Church Leaders
Often time church leadership will be on board with a student leader program; after all who can better understand the need for growing new leaders. They will however be casus about how far the program will go in letting students make decisions. Remember part of their job is to minimize risk and students being in charge don’t exactly scream risk free. When presenting the program to them be complete in the scoop of the program. Detail what decisions students will be making, describe the bounties you intent to put in place to insure safety and clearly explain how the program is based on a mentoring relationship with an adult. Remember when you say “student will be in charge” the adults are envisioning a food fight followed by a small urban riot. Be clear and complete when making your presentation. The benefit of having the church leadership on board will be to create support for the program even during difficult times.

Parents
Helping parents understand the program is very important. Nothing could be better than having parents support for the leadership team and nothing could be worst if they feel felt out of the process. Parents always want to know two things; who is on the team and what is the criteria for getting on the team. When answering these questions be consistent and honest. We sometimes feel like we need to tell parents what they want to hear – be honest; if their son or daughter doesn’t meet the criteria for being on the team tell the parents and layout for them the conditions on which they could be on the team. Also remember to be consistent; if you let a student on the team that doesn’t meet the criteria and you keep others off nothing we ruin your credibility faster and the ramifications could be bigger than you think.

Consider this plan. Call a meeting of the parents and explain them the reasons for having a student leadership team, the program itself and how students will be selected. Before the meeting ask a few parents to serve with you and your volunteer team on a committee that selects the student leaders. The benefit of this will be to have cover in that you are not making this decision alone. This also gives ownership to the parents by being involved in the process. Announce who is on the committee so all the parents understand. Communicate often, let parents know the deadlines for getting applications in, let them know when the team will be announced and let them know how you will tell the students that apply and don’t make the team. I do suggest having a private meeting with students that don’t make the team to let them know why and what they can do to make it next year.I want to encourage you to see parents as your partners in student leadership development. In the twenty plus years I have been doing this I have never been successful outside of a strong relationship with the parents.

Adult Volunteer Leaders
Surprisingly adult volunteers often struggle with student leadership teams because when you talk about students making decisions and taking leadership for events and programs you are usually talking about students taking their positions. As the youth director everybody knows your role but for the adult volunteer their role is leading the small stuff. You know the stuff that you want to now turn over to the student leaders. See the problem – adult leaders often don’t buy-in for this reason.

The answer is to retrain your adults – move them from chaperons to mentors. Let’s be honest; you don’t need van drivers and cooks you need adults that will pour their lives into the lives of students no matter how messy it gets. By helping your volunteers see that their role is to develop deep relationship with students you will give them a vision for the future and their ministry that is powerful and inspiring.

I suggest presenting you ideas about a student leadership team soon after getting church approval and before going to parents. Volunteers will help answer parents’ questions and help identify potential student leaders. Having them understand changes they will have to make early on in the process will insure a smooth transition to the new program.

The key is to communicate. Don’t just share the reasons behind the program once; state it over and over again and to people start saying it back to you. Starting a student leadership team sounds great but remember before you start get the church leaders, parents and adult volunteers on your side. It will make all the difference.

1. Training before position
Don’t start with position, start with the Biblical basis for leadership. Show students strong examples of good leadership from scripture. LeaderTreks offers lots of resources that help with this. Cast the vision for service by explaining the power of caring for people even if they don’t care for you back.

2. Teach problem solving
Most often students think about leadership in terms of telling others what to do. This is wrong. Present students with case studies of people and teams facing a problem. Ask them what they would do to solve the problem. Drill down and ask them how their solutions would affect people. Spend most of your time dealing with how people feel when a solution is reached. This is where leadership really hits the fan. You should have some great discussions. Leadership is most often a balancing act and students will learn this when they wrestle with good decisions vs. how people feel about a decision.

3. Change title
Leader is a powerful word and most students have already decided how they feel about leaders. Change the title of your leadership team, just don’t make it cheesy. If the point of the team is to serve put the word service in the name.

First, let me say that if your going to have a student leadership team then you are going to face this problem. The sole answer can not be to kick them off because they should have known better. The truth is when a student goes rogue, its time for us to shine. We get to jump into action and go after that student with everything we have. Here are four things you need to do after confronting the student and removing them from the team.

1. Get the parents involved
Let the parents know right away why the their student is off the team. Explain how you want to work with them to restore their student to a position of influence. Insure them that your focus is helping and redeeming, not judging.

