Contact Us

Use the form on the right to contact us.

 

805 Columbia Ridge Dr
Vancouver, WA, 98664
United States

Tales of Adventure Blog

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

 

Holy Cow! Talk about Innovation and Initiative!

Matthew Overton

Yesterday, I learned about one of the coolest initiatives I have ever heard of through Princeton Theological Seminary's youth division.  Basically, Princeton’s Institute for Youth Ministry has started a new initiative called the Youth Philanthropy Academy and they have partnered with an organization called “Giving Point”. The link is below. Giving Point tries to mobilize the gifts, talents, and passion of teens to change their world (Kingdom Work!).  Theoretically, we could develop a philanthropic idea of one of the students and then our other students could help develop it.  The program requires that adult mentoring be involved.  Here is how it works:

1.        Teens from your church submit applications to Princeton.

2.       A student is chosen based on their passion for the idea and their individual drive to achieve it.

3.       That student then goes to Princeton in July and receives intensive coaching for 1 week about how to communicate the vision of their idea and develop a 1 year plan to execute on it.

4.       They go back to their church and are required to assemble some adults to help them execute that plan.  (I love the inter generational aspect of this! Boom!)

5.       They are given $500 of seed money to execute the idea if the church matches with $500.

6.       If they make sufficient progress they are invited back to Princeton in 1 year for a dinner gathering with business folks from around the country who listen to their pitches and offer funding for the organizations.

*The Student must be a Freshman or a Sophomore

My church is considering whether we might participate in this process. We scrapped our usual Sunday morning program a little over a year ago and started working on what we call, "The Project". Essentially it is an attempt to missionally engage our community.  My suspicion is that some of you have teenagers with unbelievable ideas out there. Places where they have sensed a gospel gap that needs to be filled long before our adults have.  Mine those teens and get them to apply!!!

A.       Giving Point- https://www.mygivingpoint.org/

B.      Joshua’s Closet, which is an example of a Giving Point Project- http://joshuasclosetinternational.org/

C.      Princeton’s Institute for Youth Ministry’s new project called the Youth Philanthropy Academy: http://iym.ptsem.edu/youth-philanthropy-academy/

Comment
tags Institute for Youth Ministry, Princeton Theological Seminary, Youth Ministry That Works, Youth Ministry Innovators, Youth Ministry Innovations, Family Based Youth Ministry, social entrepreneurship, missional entrepreneurship, Missional Youth, Mowtown Teen Lawn Care