives together, as we share our stories, whether that's mundane stories or our faith stories, that those things bring us into a deeper relationship with Jesus in a deeper awareness of where he's at work, where he's been at work, and the legacy of some of the individuals in our congregation, but also where he's at work currently. And then the third thing is that it would help awaken missional purpose, that all of the people within our church, young, old, would be able to see where God is Calling them right here and right now, what is his purpose for us? Maybe that's a young person discovering a vocation.
Maybe it's an older person recognizing that after their career has ended, their call has not ended, that God is still doing something with their life.
Maybe it's helping someone figure out where they belong in their community, where they need to be. Jesus's hands and feet. So we're constantly hoping that those three things, forming meaningful relationships, promoting intimacy with Jesus, and awakening missional purpose, are a part of what people experience when they go through Generation Spark and when they bring Generation Spark to their own churches.
But, man, those things are things that I have all experienced when I've been on serve.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: I was just saying our missions are very compatible. I would say. Yeah, we use that too. Yeah.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: So tell us a little bit more about your mission and how those things are compatible.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You know, through my work at Therefore Go Ministries, my work is pretty much focused on our serve trips. There's a lot of other things that we do that we come alongside the church to help with church assessment tools or mentoring tools. But through serve, I get a really unique perspective of intergenerational missions in a way that's done maybe a little differently than what we're accustomed to.
So intergenerational missions is integrated into every part of our serve trip. I mean, first you have adult leaders who are going with students, and they're doing this trip together.
And then at each work site, you have a variety of ages and people coming together. They may be serving at a nursing home with elderly folks. They may be serving at a pregnancy resource center or a daycare, working with young children, or hosting a vacation Bible school or a sports camp in the neighborhood. And then the hosting themselves are an intergenerational group of young and old coming together for a shared purpose and a shared mission. And we hope that at the end of the day, what people experience on serve is the transformation that can make when you serve together as a community.
And you do it together with a shared purpose and a shared vision. And that coming together and focusing on God and focusing on others is what we're called to do in the most basic presentation of the Gospel and of the way Christ calls us to live in relationship with him and in relationship with others. And serve gives us just a really unique opportunity to live that out and experience that and have a taste of that for eight days in a really intense and exciting way.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
Thanks for that.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Do you find that you describe intergenerational mission work and you've described that really well what that looks like.
I wonder if you could think of mentoring in that context.
What does that look like for you when you think about serve?
Because in my experience I've seen that at the front end, but also during the weekend and post trip. But it can happen in a variety of places. Tell us a little bit more about that connection.
[00:22:51] Speaker C: Yeah. So I think in the way that we usually think of mentoring, which for me is a one on one conversation between someone older and someone younger that happens organically throughout the entire week of surf. It's not an intentional, hey, let's meet for coffee on Tuesday after school instead. You have adults spending a lot of quality time with students.
And in most of our SERVE sites, in most cases we remove the distraction of cell phones.
Those are usually collected at the beginning of the week. And we've taken people out of their usual routines and out of their comfort zones.
And so there is a lot of relational capital that's formed, established and fostered very, very quickly when you are spending 24,7 with this group of people.
And we hope that those relationships that are started or strengthened to during the week of Serve follow the participants home. Because we've had this shared experience because we've had really interesting conversations. They may be funny conversations and now we have some inside jokes with each other or we have found shared passions and shared hobbies or vocational aspirations that that carries them home. And now the conversations are, aren't this weird, awkward.
Hi.
But there's more to talk about. It's not just hey, what's your name? But now we can talk about all the things that were started and formed at Serve and we have created a really great comfort level with one another because we have spent the week of SERVE eating together and working together and worshiping together and playing nine square together and and playing endless games of Uno together. And we have just really shared life together and we hope that that creates a relationship transformation that how can it not follow you home?
So when you see each other on Sunday morning, you're eager to connect and to how was your week and what were you up to? And you can follow up with hey, did you see the latest crafting YouTube or do you have the latest cross stitch pattern?
There's easy ways to just connect. Also you can connect on a discipleship level to Serve. You're doing morning devotions together every night you're in worship and there's a shared theme. Our spiritual life guides for serve have a 21 day plan for when you come home and there's postserv lessons. So that's a natural follow up that the adults and the students can do together.
