What Every Church Should Know About Student Leadership Development Pt. 4

It Will Test Your Faith in Your Students

Going in to a leadership development program, I had certain expectations of my students.  Because they had  volunteered for leadership training, I figured that they would be mature, respectful, Christ-Centered students.  

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Without going into details, I have to say that I spent a lot of time ranging between disappointed and horrified as I dealt with issue after issue with my students.  It really rocked my boat.  Before I knew it, my faith in my students was waning.  

Because leadership development demands that we be closer to and spend more time with our students, we tend to get more enmeshed in their lives.  They also get more enmeshed in our lives.  As this happens, we learn all about our students in a way that we haven’t before.  As everyone’s warts appear, we can get rather disenchanted with our students if we’re not careful (they can get disenchanted with us, too).  

I think our expectations are at the heart of the issue here.  We must expect students to be mature, respectful, and Christ-Centered, just as we would expect any other believer to act in this way.  However, we must also remember that just as we screw up, so will our students.  Sometimes, they’ll screw up real bad.

When things get dicey (and they inevitably will), our reaction determines whether a failure will turn into a lesson or into a situation that may alienate your students and keep them at arm’s length.  I’ve seen how one screw-up alienated a student so much that he quit the leadership team and fell away from the church.  Sure, He could have handled the situation differently, but I could have as well.  If we allow ourselves to become disillusioned with our students after a failure, it’s more likely we’ll lose faith in the entire process.  Our groups start to hurt, and then it disappears.  

Just as we expect our students to act a certain way, we must also expect that they will mess up.  We mess up, and we shouldn’t expect anything more from our students.  Practicing mercy and grace is not only the right thing to do in these situations, but teaches a powerful lesson that your students will hopefully pass on in their time.  

Preparing ourselves now is essential.  If someone had told me before I started that I would have periods of tremendous disappointment with my students, I would have looked at them like they had a third eye.  Now I know better.  I’ve been there.  

Best practice?  Before you start a team, or even if you have a team now, have a policy about how you’ll deal with moral and legal problems with your students.  How will you react?  What will their status on the leadership team be?  What process will be used for restoration?  How will you deal with the rest of the students on the team?  

And most of all, prepare your heart.  Ask Christ to give you a spirit of forgiveness and mercy.  Ask Him to make His grace real to you in a way that you can make it real to other people.  Humble yourself by daily reminding yourself that you too, sin and need forgiveness. That way, when the inevitable happens, you’ll know what to do and in what spirit to do it.