Later this week I’ll be getting together with a bunch of others involved in youth ministry to brainstorm potential chapters for a book on Youth Leadership Principles.
Are you (or in the past have you been) involved in youth ministry?
- What are some some principles of leadership in your youth ministry?
- What are the non-negotiable principles of youth leadership?
- What errors have you or others made in your approach to youth leadership?
- What would you like to read in a book on youth leadership principles?
- Anything else you think is relevant.
Thanks for your help!
Hey DM,
I screwed up plenty of stuff when I was leading our youth drop in centre.
2 big points I learned:
– If you are going to have a prayer session before an official starting time, either do it off-site or let the guys you are supposed to be ministering to come in and hang with you while you do it.
– It’s not “us” and “them”. We’re all sinners, just some of us have Jesus.
Doesn’t matter whether they have “a heart for young people” or not, as long as they:
1/ love people.
2/ are real, raw & genuine with following Jesus (no sugar coating)
3/ are more about “hallowed be your name” rather than ego
4/ willing to sacrifice, time, money &effort for youth ministry
great ideas so far guys. thanks.
here’s one:
“people before programs” – ie structures are for serving people rather than people for serving structures.
When appointing leaders, look for godliness before gifts.
hey Dave, i know im not a youth leader but i was a leader of my school group for some time and learnt some things there
will this book involve some direction given to school ministry as well? perhaps empowering teenagers to be leaders too?
some more ideas to throw in:
– love and commitment to serve Jesus
– focussed around sharing the gospel rather than playing lots of games
– despite us all being sinners leaders are called to set the example and to be blameless (not easy!!)
– understanding the audience and knowing the needs of your group
– balance between continuity and clearly presenting the gospel for any newcomer
– organisation and preparation (so that the kids see you care)
– some form of accountability to keep people coming/ encouraged in their faith while growing (maybe fervr group, facebook, roll with phone numbers…)
– to make it clear that focus on Jesus isnt only when we are meeting together but should be reflected in life all throughout the week
hope that helps, would love to hear how it goes
nathan – golden principle!! gotta make it in
ed – that’s all gold. thanks for sharing!!!
not sure on the exact direction… will have greater clarity after meeting… but exciting stuff!! will keep you posted.
thanks guys
something that’s been huge for me this year in youth leadership has been that sometimes, being a leader means saying hard things to people.
I tend to want to be everyones friend and stay happy and positive and lead that way, but often leadership calls for causing people a ‘godly sorrow that leads to repentance’ (2 Cor. something or other), which isn’t popular, or ego building, or fan-winning, but needs to happen.
Not sure how to state that as a principal.
good one matt. sometimes being a pastor means you won’t always be their friend! say hard things. good stuff.
keep these coming guys!!
Hi there
Reflecting back on my own rough teenage years my biggest need was love. I look at our youth today and see how they crave for the satisfaction of being loved. We all know that Jesus can fill that need, but He needs fully submitted men and women to work through to guide and reach these lives. Just because we see and understand this unless we FULLY rely on Him, it’s not going to happen.
1 Corinthians 13 has been especially helpful for me.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Here it tells me that I can have the very best of programmes, events and even bands but in the end unless we are loving through the capacity of Jesus it is all for nothing and just a big loud noise. It is my belief that we need to examine our reasons and motives behind what we’re doing and make sure they are driven by the Holy Spirit….and not us.
May God continue to bless you Dave.
i think availability is big issue that is getting harder.
In my experience, many youth leaders have responsibilities to uni, part time job, family and church. Some will have full on full time jobs (especially for the new teachers starting out).
In some smaller churches, they are also the ones doing music, kids club and flowers (or lawns), plus they attend a Bible study.
Plus they have friends, relationships and need to somehow catch up with their non-Christian friends. Then perhaps a hobby or sport.
Some youth leaders are just busy people who do lots and lots of things.
For some people, being a youth leader means saying no to some of these things or at least being very good at time management so that they are able to give themselves properly to the youth ministry. Also so they don’t burn out.
This can be hard for the rest of the church, because some of these people will be very very good music and the rest of the church may suffer if they don’t do music, or at least place pressure on them to do so.
It would be good if the book somehow addressed these issues and made the time commitment of leader clear.
