The Dale House Project seeks a Discipleship Coordinator to facilitate the spiritual and personal growth of the participants in our one-year Discipleship Program located in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Each year, the Dale House Project welcomes up to eight young adults (ages 22 - mid-30s) from across the country for an intense experience of relational ministry among at-risk youth, intentional community, and spiritual growth. This group of four males and four females is your primary focus for the year. You will walk alongside these participants as they experience the joys and heartbreaks of ministry and community and discover Jesus’ healing presence in their midst of a very stretching year.
Program participants come with high hopes of making a difference in the lives of young people. The youth we serve have had hard experiences - lives in the foster care system, juvenile corrections, homelessness, and more. As our participants share everyday life with these youth, building stronger relationships with them. We know that “hurt people hurt people,” and our staff are tested by youth in many ways: often cussed out, lied to, manipulated, and challenged. The work itself is often not immediately rewarding: youth disengage from our programs for a number of reasons (including feeling uncomfortable that they are genuinely being cared for). Our staff can often lose hope and feel discouraged that what they are trying to do seems to have little benefit. However, with the right guidance, they discover their own brokenness along with the resurrecting power of Jesus in their own lives.
“Gen Z” can be described as a generation that is “information rich and meaning poor.” We have seen program participants struggle to find the meaning in their sacrifices in this program. You, as the program coordinator, are asked to guide the process by which our staff see Jesus’ presence in their work and life. This takes place both with one-on-work work with each participant and also as well as facilitating group experiences among a learning cohort.
Requirements
About the Dale House Project:
The Dale House Project was founded in 1971 with a dual focus of (1) supporting at-risk youth as they overcome obstacles and move towards independence in adulthood and (2) supporting young Christian leaders. The Dale House Project sits in the middle of a number of systems: evangelical Christianity, secular social services, child welfare, and juvenile justice. More information about our mission can be found at www.dalehouseproject.org
What You’ll Be Doing
As Discipleship Coordinator, you will facilitate each participant’s individual spiritual growth and also form a cohort that supports one another as they go through the one-year program.
As part of the program, each participant will create a Rule of Life, which is an intentional plan to practice spiritual disciplines as a way of staying attuned to the presence of God throughout very challenging work. You will ask them to share their rule of life with each other, create ways for the community to gently hold each other accountable to what they hope to accomplish to stay focused on Jesus throughout their time.
The discipleship program schedule has two days of every week devoted to the formation of our discipleship staff. You will be the lead organizer of the schedules for these days to accomplish our program goals. You will facilitate discussions on how their work is shaping their sense of identity and vocation. You’ll plan Bible studies. You’ll bring in outside speakers to help our staff maintain perspective on their journeys. You may organize times for group processing, sharing, and feedback as well as individual space for reflection and personal growth.
Discipleship program participants spend the rest of their work time investing relationally with youth in one of the programs we offer youth. Participants will rotate responsibilities between several programs, including:
Discipleship staff are also are matched with one youth that they’ll work closely with throughout their entire year, gaining deeper insight on how that youth understands the world and their place in it.
Your job will have no direct program responsibilities for any youth programs. You will not be the discipleship program participants’ “boss.” But, you will need to work collaboratively with the youth program coordinators and teams, because you’ll both have critically important information to share with them about their work performance and growth. A discipleship participant may be experiencing struggles in their work with youth that you may explore non-judgmentally with curiosity and spiritual depth. Or, you may have insights about some struggles they are bringing to you, and you can share some tips for program coordinators to get their best work out of them. You must enjoy working collaboratively with a team of people to make this possible.
Since program participants live in intentional community, you’ll be asked to weigh in on how they also spend their time off. As you work with participants in their Rule of Life, you will ask them if their time away has been truly restorative or whether they spent their time in numbing / distancing behaviors (like binging social media or videos). Additionally, roommate conflicts will inevitably arise, and you’ll see these conflicts as opportunities to grow - often serving as a facilitator or mediator to equip them to advocate for what they need.
The ideal candidate will possess certain traits essential for success in this role:
Compensation:
Salary Range: $45,000 to $50,000 depending on experience and will include a full benefit package.
Working at the Dale House means you are officially an employee of Young Life, our parent organization. Young Life includes benefits like full medical, vision and dental insurance (with no employee premiums), and 401k matching. All applicants must agree with Young Life’s Statement of Faith. A full summary of benefits is available at https://jobs.younglife.org/benefits/
How to apply:
**Please submit your resume and cover letter as PDF attachments to discipleshipcoordinator@dalehouse.org. For the email subject heading line type: Discipleship Coordinator, Your First Name, Your Last Name.