Journaling?

[Stewart Cutler]

Over the past few years people have been blogging and tweeting and facebooking like mad. We have become great at generating content, but it seems as though as a profession Youth Ministry people aren't great at sharing our practice.

That could be because our training insists on a regime of reflection and by the time we get qualified we're done with it.

It could be that we are just too busy.

It could be that we have nothing to say and that no-one is doing anything worth talking about.

I don't believe any of those (well maybe the first one) are true.

So the question is, would a Journal, either printed or online, be of use? Would you write for it? Would you read it?

Thoughts please...

[Gordon McBirnie]

I think a journal would be good, the medium is the trick though. I tend to think that if it was printed it would be read more but it would be expensive to produce. Online is easier and cheaper but you have to make a point of going to the website and reading it. In the old days of the Youthwork magazine forum, all the discussions were done by email and subscribers were sent all that days emails. It meant you had a full in box all the time but I suspect more people read them that currently go to the discussion boards. I am not suggesting this method but it points to the problem of getting people to look at a website regularly. Going back to the printed journal, Gary Smith from the Baptist Union produced a magazine where youthworkers were invited to contribute ideas, reviews etc and he would post these submissions is loose leaf form and they were added to the folder. I am not sure if this is still going as I no longer work at a Baptist church.
I'm not really being helpful here I know. I like the idea of something but clever people are going to have to try to come up with a way of ensuring people access and use whatever is produced. I do like the idea though. I am sure we all come across problems we know others have faced and found solutions to and it would be great to have a way to acess them.

[Allan Clyne]

Hi Stewart,

I Think a Journal is an interesting Idea. I guess there would need to be some discussion around what were its aims. and what kind of content it was thinking those involved in Youth Ministry were looking for.

I think you raise an important point as regards reflection. I suspect that if we're done with reflection when we finish our studies we've missed the point. and unless we get a handle on its importance we are unlikly to be able to write anything significantly interesting enoght to put in a Journal.
If as practitioners we ignore the importance of reflection then in all likelyhood we will have nothing to say, as it is most of us will caught up in the whirlwind of delivery and activity.

I'd be intersted in hearing the general responses you've recieved to the idea of a jounal.

Allan