Hopes & Dreams-A Place At The Table

By Todd Bowman


In 2006, I was the featured speaker at City Impact’s annual Hopes & Dreams fundraising banquet. I spent over twenty minutes casting vision for the creation of a strengths-based after school program called the Impact Learning Center which we were hoping to unveil in early 2007. During my speech, I communicated a dream I had that City Impact students would be so engaged in their communities through the avenue of their strengths that they would one day both join me and even replace me at the podium. I didn’t want to just talk about the students in our programs; I wanted our students to speak for themselves.

This dream became a reality on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007, when five City Impact students were the featured speakers for this year’s Hopes & Dreams banquet titled “A Place at The Table.” Over 400 people packed into the Cornhusker Hotel banquet hall to attend this wonderful event and they responded with a standing ovation at the conclusion of the student led presentation.

These students spoke about their experience this summer in City Impact’s Teen Job Club program developing a beautification painting project at Hartley Elementary School. The names of these students are—

Alejandro – 7th Grade
Takeela – 9th Grade
KaDijah – 8th Grade
Addison – 7th Grade
VaDoll – 8th Grade

As City Impact moves into the future, we remain committed to developing youth leadership in all of our activities in order to truly fulfill our calling of providing a place a table.

Program Changes

By Todd Bowman-Program Director


In February of 2006 the Impact Learning Center opened its doors for the first time. Overall the quality of the work, activities, and programs which happened there each day after school was outstanding. To give you a visual framework, the Impact Learning Center focused primarily on three areas:Literacy, Leadership, & Fun.

There was, however, a fundamental problem with this program, which was transportation. Despite being creative with van routes, we were only able to pick-up and transport about thirty students to the ILC. This meant the majority of students involved in other City Impact programs would never have the opportunity to participate in this wonderful program.

The major way in which we decided to solve this dilemma was to move the Strengths-Based Leadership component from the ILC to our Tuesday night Bible Club program which currently involves between 100 – 150 students. Not only will all City Impact students now have the opportunity to learn how to use their God-given strengths to make a positive and powerful impact in their communities, but this Leadership piece also fits well within the Bible Club framework. While the Biblical teaching at Bible Club allows youth to grow in their knowledge of God, the Leadership component, with its emphasis on service, provides a framework within which youth can live out their faith.

In contrast, the Impact Learning Center is now exclusively a reading program designed to produce rapid reading gains. Between thirty and forty students from four different schools will enroll in the ILC for nine week sessions. Students will receive eighty minutes of reading instruction each day with the goal being that all first, second, and third grade students will receive one-on-one tutoring every day. To meet this one-on-one tutoring goal, we will need approximately one hundred volunteers to contribute forty minutes of time each week.

In the coming weeks and months, this blog will detail stories that happen in both Bible Club and the Impact Learning Center.

This is an exciting time at City Impact. God is moving powerfully in our organization and the curriculum and materials we’ve developed over the past year are just the tip of the iceberg. Thank you for your faithful reading of this blog and your investment in youth in Lincoln’s urban communities. I pray that each of you will not only continue to stay connected through stories, but will also consider joining us as a volunteer or a financial supporter.

Update- Part I

by Todd Bowman-Program Director

Exactly three weeks ago today, while speaking at a banquet, I shared a story about two young men who had removed from City Impact’s summer Teen Job Club program as a result of poor behavior. However, I had a plan, and I encouraged those attending the banquet to check our blog in three weeks to see if my plan worked.

Unfortunately, my plan has not worked – at least not yet. But the seeds have been planted, the soil has been tilled, and I believe it is simply a matter of time before both of them not only return to City Impact, but return successfully.

While I’m not yet ready to share my idea for these two youth with the world, I will say that it involves creating a culture of caring in our youth programs. It involves young people showing kindness and sacrificial love to one another. For a glimpse into what this could look like, I encourage everyone to read the July 7^th blog post entitled Sacrificial Love Among Teens by Erica Schmidt. It is a powerful and moving story about kids caring for kids.

Three weeks from today, I will be back with another update on the status of these two young men. I hope my news at that time is more positive.

What is an Impacter?

by Todd Bowman
Program Director

If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:16-17)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. (I Corinthians 13:1)

At the Impact Learning Center, both youth and adults wear nametags which say “I am an impacter”. But what does this really mean?

