Chutes and Ladders

Yesterday morning I hosted a day retreat for my ministers where we focused on embracing the vision here at Church of the Nativity, in Upward Ministries (the youth ministry) and for their own personal ministry. It was so good to have some time to love on the other ministers, to give them some food, some training and some encouragement. I wish I could do more and give them more in regards to training but my energy has been spent on other things at this moment. But, the format we chose, the way we did this retreat was easier to pull off then any other training I had done before.
I had two students come in to lead worship, and help with tech and the passing out of materials. Played a video message from Perry Noble (Pastor of NewSpring Church in South Carolina) at the 2009 Catalyst West Conference and then I facilitated two table group activities. The first activity was called Mission Man, where we had the ministers draw a picture and write the characteristics of a 17 year old follower of Christ.
The next activity was called Chutes and Ladders where each table had to recreate the board game with three chutes and three ladders. The point was to create a path that we want teenagers to travel so that they could become these 17 year old followers of Christ. The chutes symbolized pitfalls and obstacles that would stand in the way of this teenagers path and the ladders symbolized assimilation and accelerators to help the teen.
Right now I’m processing their data, and so far it’s been interesting to see how each group perceived the activity. It was also interesting to see what they listed as an obstacle, and what they listed as an acceleration. In the end we’ll use this information to examine where the team is focused and how we can enable them to set-up some of these accelerators and create warning signs from falling down the chutes.