Mission Critical -- Education

Just prior to the official start of the event, eight in-depth Critical Learning Labs were offered to full-time convention participants at no additional charge. Each featured a gifted communicator with years of relevant experience and widely recognized expertise related to his topic.

Let your curiosity get the best of you and participate in the same Imaginuity technology journey taught at Salvation Army, Apple/Macintosh, and Universal Studios, and throughout Disney during McNair's years as senior concept designer for theme parks at Walt Disney Imagineering. In this jam-packed, participatory event, discover keys to brainstorming that works, attacking creative roadblocks, transforming your workplace to expand your creative process, engaging all five senses for inspiration and creativity, fulfilling big ideas on tiny budgets, and finding your passion, talent, power, and purpose.


	McNair Wilson, who spent 10 years as a Disney Imagineer (theme park designer), assists individuals and organizations from IBM to the Salvation Army with creative thinking. He’s written and illustrated books, as well as penned, performed in, and directed plays and musicals. (Visit: Tea with McNair. )

What does it take to assure there is a solid business plan alongside of a solid ministry plan? How do you avoid entering the zone of insolvency? This Critical Learning Lab assesses environmental and local market issues that have an impact on your camp or conference operation. It also explores the tools of pricing, budgeting, capitalizing, forecasting, cash flow, and break-even analysis. The objective of this lab is to assure that your ministry will not be held hostage by finances.


	Ron Mattocks, a former CCCA board member, is president of Mattocks & Associates, Inc., providing management consultation for societies, associations, health organizations, schools, and faith-based organizations. He has extensive marketing experience and has served as vice president for three organizations.

God commands us to take time to rest and pray. But how can we recover a sense of holy leisure in the midst of a culture that demands multitasking? And how are our hearts, families, and communities affected when there are no down days? Explore what happens when our lives have little room for prayer and silence, why God commands us to rest, and how we can recover a sense of the Sabbath in a world that rewards speed. This session also covers trust in God and meditations on the life of Jesus.


	Mark Yaconelli is the co-founder and director of the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project housed at San Francisco Theological Seminary. He has spent the past 16 years working with young people in congregational and camp and conference settings.

In his best-selling book, Hurt (Baker Academic, 2004), Chap Clark details the results of a multi-year study of a wide demographic of high school kids all across North America. In this Critical Learning Lab, Chap describes in detail the startling results of the team’s findings. In addition, he makes suggestions about how camps and conference center leaders can effectively counter the effects of what Chap calls “systemic abandonment,” and how they can engage today’s youth culture.


	Chap Clark, president of ParenTeen and HURT Seminars, is professor of youth, family, and culture at California’s Fuller Theological Seminary, author of 17 books, and senior editor of Youthworker Journal. He’s also president of Foothill Community Ministries, Inc., the parent organization for the ParenTeen and HURT Seminars.

We don’t realize it, but marketing is something we all do instinctively every day. This Critical Learning Lab debunks the often misunderstood concept and misdirected efforts of marketing and breaks it down into three simple principles. Each is illustrated with practical examples from local and international marketing campaigns. This interactive and practical lab unpacks in a step-by-step fashion the concept of marketing in order to provide the tools to develop a highly effective marketing plan designed to help increase camper and guest group registrations.


	Neil Gurney has handled some of the globe’s best-known brands, including Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. A former CEO of the Saatchi & Saatchi group in Africa with 500 staff members and annual billings of more than $150 million, he now heads up a division focusing on brand strategy and marketing for the Alpha Group.

Our world is being transformed by the near limitless choices that are provided to today’s consumers. And tomorrow’s consumer and philanthropic markets belong to those who can take advantage of this. How can you maximize your effectiveness in light of this fact? This Critical Learning Lab skips arcane theory and business-school jargon and provides clear, step-by-step advice, guidance, and the tools needed to develop and implement a sophisticated stakeholder program that is tailored to your camp or conference center’s needs and goals.


	Barry McLeish is the international vice president of the McConkey/Johnston Group, a fund-raising and marketing management consulting firm specializing in nonprofit organizations that has worked with numerous camps. He is also the author of Successful Marketing Strategies for Nonprofit Organizations.

Explore methods and action steps to increase the effectiveness and satisfaction of working groups. Learn about using activities and exercises to help reveal individual roles, strengths, and weaknesses, and how groups may behave in real-world contexts. The format, which will model the content, is interactive, designed to be flexible enough to address specific needs while providing solid group content. Discuss dynamics of growth, sequenced learning, the spheres of growth, and Practical Comfort Zone Theory, and methods such as initiative activities, guided reflection, solo experiences, creative sequences, and questioning for discovery.


	John Losey, the founder and director of Praxis Training Systems, has facilitated experiential learning programs for numerous organizations for more than 20 years. He holds a master's degree in social science from Azusa Pacific University and is the author of Experiential Youth Ministry Handbook: How Intentional Activity Can Make the Spiritual Stuff Stick (Youth Specialties, 2004) and Experiential Youth Ministry Handbook: Using Intentional Activity to Grow the Whole Person (Zondervan, 2007), due out this September.

What makes movies, music, and television so attractive to young people? While many have pointed out what’s wrong with pop culture, this Critical Learning Lab focuses on positive, faith-affirming elements in today’s films, videos, and songs. This session explores how pop culture can become a powerful connection point with our campers. How do we as Christian camp and conference leaders join the cultural conversation already occurring on the big screen? How do we prepare for ministry (and even counter-program) within a digitized, postmodern context?

Craig Detweiler, a screenwriter, author, and cultural commentator, first dedicated his life to Christ at Young Life’s Windy Gap camp in North Carolina and later served there as program director. He co-directs Reel Spirituality at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.



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