They can do that 21 day follow up or like, hey, let's connect and do the post serve session and let's really process and conclude what we started last week. Let's do that next week so it gives an excuse to get together one or two more times. Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: You've given us a ton of practical pieces and structural components of the ministry, but I want to get down deeper. I want to get down to the ground floor here a little bit. And I know that all three of us have stories that we've experienced or seen, maybe even in our own lives. But let's go right there. Let's go and find out what story. Tell us a story that you've seen in SERVE around some intergenerational connections that just have for you. Just this is it. This is what God intended for us when we think about this. Right. Tell us, tell us a story of something that really stands out to you around that.
[00:26:45] Speaker C: Sure. Well, I know that both of you have amazing stories and I could talk about stories all day long, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the words of our SERVE participants directly from them.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:01] Speaker C: So at the end of the week, we have all of our participants complete a survey and part of it was like, how was the host team and how was the food and the work sites and things like that?
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Pretty general questions.
[00:27:12] Speaker C: General questions, right. How was style so that we can sort of maintain some quality control as a program? But what we also do is in those surveys we say, hey, share a story about the week. How did Jesus impact you? What is a takeaway that you're going to have from your week? And I love, love, love the comments that we get.
So my favorite comments come from students and I'm going to read just three quick one sentence stories.
The first one is the student replied, they signed on this on their survey was talking with the elderly at the work sites was really sweet. It made me realize how much I need to trust Jesus like they did. Oh my word.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Amanda.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: The next one is from another serve student who wrote, hearing Grace's story was so cool.
Older people are so wise and I don't take enough time to talk to them.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:15] Speaker C: Isn't that fun?
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Right?
[00:28:17] Speaker C: Oh my word.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: And you know, here's the thing. A lot of people say, well, old people and young people, they can't get along. They can't. This is amazing. This is.
[00:28:27] Speaker C: And we hear comments like this all the time of these relationships that are formed when older people and young people share their stories. Yeah, right. There's so much connection that happens. And we had another student say, it's just so meaningful, genuine and real. When I'm at serve, I feel like I'm living the life God intended for us.
And it is. God calls us to be in community with each other.
And so, like I said, I love the student comments. I also have adult leader comments.
One leader said, this was an excellent way for me to connect with the kids from my home church. I'm an administrative elder, not a youth leader.
And so this administrative elder went on serve and got to meet all of the young people from his congregation who he otherwise would not have spent the time with and spent the time with. And he could have gotten coffee with the student. He could have gotten coffee with one student and spent a couple of hours, but instead he went serve with 10 students and said spent 24, seven for seven days. And that adds up. I mean, how many times would you have to go out for coffee with the student to get that quantity of time and relationship building? Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it. It's tenfold.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: And we also have a lot of leaders like this administrative elder. They don't have youth experience, and so we have an adult leader. This is the last thing that I'll share, and then I want to hear your stories of Surf, because part of the joy of my job is to hear other people's stories and experiences on Surf. But this leader wrote in their survey, they said, I honestly wasn't sure in my heart if I was good enough to be a leader of a small group of teenagers.
I didn't know if I had anything to show them how to grow closer to Christ.
However, as the week started, we went through the days. I felt the Lord speaking to me, and I found myself telling them some of the rougher parts of my life. We were able to have some very deep discussions about things they had experienced as well. And I felt the Lord helping me say the things that they needed to hear. I felt so blessed to be here this week.
And we hear that often. We hear stories of leaders and adults who are like, I don't think I'm good enough. I don't have anything to share.
I don't have anything to say. And then they experience this week. And by the end of the week, their vulnerability has, by sharing their story, has opened up the vulnerability of the students. And now they're sharing stories with each Other, they're learning from each other. And by the end of the week, they have been such a blessing. And any of the fear or the doubt has completely melted away.
And they're stronger relationally. And I think they're stronger in Christ.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:26] Speaker C: Because of it.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
When I hear your stories from, from the leaders and, and the students, I'm reminded of the theme this past year, which was broken and beautiful, which just touched so many people in powerful ways.
And as you both know, I was a speaker for SERVE this year and have been for a number of other years. And.
And as we were debriefing some of the different sites around North America, I asked some of the speakers, what were your. What were your joy moments?
And a couple things really stood out to me.
Stories of redemption showed up as part of the things that they took away. And they were starting to see some really interesting moments of God working in the lives of not just the young people people, but in the church itself and the community.
Like you said, I have a ton of stories. I could think of one I'll just use right now.
Oftentimes as a speaker, you want to connect with the students and you want to be sharing the gospel, proclaiming the gospel, and making sure that there's a way that they're engaging with it or hoping they will and praying that they will. And the Holy Spirit does that powerful work.
