Open YM – It’s Gaining Momentum

Open, a movement celebrating new ideas in youth ministry, is growing up and taking shape. Technically, it is growing up by not taking shape. 

Last year we alpha tested two locations, Seattle & Boston. This coming year? We’re beta testing  at least three additional new confirmed locations: Paris, Bay Area, and Grand Rapids… and a couple more to hopefully be added soon. 

Why the testing/technology language? Because I am refining Open YM as an open source product that we plan to release. I want you to come to an Open event, get a vision for how it’d work in your city, apply to be an organizer, have the resources available to build a team, host it, and continue to make the idea of Open better as well as continuing to refine the convening strategy.

Ultimately, we’re trying to build a new, simpler way for people to host a youth ministry training event that doesn’t suck.

Growing By Not Taking a Shape

Built into the DNA of Open is a lot of flexibility. I think of it like a sculptor would think of a slab of clay. It’s been pre-determined that we’ll make the final product out of clay, that it’ll take a shape, and that we’ll fire it and glaze it.

But I’m not coming to the table on any Open event with a prescriptive event plan or formula. I’m not forcing speakers or a meeting style. In fact, I’m saying… “This is what has worked, this is what hasn’t work, this is what we’re after, this is what we’re not after, but how we get there isn’t that important to me.”

Instead, I’m helping foster Open as a movement by protecting some guiding principles.

• It’ll be cheap… $25 or so per person. We’ll offset those costs with sponsorships or scholarships.
• It’ll be accessible to youth workers of all varieties… I’ll fight to keep it diverse and theologically wide.
• It’ll be flat… no one is getting famous, no one is getting paid.
• It’ll be local… Open is most awesome when it meets the needs of local youth workers by providing locals with opportunities. Heck, we even want to spend as much of the money generated from the event in the host city.
• It’ll be a win for everyone… Open only works if everyone feels good about what happens. So we design it to be good for the participants, good for the speakers, good for the organizers, good for the host, and good for a local youth ministry charity.
• It’ll be open to new ideas and people… the vast majority of people who submit proposals to speak, I’ve never heard of. I see that as a good thing. You see, there’s a mantra in the ministry event world that those who ask to speak are probably asking for the wrong reasons and are therefore the wrong people. The result is, for lack of a better term, a “class of speakers” who will be asked by the same organizers as last year, and those who typically get asked carry a posture that they expect to be asked and catered to. Meanwhile, those who are looking to share their idea are kind of mocked behind the scenes because they didn’t “let it be known they are willing” and instead blacklisted themselves by asking. Open is pretty much the opposite of that.

But beyond that I don’t come into the planning phases with a lot of concrete absolutes for what the event will look like.

Growing By Celebrating the Upside Down

To continue that last bullet point. One reason that Open is taking off is because it is, at its core, a celebration of the unfamous, unplatformed, actual youth workers who are ministering to teenagers every day. Celebrating that– people sharing their best idea, people sharing their innovations, and the new ideas that it spurs– creates an energy I can’t quite describe. It’s just plain fun to be part of!

Trust me, I didn’t invent this. Don’t give me too much credit as this is how the a lot of events in the technology world convene. I’m just bringing it to youth ministry because youth ministry is in desperate need for new ideas, new voices, and a new mechanism for finding both.

I’m not deriding the need for subject matter experts, professional trainers, gurus, and the occasional youth ministry celebrity. Absolutely not. Go to a national conference or one of the other many great regional training conferences.

Just understand that those are largely closed systems, whereas Open is, by its definition, an open system.

I’m saying is that Open is fundamentally different (and growing) because it is encouraging, training, and raising up new voices in youth ministry in an unashamedly upside down way.

We’re going to celebrate what’s happening at the ground level, we’re going to give voice to the person who is “in it” so much they don’t have time or even care to make the relational connections necessary to present at big conferences or write books. We’re going to believe that when you share your best idea in a room that it’ll spark 10 new ideas. And we’re going to fight to keep the financial model so simple that we just post the budget online and let people see exactly where every penny goes.

ALL Aboard!

It’s an open table. So you’re invited. If you can get to one of the 5 cities we’re confirmed to be coming to in 2013-2014… this is a great time to jump on board. We’re looking for organizing team members, sponsors, speaker submissions, and obviously… participants!