Intercultural Leadership for Generational Impact

Session 5

ENGAGING THE NEXT GENERATION

Session length : 37 minutes 30 seconds

Engaging the Next Generation

In this intercultural leadership session, you will learn the importance of engaging with youths in ways that demonstrate empathy and listening. You’ll learn the importance of trusting young people with leadership roles — to see them not as problems but as solutions and as active members of the church family who are contributing and who will lead us into the future.

Learning Objectives

You will learn about how to develop children and recognize their vital role in the church and how God sees them and their role in the kingdom.
You will learn about intercultural leadership for generational change and recognize that generational change means that the next generation has to be fully engaged in influencing, shaping, and owning that change.

Key Takeaways

  • The value of the next generation: Children should not be marginalized by the church. They are inherently valuable to us, the world, and the future because they are going to lead us into that future.
  • Children are the church: Children need to be valued and know that they matter. We need to empower them to discover their gifts and to use those gifts. They are not just the future church – they are the church.
  • Generational faith: Our job as adults is to create a catalyst for passing faith from one generation to another – and to empower the entire community to pass faith on to the next generation.
  • Fostering developmental relationships: Intentionally recruit people to care for and be a community for that young person. To get adults more engaged with youths, conduct service projects or hold small-group sessions so that they can learn from each other.
  • Youths as agents of change: Really listen to what youths have to say. Allow them to fully engage in the process, as they’re naturally open to change because they’re in a developmental stage of life. Everything about their lives is changing.
  • The role of empathy: Those who are going to champion children are going to be the ones who recognize their pain and joy, feel it, and share it with them. We need people in this world who feel what teenagers and children feel as they're going through those stages of development.
  • Generational Transference
  • The Holy Spirit
  • Empathy
  • Emotions
  • Deuteronomy 6:4-9
  • Matthew 19:14
  • Mark 10:14
  • Luke 18:16
  • Why are children often marginalized in society?
  • Why is being empathetic to youths important to generational change?
  • What is the role of youth ministry in North America?
  • “Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids,” by Dr. Kara E. Powell and Dr. Chap Clark

Speaker

James Grout grew up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His clear calling from God at age 18 was to teach the Bible to teenagers. After graduating with a Bible and Theology degree from Crown College in Minnesota, he spent 20 years as the youth pastor and teaching pastor at a church in Wheaton, Illinois. In 2007 he completed his master’s degree in ministry leadership at Moody Graduate School. In 2013 he accepted a call to the role of National Director for Alliance Youth of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, serving as a youth ministry consultant for about 2,000 U.S. churches. In 2016 he joined the National Engagement Team at OneChild, a global community of Child Champions that advocates for and provides holistic care to more than 40,000 children in 16 of the world’s poorest countries. James travels extensively each year and has spoken to thousands of teenagers domestically and around the world. He has also led over 40 short-term mission teams to 14 different countries. James and his two daughters live in Vancouver, Washington.

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