And I remember coming out of a Friday night session and it was the end of the week, and I received a little card from a young person who I didn't know. And usually I try to get to know the names of everybody. Right. It's. It's one of those moments. And it was a beautiful written card found in the mailbox. And I didn't get it right away. Let me just say that the student came to me after the session, said, did you go to your mailbox yet? And I said, no, I haven't yet, sorry. And then reminded me five minutes later, you got to go to your mailbox.
Right. So I went to the mailbox and got this beautiful card written by this student, which really just highlighted. Thank you so much for being a presence here this week and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with us. I just so appreciate you doing that for us and being present with us. And of course, that's just beautiful. And you're hoping that they take something home. And that for me was just a wonderful card that I have on my shelf here and reminds me that this is, this is why we're called to the work that we're doing right, because God places here to. To connect with these young people and have a relationship with them.
And what a joy, what a privilege. And I don't take that lightly. And it's something that I think about when we think about intergenerational missions and serve. Yeah, I can't speak highly enough of, Of. Of what this means for not just the next generation, but the generation that, that we're seeing, you know, living into this faith, this journey, and the privilege we have of walking with them. So that was just a story for me that just keeps sticking with me.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I also have lots of stories, but I think the story I will tell right now is about how we became a local host team. I mentioned when I was in youth ministry, I did that the first step was I had brought my youth group at the time on a serve, and we were on serve, and it was a great week. Really appreciated that week. And as we were driving home late in the night in the van, everybody's exhausted and having conversations. Half people are asleep. And a few of the girls who were sitting closest to me said, hey, why aren't we doing this at our church?
Why aren't we hosting?
And I said, well, it's a lot of work to host. You know, there's a lot of pieces to that, like, and we would need a lot of manpower.
And these girls look at me and said, well, we could do that.
We could be that manpower.
And they started throwing out all these ideas as to how it could work, work in our local context.
And by the end of the van ride, I had looked at them fully in the eye and committed that I would explore it with our council and with our senior leadership. I said, like, if you guys are in, I'm in with you. Let's see where it goes. And lickety split, we were hosting, right? And so these girls went from going on serve to then joining what we called our Barnabas team. Our local teens joined a team to help support the servants. They served the servants on the Barnabas team.
And so they. They were. They were all in. They helped with all the little nitty gritty details. They served the servants all week long. By the end of that serve, at least one couple of the girls were getting to be the point where they were kind of aging out. And they said, well, we can come back as host team members. And they did.
Right. And now one of those girls is a missionary in Europe right now. She's taken the call of missions even further.
But just seeing this progression from like a student who has Gone on an experience to someone who wants to help create that experience for others, to discovering their gifts and using them on the host team, to using them to really launch their whole trajectory going forward.
And I didn't put names behind those because there's actually more people that I could say have come up through, like our leadership team, that Barnabas team, who did very similar things.
Because when you're doing these experiences together and you're being intentional about walking with one another, all of a sudden it just organically happens.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Folks, we've been talking about God, we've been talking about Jesus.
But if there's a text that for you kind of illustrates or highlights this thing called intergenerational mission, what's a text that jumps out to you that you'd like to share with our listeners?
[00:37:29] Speaker C: So I can start this one? Yeah, for me, it's not necessarily inner.
You can read into the text intergenerational. But for us, who we are and what we do and what serve is, is very much Acts 2. So starting at verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. And all the believers, I guess that's the intergenerational part. Right. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
That's pretty much serve. You live and you eat and you work and you share and you worship and you give to those who are in need.
And when we take those scriptures off the page and apply them to our ordinarily everyday lives, when we live according to these scriptures, a sacred text that's alive and active, it's transformational.
And when we give people the opportunity to live according to the power of the Spirit, they're going to be changed.
And that's what we hope for. At the end of the day, that's really what we hope for at CERF is that transformational power of scripture and Christian community that creates long term faith discipleship for old and young.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Beautiful, Amanda, thank you for reminding us of that text.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: And that perfectly ties into that Deuteronomy 6 text that we're talking about so often. Right?
The hero, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul. Your strength.
Impress these on your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, when you break bread. Right. When you are just doing life together like you get to do over the course of a week long service project.
That is when these commands are impressed, when they don't just glance off of us, but become part of who we are.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: We talk about that often leaning into the van, ride to wherever we're going. Right. And often there's this big van that we're driving from. So someplace to someplace to do this work. And it's in the conversations in the everyday. And as you said, the two, the two texts complement each other beautifully into that.