– In the church, leadership gifts don’t mean you are free to neglect pastoral roles. Too many “leaders” hide behind that label as a way to avoid the tough work of pastoring and shepherding the flock.
There’s a lot here and I haven’t read it all, but the biggest difference to leading our youth group was how we did the introduction.
We used to just get there, say g’day and then get into the things we would end up doing. We changed and began by enuring that we greeted them, stated why we were here – to hear about Jesus, to be more like Jesus, and love each other like Jesus – and then prayed that that would happen, it instantaneously changed the whole dynamic.
Also, ensuring that your youth group has a defined vision, and that your other leaders and your students know what that vision is, and at the end of each night, month, year, decade, you can assess what you have been doing and see whether it has been contributing to the goal of your vision.
big amen to Phil van’t Spyker’s one – availability, I think it really needs to be all or nothing.
kurt – gold!!!
everyone – really value the contributions.
will try and interact with some later on.
keep proclaiming Jesus to teenagers!!
I may have adapted this from somewhere/one else (I can’t remember), but I think one of the most critical things to remember about youth grouping (and I’ve become more convinced of this recently) is you can’t attract and keep kids with ‘games’ and ‘fun’. The world, particularly the teen world, is very good at ‘games’ and ‘fun’, and can outplay you at both, unless you can give kids something the world can’t; that thing is the Jesus.
The other thing, as a youth leader, is to try and be mature and disciplined as a Christian at all times, but partiularly at youth group. The gospel is something that should be evident in our lives, not just our words, and kids, more than adults, seem to cotton onto hypocrisy and inconsistency more readily. We need to be modelling Christ in everything; the gospel seen to be dwelling in us (Colossians 3:16-17). I also think that speaks more powerfully to people than words alone, a lot of the time.
Again, that feeds into the idea that, as Christians, we should be believing that what kids most need (and what those god has called most want) is the gospel, and that should shape our programs from a top down perspective.
Actually, I’d also like to address/supplement Phil’s point…
I’m in EXACTLY the situation you describe, Paul. I’m one of four young leaders who oversee/run most ministries from high school to young adults. Our leadership has, until recently, undergone regular seismic shifts where almost the entire youth leadership (almost always composed of recent graduates of both high school and youth group) has turned over, which is itself compounded by our reliance on student ministers (from places like Moore College), who are only around for one to two years tops.
I also run musical worship for our Sunday evenings services, which another of our leaders also plays for. Another leader co-leads the Friday afternoon kids club. Myself and the fourth leader operate the young adults ministries (which only restarted this year after losing the majority of our young adults, and even then only after much prayer and shuffling priorities). So, sometimes some of us will end up spending at least parts of four different days awake in ministry, plus preparation, not including uni, work, spouses, and our own time with God. So Paul’s point definitely does happen, and is a real problem!
None of us, have any formal theological leadership, or pastoral training, aside from child protection and the like, and have been propelled into our positions by necessity , and by God prodding us along. Few people in the congregation seem to volunteer to take on these ministries, and those that do burn out, for what I think are three main reasons:
1. Not a large enough leadership team to delegate various tasks to
2. Being unequipped and largely unsupported in a given ministry
3. An church-wide culture of being in a ‘holding pattern’, rather than being committed to ministry growth (if you don’t see fruit, that can lead sometimes lead to doubt about God working in that ministry, which can lead to spiritual drain, as well as emotional/physical ones.)
We’re seeing this in our Sunday morning group for teens, which is going to shut up shop end of this year (much prayer needed here: not sure if those kids will stick around, and it’s been hard encouraging them to Friday night or Sunday evening!). The reality is that there are many churches with such a scarcity of trained and qualified leadership, that it is usually going to be people with other commitments or jobs who have to step up.
In many cases, I think that (and I’m also speaking of myself here) in many such cases, particular when the leaders are young leaders, they’re not always emotionally, or maybe even spiritually, READY to just leap into full time ministry, or at least to remove things like uni or work that may be an obstruction to ministry.
The truth is that many lay youth leaders don’t have an experienced leader or mentor to look to (in some cases, it seems, not even their church pastor/minister), and so are uncertain of what lies ahead. Even Timothy had the encouragement and advice of Paul regularly, even if only through letters! But there are leaders who don’t have that in their own congregations, and that acts as a deterrent in regards to putting even more effort into their youth ministries. The thing to remember is that many of these people are genuinely God-fearing, servant-hearted people, and want to work for God’s glory; many wouldn’t be leaders if they didn’t! But many also lack real support from within their own congregations/parishes about how to best do that, and what direction their life needs to take to do so.
