What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear “student leadership”? More than half of us think, another meeting with students and the rest of us think, put the students in charge. Actually we are both right – a good student leadership program has both training and experience tied together. The problem [...]

Teams need champions. When a champion stands up they challenge the team and push them forward to greatness. I see the value in having a champion on a team and therefore want to teach students how to be champions. I like to teach them three keys: risk taking, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Risk Taking [...]

There are a lot of folks out there who have tried student leadership and failed. They put students in positions of leadership and saw no real change. In fact their youth ministry was hurt by jealous and accusations of favoritism. Doing student leadership wrong is not like doing a bad job of small groups. When [...]

Youth workers seem to think there is a magical time when students are ready for leadership development. Like you have to cross some line of maturity before you can start to be a leader. Why? Who made up this rule? Where is this line and how do you know when you have reached it? I [...]