Recently, I’ve been struggling with how best to help youth make the transition between the idea of being an impacter and practically turning the idea into a daily reality in their lives. At the Impact Learning Center, we talk with youth a great deal about making an impact and even ask them to write journal entries and set goals around this idea. But when pen meets paper, everything starts to get a little fuzzy. The question is how, specifically, can one make an impact?

I may have found an answer to this question on May 8^th & 9^th at the Hours Of Opportunity Conference in Kearney, Nebraska. About two hundred adults involved in after school programming were in attendance. During one of his sessions, the main speaker, Michael Brandwein, offered a question which he suggested if adults and youth answered every day would make the world a much better place. The question is “What is one thing I did today, that I didn’t have to do, which helped or showed sacrificial love to others?” After copying this question, in the margin of my notes I wrote “THAT is an IMPACTER!”

Impacters are others focused. They desire to serve. They love sacrificially. They make a positive mark on the world around them.

The most recent development at the ILC is for youth to write journal entries and set goals around this very question. This question will be prominently located on the forms they use to craft their journals and shape their goals.

Questions are powerful. When confronted with a question, our mind immediately begins searching for an answer. And what a great question for urban youth to be asking and answering on a daily basis.

At this point, I know some of you are feeling a tad uncomfortable. You might be asking - Where is God? Where is Scripture? You might be saying – This sounds legalistic. You can’t serve under your own power apart from Christ.

No worries. We have thought a great deal about how to ground our work in the truth of God’s Word and I will address this issue in my next post.

In Their World

by Todd Bowman
Program Director

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.

The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Laws and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22: 36-40)

This week, I reflect on the fourth portion of the Impact Learning Center’s vision statement – in their world.

Young people using their God-given strengths to make a positive and powerful difference IN THEIR WORLD.

I committed my heart to Christ in high school during a work camp in Spring Canyon, Colorado. It was a difficult week of painting, building, and fixing things. I had never been known as a hard worker, so the week was a stretch for me. I shouldn’t admit this, but I nearly passed out one afternoon in the heat after a particularly strenuous session of clearing brush to prep a camp site. My lunch that day consisted of two Snickers bars because I wasn’t digging the salad and vegetables being served. Following lunch, I was a bundle energy, for about two hours. The remainder of the day found me light headed and dizzy under the shade of a tree.

While the work wasn’t very fun, it was meaningful. I thought about the kids who would be visiting the camp during the summer. I imagined their smiles as they fished on the dock I helped paint. I imagined the ghost stories that would be told late into the evening as they sat around the campfire I helped dig. I imagined the awe in their minds and hearts as they slept under the stars in the camping area I helped clear.

Each evening during that week, our youth group would gather together for a time of praise, worship, prayer, reflection, sharing, and Scripture reading. During that week, God was real. Jesus, through his Word, was alive. The Holy Spirit was transforming my soul.

There are many different ways to help young people grow in their faith and in their knowledge of God. Entertaining Bible lessons, mentoring relationships, and developmentally appropriate praise and worship are all traditionally effective standbys. But one of the most powerful methods is also probably one of the least utilized – service. Service gives legs to our faith.

Each week at Bible Club, City Impact youth learn about Jesus in His word. And each day at the Impact Learning Center, City Impact youth are challenged to live out their faith by making a positive impact in the world around them.

While exhorting youth to impact their world seems rather broad, it really comes down to following Christ’s second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. Young people have many neighbors. At home, a young person can help out mom by looking after a younger brother or sister. At school, youth can speak kindly to a classmate who is routinely rejected. In the neighborhood, a young person can organize other youth to clean up a blighted alley.

For urban youth in particular, the message of transforming one’s community is a powerful one. Many of them view their community through the lens of despair and lack of opportunity. The reality that God has powerfully gifted them, and that those gifts can be used to transform the people and places they love allows youth to experience a sense of purpose in the midst of hopelessness.

I’m not certain exactly how Impact Learning Center youth will be transforming their communities in the coming months and years, but I do know God is at work and it will be exciting to watch. These are fun times at City Impact.

To Make A Positive And Powerful Difference

by Todd Bowman
Program Director

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. (Philippians 3:10)

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12)

This week, I reflect on the third portion of the Impact Learning Center’s vision statement:

Young people using their God-given strengths TO MAKE A POSITIVE AND POWERFUL DIFFERENCE in their world.

When I committed my life to Christ as a sophomore in high school, the verses above were instrumental to my growth as a follower of Christ. My high school mentor, John Matzke, told me it didn’t matter that I was young in my faith. He told me I was created for a purpose, which was to know Christ and to be transformed into His likeness. He challenged me to be an example, a role model, and a light for Christ in the places God had put me. I took that exhortation seriously and it was important to me to know that God thought highly of me as a young person.

