Flagler Forum on Youth and Family Ministry

Workshop Leader: Amanda Purvis

Every child who walks through your ministry doors brings a story. Some stories include loss, adversity, abuse, neglect, family disruption, or other experiences that shape how children think, behave, connect, and learn. In this interactive breakout, we'll explore the Five B's of Trauma, Brain, Body, Biology, Behavior, and Belief, and examine how trauma impacts each area of a child's development. Participants will gain practical, ministry-ready tools to recognize trauma responses, engage children with compassion, and create environments where healing, connection, and spiritual growth can flourish. Whether you serve preschoolers, elementary students, or teenagers, you'll leave equipped to better understand and support vulnerable children and families.

Workshop Leader: Anne Reid Broos

Bringing children, youth, and adults together can create meaningful opportunities for shared learning, service, and relationships. In this workshop, children, youth, and family ministry leaders will explore the value of ministry across ages and discover practical ways to help every generation feel known, valued, and included.

Workshop Leader: Dr. David Wang

In this workshop, Dr. Wang will explore the research literature on secondary and vicarious trauma, applying and contextualizing the conversation onto children's, youth, and family ministry contexts. A discussion on how clergy and spiritual leaders can navigate ministerial contexts and situations where they might feel bombarded with the many emotional and trauma-related needs of the communities they serve will conclude our time together.

Workshop Leader: Sean McGever

How do we offer genuine Christian hope to young people without minimizing their pain or rushing them toward healing? Drawing on the promise of resurrection, we'll consider how youth ministry can become a community of lament, belonging, and hope for young people whose lives have been shaped by trauma.

Workshop Leader: Marc Craddock

Workshop Leader: Carmelle Beaugelin

What would it look like to design welcoming spaces in your ministry that fully embrace young people and their families? In this workshop, we'll play a round of Accessibility Bingo and explore key hospitality ideas from Flagler CRC's latest youth ministry book, Cripping Youth Ministry, along with the free tools we've gathered to help your community explore what intentional hospitality and accessibility might look like in your context. Alongside a community of practitioners, you'll leave with a clearer sense of where your existing ministry context both excels and has room to grow on accessibility - plus practical ideas for building a more hospitable family ministry of your own.

Workshop Leader: Tiffany LaMotte

Youth, children, and family ministry is deeply relational work. As we walk alongside young people and families, we often encounter emotions, behaviors, and relational dynamics that can be difficult to understand. Why does a student’s reaction seem much bigger than the situation? Why might a parent direct frustration or anxiety toward a ministry leader? And why do certain relationships or situations trigger strong emotional responses in us? This workshop introduces practical mental health concepts including transference, countertransference, projection, attachment, emotional regulation, family systems, and differentiation and explores how they can show up in everyday ministry. Rather than training ministry leaders to become therapists, the goal is to help leaders better understand what may be happening beneath the surface, recognize their own emotional responses, maintain healthy boundaries, and respond to young people and families with greater awareness, compassion, and confidence.