Are you looking for practical steps on how you can start or continue mentoring students and equip them to become the leaders you know they can be?
If you are a church or faith leader who mentors high school students and young adults, watch this replay of an engaging conversation and live Q&A on youth leadership with Dr. Patrick B. Reyes, senior director of learning design at the Forum for Theological Exploration.
Patrick shared stories, insights and practical advice to help you identify ways to nurture and support your youth to become leaders for the church. He also addressed how you can empower both students of color and students in general, leaning into his own experiences and lessons learned from the Forum for Theological Exploration and Youth Theology Network.
Want more advice from Patrick?
In his new book The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive, Patrick reflects on a family member’s death after a long struggle with incarceration and homelessness. As he asks himself why his cousin's life had turned out so differently from his own, he realizes that it was a matter of conditions.
While they both grew up in the same marginalized Chicano community in central California, Patrick found himself surrounded by a host of family, friends, and supporters. They created a different narrative for him than the one the rest of the world had succeeded in imposing on his cousin. In short, they created the conditions in which Patrick could not only survive but thrive.