Finding Your Value

I’ve learned a lot by watching teachers.


I have a deep respect for teachers that knows no bounds. I went to school for four years to become one ( I ended up one, just not like I figured).

One of the things that I was warned about during my college days was not to be the student’s friend. I never could figure this out until I got into the classroom and saw how this worked. If you were worried about being a friend to the student, you were often less of a teacher. It was a rare teacher that I saw or see today that can pull off being both to their students.

Thinking about this in terms of Youth Ministry, and especially in regards to leadership development, it occurs to me that we are brothers and sisters with our students. We love them, and often form friendships that last a lifetime with our students. So how can we be friends with our students, pour into their lives, and love them as brothers and sisters, yet still remain a teacher to them?

I think it all has to do with where you find your value as a human being. If you derive your value from the friendship of your students, then you’ll likely be a poor teacher. It’s more than being a friend to your student, at this point your self-image is caught up in it.

As Christians, we have to find our value in Christ. Personally, I don’t know any better identity to have than as a son or daughter of God. God created you, therefore you have intrinsic worth.

We are supposed to look to God for our value and worth as His creation, and not turn to his creation for that value.

That’s where we have to sit as youth leaders and as developers of young leaders. Most of the time, we can’t help but befriend the youth we work with, and well we should. But we should never derive our personal worth from being their friend. This leads to a bad motivation, less teaching, and a less than godly relationship.

Training Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,

Matt

Mini-Me Leadership

What kind of leaders are coming out of your leadership program?
This is a very important question. The purpose of leadership development is not to turn out clones of you. I can’t think of a more egocentric way to pollute the world. What the world does not need is another you. I’m sorry, but it’s true. What the world needs is a man or woman that God has created specially and specifically for their own task.
Let’s stop trying to turn out mini-me’s and let’s start partnering with God to help Him turn out the kind of leaders that He wants.
Our job as leadership developers is to work with and hone our students as individuals, allowing them each to become what God has intended them to become, not what you are. This is very difficult for some leaders to put into practice, because they are very familiar with what trained and honed them as leaders. Each of us are different though, and each of us are going to need a different “program” to train us as leaders.
Let me give you a good negative example. I am a reader. I read voraciously. I learn from reading, and I love it. Right now I am mentoring a young leader who is not a reader (not that they don’t read, but they don’t read like me; see how egocentric this can get?). At first, I tried to make them read. That didn’t work so well. When that didn’t work I found out what kind of a learner I was dealing with and began to teach to their strengths. That worked much better.
What this means for us is it’s not going to be easy to train new leaders. It’s hard, messy, and time-consuming. But nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Training Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,
Matt