2. Put a plan in place of restoration
Let the student know what steps need to be taken for them to return to the team. I don’t know your students, so I won’t try and tell you how to make this plan, but I am confident that you know. Just make sure the student repents, has time to heal, and returns to serve.

3. Let the team know the plan
Make sure your other student leaders are cheering for this student’s return. They must see the importance of this young leader being restored. Share the stories of Jesus and the one lost sheep. Explain how each person is so important to Jesus and how we must have the same view of our fellow students.

4. Celebrate the return
When the student is restored … make it a big deal. Kinda like the prodigal son’s return home.

A leader should be in a continual cycle of being poured into (being mentored) and pouring into someone else (serving as a mentor). This activity will help your students identify a person in their lives whom they could mentor. Encourage your students, when appropriate, to approach this person as a possible mentee. As the adult leader or youth pastor, it is wise to oversee this process.

A mentee is a person who is younger than you, or not as far along as you in their walk with Christ. You can encourage a mentee as they learn from your experience – doing what you found helpful and avoiding your mistakes. All you need is time and a willingness to help someone else.

Directions: List at least 5 characteristics, qualities or traits that you would look for in selecting a mentee.
A Mentee Should…
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Explain the reason you think this attribute or quality is important.

Because…

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Note to Facilitators:
Ideally, students should identify and approach a possible mentee. But realistically, they may not have time to work with both a mentor and a mentee. If so, first help them find a mentor who will be a trusted counselor, and one who will teach them how to mentor. Later, they can begin to mentor others, too.

To have an effective leadership development program you need to focus on the two sides of leadership development. You must have solid leadership training for students and you need to give students real leadership experience where they play the role of a leader. When these two sides of leadership development are in balance you have a solid student leadership development program. When you just focus on one or the other you get a program out of balance.

How do you balance the training with experience?

Let’s look at a case study – youth pastor Bob wants his student leadership team to run this year’s winter retreat. For the last several years he has taken care of all the details including the games and the spiritual content of the weekend. He realizes this retreat is a perfect opportunity for his student leaders to step up and breathe some new life into an old activity.

The retreat is over a long weekend in February due to parent teacher conferences. The church has a long-standing relationship with a camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that is close to a ski resort. Pastor Bob sits down with his team in late October to give them the challenge of coming up with the winter retreat program.

Bob already has a good leadership experience lined-up in the retreat itself, now he needs to add some pre-experience training to make the leadership development effective. When he lays out the challenge for students to lead the retreat he requires students to commit to three training lessons, two in November and one in December. Students are all in.

At the first training session students are excited because they think they are going to be dreaming up new games and deciding how much time they get to ski. But Bob has some different ideas. He first starts with a dream session on “how we want to be different after the retreat.” Students are puzzled – what does this discussion have to do with being the leaders of the retreat. Bob explains that leaders of retreats don’t just think about what is going to happen but they think about how people are going to grow spiritually because we don’t go on retreats to ski but to retreat and focus on lives with God. Bob goes on to explain that by deciding what outcome we want we are able to pick activities that help us reach our goals. Now students are thinking differently, they start a white board session on what are the spiritual needs of fellow students. This first training session ends differently then how it started. Students are transformed from thinking about activities to thinking about how activities can help them minister to fellow students.

At the second training sessions students are focused on spiritual outcomes for the retreat and start to plan what activities will attract students and help them reach their goals. Bob wants to use this training session to teach his student leaders about strategic planning. He knows their first thoughts are to pick activities and the last thing on their minds is what it will take to accomplish these activities. So as activities are chosen Bob asks students to make lists of all needed material and equipment for each activity. He also asks the students to assign one member of the team to be the leader of the activity. As the second training session comes to an end Bob hears students say things like, “man, a lot goes into this – who did this before?” Bob thinks to himself, “I love student leadership.”

At the third training session Bob knows he still has lots to cover and wants to make sure his student leaders get the most out of the experience. In the coming weeks his student leaders will make the announcement in youth group about the winter retreat. He has decided to focus this training on helping students cast the vision for the event to fellow students. Bob understands that announcing time, place and cost will only excite a few students. Bob asks his student leaders, why are we having this event and how will you describe it to your friends? After a short but productive discussion Bob asks one student to stand up in front of the team and give a practice announcement. With much excitement the student stands up and tells the group about all the cool things there are going to happen on the retreat but never mentions the potential of the retreat to have an impact on students spiritual life. Bob asks the team if the student hit all the bases. They quickly realize how hard it is to communicate what is in their hearts not just wants in their heads. Bob breaks the team into groups of two to work on casting the vision for the retreat.

