What Every Church Should Know About Student Leadership Development Pt. 2

It’s Hard

If you looked at some of the available literature on youth leadership development in churches (which usually consists of one chapter in a book) then you might get the impression that developing young leaders is easy.  

In fact, it reads almost like a recipe.  Pick these students, teach them these things,  and do these activities.  Next, shake them up, pour them out, and you’ll get student leaders.  Problem is that life isn’t that tidy, and neither is a youth ministry program.

One of the things I wish I had been told up front is that leadership development isn’t easy. It isn't easy to start, and it only gets more difficult as you go along.

There are no magic recipes to make your leadership development program work.  There are no super-lessons that will instantly turn apathetic youth into leaders.  There are no guarantees that the students you pour so much into will go on to become great Christian leaders.  

Like all other aspects of ministry, leadership development takes a lot of time and effort.  We shouldn’t go into it thinking that it will be a walk in the park or an afterthought to the rest of the youth ministry.  Done right, leadership development takes just as much effort and preparation as the rest of the youth ministry.  It takes constant tweaking, sleepless nights in prayer, planning, and research.  Oh yeah, and did I mention that you’ll be pouring tons of time into these students?

If you are going to start a leadership development team, keep these things in mind.  Way too many leadership teams are started and then quickly thrown away when it’s discovered that they take more than 10 minutes of prep time.

Don’t fall into this trap; your students deserve better than that.  Go in knowing that leadership development takes time, effort, and plenty of both.  This isn’t about being negative, it’s about going in with your eyes open. 

The Hardest Lessons

It's been a while since I blogged, and I feel I owe you some explanation.  The last few months have been one of transition for me, and have been extremely difficult.  There have been a lot of changes in my life, and a lot of difficult decisions that I've had to make.  Through it all though, I've learned some incredible leadership lessons, and am looking forward to finally getting back on track with blogging and Next in Line in general.
These last couple of months have shown me that the hardest things that a leader will face can't be completely prepared for.  As teachers, we can academically prepare our students for a lot of things, but our students will have to experience them to understand and learn from these experiences. 
Academically, we can teach our students how to make hard decisions; but they will never know the stress and pain that making them entails.  We can academically teach our students how to confront someone, even one of their closest friends, but we can't teach them how difficult it really is, or how much anguish there can be in confrontation. 
Only experience can teach these things, and they are lessons that will stick with them for the rest of their lives.  The hardest lessons learned are those that will be strongest in their minds throughout their lives.
Does this mean we shouldn't try to academically prepare them?  No, of course it doesn't.  By training students in the proper way to handle a situation such as confrontation or decision making, we can help them push through the emotional aspect and make the right decision, or confront in a loving and productive way.  We can and must continue to teach our students to do things correctly and in a Christ-honoring manner; however we can't expect them to fully understand some of these situations until they have gone through them themselves. 
Along with academically preparing them, we also have to let them get real experience in the leadership world.  By allowing our students to "get their hands dirty" we allow them to have some of these hard experiences early, where we can come alongside of them and help them through.  The earlier these hard lessons are learned, the more prepared our students will be for where God will put them in life.
Keep carrying on, and remember that the hardest lessons learned will also be some of the most important lessons learned.

Training Tomorrow's Leaders Today,
Matt