Young people tend to get a bad rap, oftentimes deservedly so. They can be reckless, self-centered and materialistic. Urban youth, in particular, can be apathetic, angry and violent.

But I wonder if young people often struggle with finding their way simply because the bar is set so low for them. As adults, we often don’t trust youth, so we withhold power and the opportunity for them to have a legitimate voice. In turn, youth become alienated and frustrated. They act out. Many urban youth turn to the streets.

The streets are a powerful lure for urban young people. The streets are open 24 hours a day, accept everyone as they are, provide love and security, and give young people a feeling that they are in control, that they have power.

At the Impact Learning Center, our desire is to offer youth an alternative to the streets. Not a wimpy alternative, but a powerful one – Young people using their God-given strengths TO MAKE A POSITIVE AND POWERFUL DIFFERENCE in their world.

Traditional thinking says young people won’t respond to this vision. Young people are too self-consumed to respond to such a calling. It is too big and demands too much sacrifice. The reality, however, is that many young people are just waiting for adults to expect big things from them, to believe in them, and to trust them. They are waiting for someone to challenge them to build God’s kingdom, to be an IMPACTER, and to transform their world.

Using Their God-Given Strengths

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

This week, I reflect on the second portion of the Impact Learning Center’s vision statement – using their God-given strengths.

Young people USING THEIR GOD-GIVEN STRENGTHS to make a positive and powerful difference in their world.

Max Lucado, in his book Cure For The Common Life, wonders if historically the church has misinterpreted the verse at the top of this post. As adults, many of us believe if we put kids on the right path, they will never leave it. If we fill them full of Scripture and Bible lessons and sermons, they may rebel, but they will eventually return.

Under this model, young people are empty vessels. From birth through adolescence, it is the responsibility of adults to fill youth with all the right stuff so when they reach adulthood, they are ready to fulfill their destiny in the world.

While adult-driven teaching and training of young people is certainly a piece of the puzzle, I’m not certain it is the entire puzzle. I also like this verse:

I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born.

(Isaiah 44:2)

Do young people have strengths? A better question is, do young people have spiritual gifts? Answer carefully, because if the answer is yes, it may revolutionize the field of youth ministry.

Getting back to Max Lucado, here is his interpretation of Proverbs 22:6, again taken from his book Cure For The Common Life:

The phrase “train up” descends from a root word that means to develop a thirst. Hebrew midwives awakened the thirst of a newborn by dipping a finger in the bowl of crushed dates and placing it in the baby’s mouth. To “train up,” then, means to awaken thirst.

Parents awaken thirst “in the way [the child] should go.” The small word “in” means “in keeping with” or “in cooperation with,” suggesting that babies come with preprogrammed hard drives. The American Standard Bible margins this verse with the phrase “according to his way.”

“Way” refers to a unique capacity or characteristic, whether of an eagle, a serpent, a ship, or a person. If you raise your child “in the way he should go,” you attune yourself to your child’s inherent characteristics and inborn distinctives.

God prewired your infant. He scripted your toddler’s strengths. He set your teen on a trajectory. God gave you an eighteen-year research project. Ask yourself, your spouse, and your friends: what sets this child apart? Childhood tendencies forecast adult abilities. Read them. Discern them. Affirm them. Cheerlead them. (P. 121-123)

At the Impact Learning Center, we believe that God has uniquely gifted every young person. We use this language repeatedly during our many interactions with them each day. The repetition is necessary because for many of them, the language of giftedness is a foreign language.

Many urban youth hear daily what they don’t know or can’t do. They don’t read well. They have bad attitudes. They lack social skills. They engage in destructive behaviors.

At the Impact Learning Center, they have strengths. They are gifted. God gifted them. God gifted them for a purpose. See you next week.

Young People

by Todd Bowman
ILC Director

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12)

This week, I reflect on the first portion of the Impact Learning Center’s vision statement – young people.

YOUNG PEOPLE using their God-given strengths to make a positive and powerful difference in their world.

In many, if not most youth programs, adults drive the decision making. Adults decide what topics to study. Adults decide what games to play. Adults research the difficulties associated with being an adolescent and adults develop programs based on what they believe youth need.

