Registration is OPEN

Registration is now open for the Idaho Discipleship Conference.  Registration is limited to the first 1,000.  Click here to get started.

WORKSHOP: Mentoring Young Disciples

WORKSHOP: Mentoring Young Disciples

We all want our students to know God's love deeply.  Beyond that we want them to live out that love in the world.  What practical tools do we have as parents, grandparents, ministers and mentors to give to them?  Whether you are a parent, volunteer or professional this seminar will equip you with some practical, tangible and realistic ideas for mentoring.

Zach Davis has been in youth ministry for 18+ years.  He has a degree in Social Science from Washington State University and a Post Graduate Certification in Christian Education from Concordia University in St. Paul.  He's blessed with a wonderfully supportive wife and 3 teenagers at home.   In his spare time Zach can be found playing guitar at local open mic nights, watching movies, or working on one of his writing projects.

More Workshops

Building Community by Ear
Joel Westby
You have probably known people that play a musical instrument “by ear”. That is the ability of a musician to reproduce a piece of music one has heard, without having observed another musician play it or having seen written music. It is a matter of the ear. This workshop will give attention to how we listen to others in order to build community.

Pastor Joel Westby is currently serving as Interim Pastor at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran, Boise.  He has 25 years experience as settled pastor and six years as intentional interim pastor. He has been trained in Intentional Interim Ministry, Transformative Mediation, Nonviolent Communication and Healthy Congregations. He has served congregations from Family size to Program size.

House Churches of the 1st Century
Bob Parish
This one hour session will explore the first and second century world that the young Christian church grew up in.  We will look at the variations in the Gospels and Epistles that inform us of the numerous churches in the eastern Mediterranean.  We will also use texts from early historians and the comments of modern scholars. We will conclude with a discussion of how some early church practices might inform a modern home church among small groups of believers.

Bob Parish is a life long Lutheran who has long been interested in, among other things, the first and second century church. He became interested in this when he discovered that there was little unity in the thinking and practices of the early church.

Spiritual Direction
Meg Sass
An interactive, experiential presentation for those people with questions about the ancient yet ever new practice of spiritual direction.  What's the point of spiritual direction? Can someone tell me if I'm really praying?  Are some kinds of prayer better than others?  Does spiritual direction help keep you honest on your spiritual journey?  How do you find a spiritual director? How do I know if I'm ready for spiritual direction?  Could I ever be a spiritual director?

Sister Meg Sass, OSB, a Benedictine sister from the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho has listened to the prayers and spiritual journeys of people from many faith traditions for almost 50 years.  She has her Master's in Pastoral Studies from Loyola, University of Chicago.  Currently she offers retreats, classes and spiritual direction in Boise, Cottonwood, Moscow, McCall, Lewiston and beyond. Grounded in her  Benedictine spirituality Sr Meg is a Mission Centered Education certified spiritual director.  srmegsass@gmail.com

David Lose Workshops

In addition to a keynote and preaching at Sunday worship, David Lose will present three workshops.

Preaching 2.0
Preachers across the country confess that while they have only worked harder to deliver messages that are faith and relevant, they are unsure of the impact of their preaching. Building on our plenary discussion of cultural change, in this session we’ll explore the need for preachers to tend both gospel proclamation and faith formation. We’ll also consider a variety of ways by which to cultivate greater biblical imagination through more participatory forms of preaching.
 
Why Don’t My Children and Grandchildren Go to Church (And What Can I Do About It?)
It’s a common refrain: my kids/grandkids don’t go to church? But unless we understand why – and especially what’s different about the world our kids and grandkids are growing up in than the world in which we grew up – it’s hard to do anything about it. In this workshop, we’ll take our conversation about cultural change a step further and investigate the powerful and varied cultural stories our children are listening to and how we might invite them into a dynamic experience of the Christian story.

Cultivating Vibrant Congregations
What makes dynamic congregations tick? Is there a secret to moving to greater congregational vibrancy? What are the best practices of engaged and engaging congregations? For five years I led a study of 36 congregations of different Christian traditions across the U.S. and Canada that attempted to answer these questions by discovering some of the keys to cultivating more vibrant, healthy congregations. In this workshop I’ll give participants a taste of the process we used and share the key insights we learned.

Registration coming soon.