Here’s something I’ve heard hinted to hundreds of time since doing full-time
ministry but I’m learning it’s truth more and more each day!
Here’s how I would word it:
“Students are beyond eager to be part of something bigger than themselves, to the point that, when deprived of the chance to do so, they grow desperate for it.”
Leadership on the brain right now, can’t sleep, so I write…
Great leaders are people who are willing to show up wherever they are leading and bring their best every time–and thereby create a culture where everyone else does the same!
Let’s not settle. Lead strong today even though it’s the end of the week! Make it a great day!!!
I wrote about this previous here and I wanted to add to this list a little bit because it’s been on my mind for a while.
One of my greatest passions is to help student and leaders grow in whatever areas God’s directing them towards. One of the ways I’ve grown most as a leader has been to always have mentors in my life who will ask me the tough questions, call me out to greater things, and be someone to bounce ideas/thoughts off of.
So I talk to students a lot about finding mentors in their life and they usually ask me “How do I find a mentor?”
Is “defensive” how some people see Christians?
I was checking out some “scatting” on YouTube and checked out an Ella Fitzgerald Scat performances and aparantly somebody got defensive about the performance because someone said it wasn’t very good.
The user wrote back and said this:
Why would this persons knee jerk reaction be to ask if the previous user comment “was a Christian”?
It’s most likely because this user had previous experience with a “Christian” who was defensive about something, which give them the perspective/worldview that Christians must be defensive and that if some random user on YouTube gets defensive, it’s probably because they’re a Christian. It might be that this user wanted to “confirm” his/her perspective/worldview about Christians.
I immediately asked my self “what am I doing that might give off the impression that I’m defensive” because that’s not at all how I want to represent Christ.
(Side Note: Unfortunately this was posted “7 months ago” according to the timestamp and there has been no reply, I’d love to know!)
(Photo I took of one of our students at her high school play “Crazy for you”. Maddie’s in the middle)
This is an area that is easier said than done but what if we really understood the nature of this question and the parable that follows? What if we got over the things that keep us tied down and learn to forgive, and forgive, and forgive, and forgive, and forgive……..
I know some ‘Christians who don’t forgive’. You know, people who boast their closeness with Christ and still can’t forgive someone or themselves. Sounds like an oxymoron to me like “abundant poverty”.
Let’s be a forgiving people!
(Photo by Dan Vukmirovich from GCC’s India Mission Trip Team)
Kasi over in a small village in India is rocking some ND Crocs! BRING IT! haha I love this photo!!!
Found this in my Leadership folder in my Evernote stuff and wanted to pass these thoughts along in case you haven’t seen them. It’s from Kurt Johnston, who by the way is A LOT shorter in person than you may think from the Simply Jr. High Podcast he does, but great thoughts none the less. Sorry Kurt, had to let the world know. (and by ‘the world’ i mean the people who read this blog. ha)
He said:
(Random Photo from web)
Great wisdom about “Mountain Top Experiences” HERE.
(Random photo that I found…wish I had some glasses like this.)
Yesterday I posted about types of leadership we have in GSM and today I just want to post the main thing I look for in volunteer leaders.
Here it is:
So because of that, I see my job in looking for volunteers as finding these leaders who love Jesus and care about students then connecting them to each other.
The kicker I learned from watching Mark Beeson and Mark Waltz is finding leaders who can also love the students who don’t yet care about Jesus. It’s easy to love students who love Jesus but it’s a whole different ballgame to love and care for students who could care less about Jesus. They’re just showing up because there are cool game, cute girls, a crazy awesome band, some semi-funny speaker, or because it’s just the “thing to do”.
We’re due up for some new leaders rolling through GSM
It’s impossible to lead a team without knowing who they are. So, one of the things that I frequently do is look at “who” our leaders are. Most of this happens through conversation and watching them. As I was looking at our leadership recently, I figured out that based on how we do ministry, we need these 3 types of leaders in our GSM.
…are the primary type of leader we have. They’re invited onto the leadership team to “help students take steps towards Christ…together”. I invite them to use whatever gifts, skills, passion they have to further that mission. It’s life on life type of leadership that implies going further than just showing up every week. (side note: I don’t often use the term “shepherd” as I’m talking about this with our leaders as the word carries lots of different meaning and I’m not hung up on the ‘label’ as much as I am leadership style.)
…offer students a level of relationships, connection, discipleship that not every student is ready for. These leaders offer more than ‘acceptance’ (it’s essential to have those leaders who will merely accept students where they are and never really go further than that but this leadership is one that goes beyond acceptance). These leaders aren’t afraid to push through awkwardness and ask the tough questions. These leaders offer a character and integrity that allows them to ask the questions necessary to push students to a higher level of devotion to Christ or leadership within their gifting.
…offer students supervision that you can rely on. They’ll “keep an eye” out for you and make sure students are having a good time and staying within the safety guideline. I think it’s important to have these types of leaders at GSM weekly because as all the “Shepherds” and “Mentors” are hanging out with students, playing games, getting food at the cafe’, etc, we need leaders to have eyes on all other other stuff that matters to creating great environments for students. (They also offer you relief during really busy seasons in ministry when you really just need some volunteers to be with students. ie. Trip to a theme parks, work days, group outings like bowling, etc.)
This pattern of thought comes down to how you “define” the people you have so it might not work for everyone, especially those who lump all of their leadership team into the same bucket, which is totally fine.
For me, it really helps me as I look at our entire leadership team to know the specific makeup of our leaders. Not everyone will fit into the same place and that’s ok, but the more informed we are the clearer our expectations of them will be.
This also isn’t a rigid leadership metric that I have drawn up that i fit people into, most of these roles are self-selected by the leaders themselves. I occasionally will invite a leader into a role that I feel may be a good fit for them but I like for our leadership to decide where they fit. Jesus gave his disciples and opportunity to “opt-in”, he said “come follow me”…they could have declined.
This shirt cracked me up…not gonna lie, i’m sippin the Kool Aid!!!
Just heard a great line in the movie ‘Love and Basketball‘. It was a son talking to his dad after finding out his dad had been a hypocrite the whole time he was raising the son. He said:
This reminded me of students ministry leaders. We should be the people we’re encouraging our students to be. This was a great reminder to me and reminded me ‘we never take our hat off’. Lead Strong!