Flying with Karen today to speak at the Youth Specialties Conference in Sacramento.  If any of you blog readers are out there, let me know - I'd like to meet you. And if you're around at 4 pm tomorrow, come check me out. If you're in Pittsburgh on 10/31 or Nashville on 11/21, we can meet there.

My speaking topic:  Your Students Can Change the World Now!

OK, maybe it's a little disingenuous -  usually it takes a while before a person can begin changing even a piece of the world, much less begin doing it immediately upon exiting my conference talk.  But I do believe that young people can do far more and do it far sooner than most people give them credit for.

My description of the talk:  The world's needs have never been greater. We see the headlines daily: AIDS! Sex-trafficking! Poverty!  Do we retreat to our suburban
fortresses, or do we raise up world-changers who risk as Jesus did?  We'll look at case studies of young people who have changed the world and the youth workers who helped them. We'll explore ideas for turning your teens into activists who bust out of comfort zones and make a difference.  The constant struggle in youth ministry is to activate real, God-breathed radical faith in students who are too comfortable.
They need to see themselves making a difference.  I want to make this practical, so we'll divide our time into three parts, pausing along the way to try and digest and apply what we've covered.

I don't much like conferences or speaking.  But I believe in this material and they're a good place to meet people - usually the connections end up producing fruit of some sort.  If you're the praying sort, please lift Karen and me up.