Something that might be cool to see would be a system whereby lay youth leaders, who lack senior support/leadership in their churches, could have a mentor, perhaps functioning like an Archdeacon, who they can ask for advice from, pray with, receive encouragement from (maybe this already exists)? Or maybe something where ministers and pastors can get resources or advice on how to support lay youth leaders? That would be useful for where I am, for example.
As a (partially) unrelated point, I think behind good youth ministry there also needs to be constant, dependent prayer. We have a tendency to pray when things muck up, but we should be praying both in and outside of our youth groups. Out, because we should be asking, as churches, not just as individuals, that God will work in local kids and groups to bring his people to himself, and also within the group, because it both models Christ, and shows people how tangible and liveable a relationship with God is (you could write an essay on this last point ?)
And sorry if I’m rambling. Some of these thoughts have only half been thought out…
There’s a massive thrust so often on “youth empowerment” which I think is great… but I’ve seen it over extended. From my own experience I ended up in a place where I definitely thought I was pretty hot stuff and in charge of a fairly large youth organization. What I realised is I ended up to far ahead and was not falling under the wisdom and guidance of older (or more experienced) leaders.
The result is you very quickly exhaust what you do know about leadership and team building (which probably wasn’t much to start off with) rather then going forward in a process of learning and growing which is going to help those you are leading anyway.
So there needs to be a balance struck between empowering youth and making them realise they still have so much to learn by taking on the wisdom of others. You need to cultivate open minds and hearts that are easily teachable, humbly assess themselves and actually pursue council and checks on how they are going…. See More
That’s why I’m planning that for next year I will be endeavoring to come under as much wisdom and experience from other leaders in my church, my internship and in life in general.
The word of God forms the church. That includes young people!
What are some some principles of leadership in your youth ministry?
– we wanna see transformed lives not just informed lives
– our youth group should complement our churches vision and mission not compete with it
– we care about numbers coz numbers are people and God cares about people
– preparation is more important that presentation (and we value presentation very highly!)
– leaders are shepherds/servants/stewards/models
– we want our youth to live regret free lives in a sex saturate world
– grace not guilt leads to godliness and makes people gravitate towards the gospel. we wanna grace our youth towards godliness
– quality first, quantity later
What are the non-negotiable principles of youth leadership?
– godliness/ above reproach
– relate to youth
– can’t be dating an unbeliever
– gotta be fed if your gonna feed others – you can only lead people as far as you’ve grown yourself
What errors have you or others made in your approach to youth leadership?
– failing to share my struggles and sins with the kids I lead –> perfectionism and inability of kids to share their own struggles
– failure to saturate my ministry in prayer
– failing to delegate properly
– allowing pride to creep into my heart
– not saying the hard things
What would you like to read in a book on youth leadership principles?
– principles of preaching to youth
– how to lead a team of volunteers
– how to lead while learning
– is church discipline appropriate at youth group? how to do that?
Anything else you think is relevant.
– too often parents delegate the responsibility of spiritual discipleship of their kids to the youth group. I want to help parents partner with their kids in the mission of Jesus, and partner with the leaders in raising a goldy generation of young people.
Hope that’s helpful.
1. Make friends your own age – you’re there to serve, not fulfil your own emotional needs.
2. You can’t lead anyone somewhere you haven’t been: Integrity and sincerity.
3.a) In a small church, there’s often pressure to accept a leader just because they’re willing to fill a position you desperately need filled.
Turns out that the wrong leader is worse than no leader.
b) If people are following you, they’ll end up in the same place eventually – including struggling with secret sin. Don’t pretend.
4. The balance of scripture and psychology when counselling.
Developing leaders comitted for the long term.
Dealing with leadership team disunity.
Forming relationships with parents.
Some worked examples of ways to make typical discussions with teenagers turn into gospel discussions??
one other thing I forgot
– if you’re not willing to vacuum, wash dishes, take out the rubbish, scrub stains out of the carpet, sweep the broken glass up, stack the chairs, mop the kitchen floor etc…don’t be a youth leader! pack-up is as important as planning, preaching and playing games!