In a week we’ll be underway with Open Boston.
18 presenters are taking the risk with us. About 100 folks have signed up to come… we’re really hoping another 50-100 take the leap this week. (For Open Seattle we went from 60-130 in the week prior to the event.)
Together we see the value in flipping the typical youth ministry training event on its head, favoring local voices of innovation over national ones; unpublished experts over published ones; frontline learnings versus polished and tested presentations.
No one is getting paid. No one is making a career out of this. And all of the presenters will, at some point, make a transition from learner to teacher and back. (Meaning they’re coming as both learners and teachers.)
It’ll be rough around the edges and natural and beautiful. In so many ways Boston is perfect for Open and, we hope, Open is perfect for Boston. But that’s the nature of risk… we won’t know until it happens. It could be amazing and it could suck and there’s only one way to know.
Every time I’ve done something in the Northeast I’ve gotten polite pushback. “That may work in the Bible belt or Southern California but churches are different here. People might come to that but the training won’t be all that useful.”
So Open puts locals in charge of designing the event from top to bottom. When we looked at the 50+ proposals for presentations I was just one of six voices on the call. Over and over the team said yes to presentations that were localized and no to ones that were great presentations but might not work locally.
The end result is a very Northeast flavor, one which I’m really pumped to get to experience and learn from.
Open is Risky and that’s what I love. (And I think youth workers are ready for that risk, as well.) In the DNA of Open is the desire to say “why not” more than “that makes sense.” The interesting thing about that is that when it boils down to it, Open takes so much risk that it just makes sense! By saying yes to things that most events would say no to the thing takes on a life of its own… melting flavors of risk into a fondue of tasty awesomeness.
Are you coming? Why are you coming to Open? What’d made it worth your time?
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