The student leaders have learned a lot – the process wasn’t actually what they thought it would be but they have learned a ton about how leaders operate. Through this process they set the goals for the retreat, strategically planned for all the events and prepared to cast of vision to fellow students.

Risk Taking
Risk taking is a key to being a champion. Teams become comfortable and content. A defining moment for a champion is that moment in time when they stand up, take a risk and push their team on to better things. Risk is the power to leap frog a team into success. We teach our students that timing is everything when taking a risk. Whether it be when a team is down and out or when they are working well together a champion can stand up take a risk and champion their team onto greatness.

Problem Solving
A champion must also be able to solve problems. In order to teach students to solve problems we prescribe a simple process:
First of all be sure you are solving the right problem. Often times students try to solve problems but begin solving the wrong problem. I was once with a team who was convinced that the problem was that weak people kept spilling wheel barrels on a large concrete pour. They “solved” the problem by not allowing girls to run wheel barrels. They soon realized that guys were just as apt to spilling wheel barrels. They had solved the wrong problem. Eventually they realized that all they had to do was put less concrete in the wheel barrels.

That night we had to do some major problem solving as the girls came to the team hurt and unappreciated. That night when we met together as a team one of the guys in our group immediately spoke up admitting the team’s wrong and began to reconcile the team using simple conflict resolution steps he had learned in pre-trip training.

Conflict Resolution
The following steps are vital in conflict resolution
-Let each person state his/her views
-Have neutral team members identify areas of agreement
-Explore areas of disagreement
-Have opponents suggest modifications to theirs/others point of view
-Ask opponents to accept team decision

That night the team dealt with the issues that had arisen during the work project, came to an agreement and moved on. The team made the correct changes this time and pushed hard for the next days of work.

Teams who have champions accomplish so much. At LeaderTreks we believe students can be leaders and champions. A champion is proficient in risk taking, problem solving and conflict resolution; all it takes is a little instruction and encouragement to see a student become a champion for their team. Often times student leaders look to someone else to carry the team. They worry about what people think more than getting the job done.

Directions: Use this sheet with individual students, small groups or student leaders and have them fill out each question. Then use this sheet to facilitate discussion about their thoughts on their walk with Christ, evangelism and sharing the gospel with their friends.

Be perfectly honest. When you think about your personal walk with Christ, how do you see yourself?

When you think about school, how do you see yourself, your friends and God?

Take some time to think about sharing Christ’s love at your school. What would that look like? Do you have any expectations, any fears? Use the questions below to write your thoughts down and then think of 2 or 3 friends you can share Christ’s love with.

1.) When you think about your personal walk with Christ, what are your personal expectations (i.e. responses, attitude, responsibilities, etc.) of… Yourself? God? Others (friends, accountability partners, leaders, etc.)?

2.) What are your fears and/or apprehensions in your personal walk with Christ?

3.) When you think about school, what are your personal expectations (i.e. actions, responsibilities, attitude, etc.) of… Yourself? My Friends? God?

4.) What are your fears and/or apprehensions when you think about sharing Christ’s love with your friends?

Communicate Expectations : I find that when I am communicating expectations I need to give the “why” or as we say, “the mission.” Students will always work harder when they have a purpose or know how their actions will impact the Kingdom. Help students understand how their actions will affect the outcome and give them a purpose to do great things.

Teach by Example: I believe students gain confidence when they have an example to follow. When placing a student in a leadership position, set them up to win. Don’t just give them information; give them hands on instruction with you as their teacher.

Release Students to Perform : Allowing the students to perform without letting them fail is the hardest part of developing leaders. Adults are often too quick to fix the problems that students encounter. Adults don’t want anything to go wrong, so they miss the opportunity to teach great leadership lessons.

On a recent trip I was challenging students to push themselves as they ran wheelbarrows of concrete up a hill. After every time I yelled “push yourselves, you can do it!” an adult leader from the church would yell “you’re doing well, don’t worry.” The truth is students are not doing “well” if they are not working to their potential. Keeping them in their comfort zones will never help them develop into leaders. You can make them happy, but it can’t make them great.

Evaluate the Performance: Evaluation is hard—but what I have found is that students want evaluation. When they are in a new leadership position, evaluation will accelerate their growth. Evaluation will also build trust and allow you to speak truth into their lives. Honest and clear evaluation will drive your relationships with your students to a new depth.