However, an interesting tenant of positive youth development, also known as strengths-based youth development, is that it does not demand waiting for youth to become old enough and mature enough to trust them with important decisions. It is an approach which does not demand waiting for a young person to grow into leadership.

Instead it is an approach which trusts young people and gives them a powerful voice in shaping their future. It is a philosophy which recognizes that all young people have the capacity to lead, regardless of whether they are in preschool, elementary school, middle school, or high school. It is a set of principles which recognizes that all youth, regardless of the difficult issues or circumstances in their lives, have the capacity to use the assets they currently have to make a positive difference in their community.

I am reminded of a quote by John Perkins, the co-founder and chairman of the Christian Community Development Association and a man who has faithfully ministered to the poor for the past forty years, who said the following at the 2006 CCDA Conference:

Everybody has beauty to unveil. Everybody. Because we bear the image of God.

My favorite definition of this strengths-based approach to youth work is taken from the book More Than Just a Place to Go by Yvonne Pearson:

Positive youth development views youth as resources to be engaged rather as problems to be fixed. P. viii

If one truly believes the statement above, it can’t help but transform your approach to working with youth. In the field of urban youth ministry, where young people are often labeled, categorized, and described with such words as poverty, violence, drugs, and many other negative associations, this approach is even radical.

Is the Impact Learning Center perfect in this endeavor of engaging all young people as leaders rather than trying to fix them? No. But mentally, our organization has made the shift. We are asking different questions. We are considering new possibilities. We are open to a new path.

What will the Impact Learning Center and City Impact look like a year from now? While I can’t answer that question with any certainty, I do know that young people will assist in leading the way.

Youth Impacters

by Todd Bowman
ILC Director

Youth Vision

Youth Empowerment

Youth Engagement

Youth Mobilization

Youth Leadership

Youth Change Agents

Youth Community Builders

Youth Impacters

All of these statements are different ways of communicating the vision of the Impact Learning Center:

Young people using their God-given strengths to make a positive and powerful difference in their world.

When I first arrived at City Impact in December of 2005, I never would have imagined that the statement above would capture the vision for the Impact Learning Center. Having spent twenty years in the field of youth work and twelve years in education, with the past six years being in an urban school setting, the paradigm through which I viewed urban was filled with images of need.

At-Risk

Achievement Gap

Illiteracy

Failure

Poverty

Violence

Drugs

Hopelessness

I reasonably assumed that reaching urban young people involved solving or addressing the myriad of problems these youth faced on a daily basis.

However, an alternative approach to youth development theorizes that the most effective way to positively affect the life of a child is through their strengths. This field of study is known as positive youth development.

While my posts will likely hit on a variety of topics over time, the topic of urban youth as community builders will be a common theme. I invite everyone to join me each week as I explore this powerful new paradigm and its impact on City Impact programs.

Sweet Spot

From the Desk of Education Director Todd Bowman...

Sweet Spot. In his book Cure For The Common Life, this is term Max Lucado uses to describe the zone, the region, or the life precinct within which God created each person to dwell. God designed all us for a purpose and He gave each of us a unique set of talents, abilities, and strengths with which we are to carry out that purpose.
As a result of a generous grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and in conjunction with the Gallup Organization who is a partner in this endeavor, City Impact is in the process of developing an innovative, strengths-based education program. While this program will contain many of the elements of traditional education, at its heart lays an emphasis on building on the God-given strengths of the young people involved in our ministry.
Many people will go through their entire lives without ever finding their sweet spot. They will spend their lives in jobs they don’t enjoy. They will spend their lives pursuing that which never fulfills such as wealth, power, or status. They will spend their lives unaware of their unique talents and abilities. They will spend their lives oblivious to the unique purpose to which God had prepared them.
It is my desire as the Education Director to build a program in which every young person at City Impact involved in this program is given the opportunity to:

Use their uniqueness
to make a big deal out of God
every day of their life.
- Max Lucado

As City Impact moves forward in the process of building this strengths-based program, we ask for your continued support in prayer. Pray for everyone who will eventually be involved in the program including the youth, families, teachers, community leaders, volunteers, program coordinators, and others. Pray that God would generously grant wisdom to those involved in the creation and building of this program. Finally, pray for continued positive transformation in the lives of the youth, families, and neighborhoods in which we are ministering.
I am excited to be here at City Impact . God has laid a strong foundation in this organization with its mentoring Bible clubs, summer camps, Gifts of Love store, and many other programs. The Impact Learning Center will help strengthen that foundation and I feel blessed to be here as its Director.