What's the NEXT Youth Workers Conference at Crown College?
NEXT Youth Workers Conference at Crown College, on Saturday, February 9, 2013, will be an inspiring one-day gathering for volunteer and professional youth workers. Through workshops and opportunities for connection, NEXT will provide an innovative forum for ideas, resources, networking, and encouragement for biblically-based next-generation ministry.

Who Will Be There? We expect that between 225-300 attendees to include approximately over 100 youth workers who are involved either in full-time ministry or who invest in youth ministry teams throughout regional churches or ministries. We also anticipate that over 100 ministry students, as well as several faculty and staff from Crown College will be participating.

Who is Speaking? We are very excited to have several regionally and nationally trusted youth workers joining us. This year's line-up includes:

• Jim Barringer
• Jason Barthelemy
• Kathy Castor
• Eric Iverson
• Dr. Bill Kuhn
• Tiger McLuen
• Cher Moua
• Ginny Olson
• Dr. Pang Rhodes
• Mark Warder
• Edrin Williams

What Topics will be Covered? We plan to have workshops covering topics such as adolescent crisis training, urban and multi-cultural ministry, leadership training, special-needs ministry, discipleship groups, partnering with other youth ministries, Hmong ministry, family mentoring, and more. Every attendee should find several take-aways and beneficial training opportunities.

What's Different? Increased opportunity for connection! We're adjusting some of our schedule to provide more interaction with speakers and also more workshop options based upon evaluations from last year. We're also planning to offer a post-conference option to interact further around dinner and discussion with some of our speakers and with Crown's youth ministry partners.

Why the Name Change from Spark to NEXT? Several reasons... A Spark is an ignition... now we want to explore what The Next actions will be. While "Spark" was a great way to describe our desire to ignite a refreshing movement for generational ministry last year, we want to be sure to keep moving forward with strong opportunities for networking and training in the future.  Changing the name of this gathering to "NEXT" accomplishes several things:

1. "Spark" (and many other words and versions of this idea) is already used as a label for several ministries, curriculums, conferences, and even online dating sites.
2. Building on past successes and current initiatives, we felt like we needed a new label that described the unique forward-thinking developments that should enable Crown to become one of "the next" great training centers for "next" great youth workers in North America and around the globe.
3. NEXT communicates our biblical desire for "one generation to proclaim to 'next'" the greatness of God and the Good News of Jesus.
4. NEXT is also a little bit of a cheesy way to play on words (e.g. Hey, dude, what's the next youth workers conference I should go to?) and have a little fun at our own expense.

"Are You Trying to be Innovative by Calling this Event NEXT Youth Workers Conference?" Well, that's a trick question. As another local youth pastor shared with me, "Nothing in youth ministry is new under the sun." This is so true! In fact, everything we're doing at Crown is emphasizing the biblical concepts of generational transference. We are basing what we do at The Next Youth Workers Conference according to God's patterns for generational ministry. That includes the "what's" and the "why's" and the "who's" as much as it involves understanding best practices for the "how's". So while innovation is not our goal, we also expect innovation to be a natural, fruitful product of commitment to our creative God in ministry.

In terms of reaching and equipping the next generation for faith and leadership, we have a lot to learn from each other... and that is what NEXT Youth Workers Conference is all about.