5 Tips to Develop your Adult Leaders

There are a lot of great training resources available for youth workers to train and provide opportunities for their adult volunteers.  Downloadable Youth Ministry & YM360 are two solid places to start.
I was in a conversation about this a couple days ago and it got me thinking about how I tend to communicate to volunteers in our ministry.  What are the key starting points they need for ministry influence as they first sign up?  Here are a few:

1--Be present.  
You can never under estimate the power of physical presence in a students life.  They and you won't realize it day 1, but continual and intentional presence in the life of a teenager that so often feels overlooked, emotionally minimized and stereotyped by the world is one of THE biggest road block breakers we can have.  To be present you have to be consistent.  It's a stupid analogy but it rings true "Rome wasn't built in a day" and neither will your influence in the life of a teenager.  But consistent & intentional time in the life of a student will bring effective ministry opportunities.  Giving a student someone who won't bail because of a rumor, a misread text message or because a certain style of clothing option is a huge win for youth ministry health.

2--Go-to Students
If you walk into a room and expect students to run up to you with open arms you'll be disappointed.  So often leaders assume that the youth room is "the student's area to connect" and I call out a big fat BULLCRAP because the youth room/area is a key area where trusted & caring leaders can connect with students to point them to Jesus.  It is an intentional mental shift leaders need to have!  In our current culture where "connection" is related to a digital screen we need to model what a live & verbal conversation about life can be.  Make eye contact, offer a high five or an appropriate physical touch.  Be willing to show them they are worth your time, attention & energy and you WANT to be in their life.  This doesn't mean the welcoming arms pop out immediately, but over time with being present it does happen.

3--Who Cares
It's within the first conversation or two I call out 1 of 2 elephant thoughts in the room of our adult leaders.  It is either "students won't like me cause I'm the age of their parent" or "I'm insecure about what to say or how to act around a generation that I don't get".
Both of these feelings are valid but truthfully we have to say to ourselves WHO CARES!  Who cares if they judge you, who cares if they assume you're here to be a moral watchdog in their life, who cares if you don't really understand their world.  Throw all that out the window and ask yourself a more strategic question, "If I don't model and communicate with them the LOVE & LIFE CHANGING message of Jesus who will care enough to speak that truth in their life?"
See the key question isn't if a student cares about us, but do we care enough about them to risk to point them to Jesus?

Helping Student learn how to Lead and Leverage

I enjoy mentoring teenagers.  I like helping them make a difference in their life as well as helping them think forward of what trajectory their life is going.  
But it does have its challenges.  One of those challenges I've often come across is how to encourage students to lead.

Often students believe that to be leader you have to be;

- LOUD

- Willing to talk in front of people

- Popular

- Shop at all the right stores to look the part of "cool"

For so many students the campus they walk and the culture they live in there is a lot of legitimacy to their feelings of what makes up a leader.  They quickly develop their own stereotype and if they don't fit the mold they feel they are excluded.

Then there are some students who feel they are a leader but really they just boss people around.  They have a dictatorship view of what leadership is about and they do use their loud or manipulative personality to force upon others what often they'd never be willing to do.

Helping students learn how to lead & leverage opportunities in life is something I've grown to enjoy. I enjoy helping them look at their own life and circumstances with a different perspective. Often students need to be reminded of the power of their own wiring and giftings.  

Each student has gifts, talents & experiences that has already shaped them to have influence in their world.  They need to be encouraged & shown how and where they are gifted.  Breathing life into someone nourishes them feel like they have what it takes to do something with their own life with a sense of empowerment and that their life can matter.

Students need opportunities to lead and test out their leadership.  If you are an adult that oversees something you have the power to let a student be influenced by some leadership opportunities.  That also means you are going to have some areas that don't look perfect with their young leadership and it probably won't look as put together and might even could end in a train wreck.  But you have the ability to help shape and develop a young leader in a significant way.

So if you are going to let students leaders here are 5 foundational tips you'll need.

• Their probably going to be a bit nervous & a bit naive.  So encourage, encourage & encourage them.
• Starting off help them fail safely.  Yep, "fail" safely.  Give them tasks early on in leadership that they'll probably fail at the first time around but the failure won't be so grievous that they are crushed by the shortcoming.
• When they mess up be willing to show, explain & communicate clearly how & why they messed up from your perspective.
• Help them learn the art of evaluation.  Have them evaluate themselves, the task & even how they managed the task.  Help them see the great & the no so great moments around them.
• Remind yourself they are human & taking a risk.  So don't crush or squash them, but do what you can to help them grow.

If you want to dialogue more about this leave me a comment and we'll connect up.