And thank you for sharing that, Amanda. I'm going to give you some space here. What resources can you share with our listeners that have been been beneficial to you in your work and maybe for the work of the churches as they think about this?
[00:40:23] Speaker C: Sure, sure. There's three resources that I'd love to share real quick. The first one is a weekly email that I receive.
It's called the Culture Translator. It's a weekly email from the amazing folks at axcess and that's a X I S. These emails are so, so good. So what they do is they, they translate pop culture. And in a ministry that works with teens, it's very much a cross cultural ministry. And so the songs, the music, the lingo, the trends, just anything with pop culture they do. Every Friday you get an email and it usually highlights a song. It highlights a slang word or phrase. It gives you a couple of stories, news stories that are in pop culture right now.
And it is everything that I need to help translate what our teens are saying today.
It makes me feel hip and cool in a point of my life where I'm not feeling hip or cool anymore.
A prime example.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Hip, hop and cool to us.
[00:41:30] Speaker C: I was going to say a prime example. Using that I use the word hip and cool, which tells you how old I am. So I love the culture Translator. It's something that every parent and every youth pastor should subscribe to.
Access does a lot of great tools for parents as well. They're just a great help to come alongside in this ministry. The next one is there's a book that I like. It's called the New Understanding and equipping the 21st century Volunteer. It's by Jonathan McKee and Thomas McKee. The book is getting kind of old.
It was published in 2012, but, but everything I do is with volunteers and so any opportunity that I have to dig into the mind of a volunteer or to discover ways to better lead and equip volunteers, I'm all in. It's so helpful. And I haven't found something more current that provided the same tools and resources that this book did.
And finally, the last one is, I'm gonna go personal on this one and give a shout out to all my fellow women in ministry. There is a book called Women in God's Mission by Mary.
Her last name is Lender Linder. Neater.
It's. It's L E D E R L I E I T N E R. I'm sure I'm not saying it correctly, but the book is called Women in God's Mission. And as a female who works in missions and who works in ministry, this book was such a great source of comfort and support and affirmation of my call as a ministry leader and as a female. So the subtitle to this book is called Accepting the Invitation to Serve and to Lead.
And the author did. And they did a ton of research, and at one point. So she states, just to give you a synopsis of what this book is about, one point she states, it was interesting to watch a model of leadership emerge from such ethnically diverse women who were serving in so many different types of ministry.
Although they all identify as servant leaders, their leadership style was more nuanced.
And so what she does is she analyzes these leadership styles of women, and she has concluded that there are two themes that are best captured by successful women in leadership. And the two themes are faithful and connected.
And I think when I think of intergenerational ministry, I think that that's two qualities that any mentor can strive to embody in their life.
Being faithful in our own spiritual growth and discipleship, and being connected to those around us in our churches, in our communities. And so while I picked up this book as a woman in ministry and in leadership, I think there are themes of the book that can be helpful for any reader. But yeah, that was just a really. That was a really great book that I picked up recently that I love to share with other women in leadership.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Wonderful. Thank you. Annika, did you have anything you wanted to add? Any resource that came to mind? If not, that's fine.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: Well, honestly, I'm just adding those books to my, like, Amazon cart right now.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Yeah, no kidding.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: I haven't read either of those. I look forward to them.
[00:45:01] Speaker C: Great. Yeah.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: I'll just add one that has been. Amanda and I went through this a number of years ago, this book, and I've highlighted it with John a number of times, my other co host on this podcast. But Dietrich Bonhoeffer's incredible writing, timeless Writing Life together just again, just so beautifully illustrates the need for a community and again, highlighting the two texts that you two so beautifully intertwined together for us.
And this book is just another option of reminding us of the importance of this incredible work that God has in front of us. Friends, we're going to wrap up any last final comments that you would like to share with our listeners before we say so long.
[00:45:43] Speaker C: Just thanks for having this conversation with me. It has been just a joy to be a part of and like this work. It is a joy and a privilege to do. And so thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about it and to highlight it. It's one of my favorite things to do.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: And you're good at it. You're so good at this work. Thank you for this.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Thanks for being here.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Yeah, so much. If it works, I'd love to bring you back for a follow up at some point.
[00:46:11] Speaker C: That'd be great.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Really cool.
And thank you all listeners for joining us and this has been a wonderful time of conversation. If you're looking for more information about their Virgo ministries, we'll post that in the Notes axis will also link there and some of these other book references that you've highlighted. Continue to do that good work that God has called you to listeners.
