Creating an Environment for Student Leadership Development

This was a discussion with impact. In this simple discussion between Jesus and his disciples we see many elements of community modeled that become environmental targets in student leadership development. In this passage we get glimpses of the type of environment Jesus created in his earthy ministry. It was a safe place where disciples could talk openly and query their teacher. They knew Jesus had high expectations for their earthly ministries; they strove to be the best. Their teacher valued them and placed them in positions that required thinking outside of themselves. While some of his ways and habits were mysterious to them, they observed carefully his behaviors and tried to replicate them later. Jesus walked with the disciples daily physically and emotionally, all the while he kept his vision for them in mind.

For student ministry, the question is not, “should we create an environment like Jesus did for training and mentoring student leaders?” But rather, “In our context how do we go about this and when do we know the groups we lead have arrived at a place where student leaders can be fostered?”

In the following exercise we will explore the “how and when.” To do so we will look at the current environmental factors among popular youth ministry models, the environment of leadership development during Jesus’ earthly ministry with his disciples, the environment of the early New Testament church, and finally its possible transferable cross-model implementation recommendations for student ministry practice. The goal of this project may sound complex, but at its core it is simple: What kind of community should youth workers be working to create to develop student leaders?

It is a good starting place to begin with a look at the scope of this question. The youth ministry marketplace is still in its infancy. While there has been youth ministry practice for decades, academically there is lots of work still being done. In some corners of the church youth work is a highly respected profession. While in other areas it is something either completely ignored in its importance or is relegated to the church basement and left to an interested and well meaning, if under-trained volunteer. Overall, it is fair to say that in practice and academia, student ministry is still trying to find itself. Since there are no universally accepted hiring standards, credentialing, accepted practices, or measures of progress industry wide, thousands of youth workers are left seeking personal validation and struggle with the basic question “how do I do my job?”

Certainly, within that marketplace there are niches of success. These pockets of success then develop and serve as models to other likeminded ministries. For church-based student ministry, these ministry models are not only popular and copied, but also loaded with a wealth of positive experiences and success by any measure of the definition.

It is this mixed marketplace that we begin our examination. We will briefly look at three ministry models to see at what unique point they instruct youth workers to begin developing a leadership team. What clues do they provide for what to look for in the groups dynamic? Is it about individual growth, corporate growth, or a combination of all three? For the sake of simplicity this study is limited to Dash Student Leadership, Purpose Driven Youth Ministries, and Sonlife Ministries. Each of these paradigms provides enough differentiation to represent several other models as well without making the survey portion of this question overwhelming.

Dash Student Leadership, along with their flagship ministry at North Point Community Church, approaches the question from a purely individualistic standpoint. Environment seems to take a backseat. Jeremy Brown, a Dash subscriber from Bryan, Ohio notes that the cream always rises to the top no matter the environment. (Obviously, he’s never made butter! There is a lot of churning and waiting.) He identifies leaders for MaxQ by observing their interactions in the group, their attempts to influence peers, and the potential he sees within them. Within the Dash model there is no environmental group dynamic that triggers to the youth worker that “the time has come.” To the contrary, under any circumstances of health or dysfunction a student can begin being trained to influence his peers. The obvious benefit is that by eliminating the group dynamic and environmental baggage allows students to be developed at any time. For those in small churches, this training will look the same as traditional one-on-one discipleship with only the training emphasis being different. The weakness is that a ministry team will inevitably have student’s at all different levels of maturity and will be more time consuming to keep up with. To pace with students at all kinds of different levels instead of having a group really requires that the youth workers time be designated wholly for this purpose and less on vision, curriculum, and event planning.

Within the Purpose-driven model, environment is a much greater influence. Within the concentric circles of involvement it assumes that there will always be some students drawn to the core. (Perhaps this assumes that all youth workers are objects so big they have their own gravitational pull?) Within its framework there will always be students at the core who are reaching out to the community and congregational students and drawing them towards the core by serving them. Likewise, students in the community group seeking to move closer to the core will demonstrate an aptitude to serve, which the leadership sees as a decision to be a servant leader. Doug Field’s unashamedly invests most heavily in students who have demonstrated long-term that they want to be trained as leaders. The visual is that once you’ve climbed to the top of the mountain, then you will be trained. The strength of this philosophy is that it puts the responsibility on the student to follow the leader. Through their continued involvement they “prove” to the leadership that they too are leadership material. The weakness of this is that often times we confuse involvement and dedication as leadership potential. In an article by Jonathon McKee he writes, “Let’s look at the average youth group in America – tons of students in the middle [curious] column. We would like to move these kids to the right. [To the committed column] We’d like them to start using their spiritual gifts, reaching out to others and taking leadership roles. How can we move them right unless we have somewhere for them to move? A student leadership program could be just the thing.” (Moving Students to the Right… Developing Student Leaders) The wrong assumption is that because you express involvement and become committed that you are ready to lead others towards the Lord. (It’s worth noting, in a follow-up e-mail to this article with Jonathon McKee, he had admitted to his oversimplification in his article and referred me to his book.)

In the Sonlife ministry model, environment is everything. It makes the same assumption as the Purpose Driven model that within the groups dynamic there are different levels of interest and involvement, but it takes the ramifications of this to another level. Their teaching is that to prematurely launch a ministry team would negatively impact the formation of the group’s identity. Citing the example of Christ’s relationship with his disciples, they draw out that Jesus could have taken as much time as he needed to develop his disciples, but chose to prepare them in 3 to 3 ½ years. Further, Sonlife breaks this period into 3 seasons. One season for building an environmental foundation, and two concurrent seasons of equipping and winning. Could leadership development happen during that first season? Certainly. Yet the goal is clearly to create a group dynamic that models the atmosphere that Jesus created. The strength of this model’s approach is that it acknowledges that environment is very important. It seems to continually develop an environment where leaders are “bred” within the group as opposed to waiting for these people to emerge naturally or making the assumption that the cream will always rise to the top. The weakness is that 18 months is an awful long time to hold natural leaders back. Since they discourage equipping students for peer ministry in season one, sometimes a perfect candidate gets cycled out before the environment is ever conducive to a ministry team. From personal experience, another weakness is that this environment is very hard to create and maintain.

In these three examples we see that there is a varying importance given to environment. Dash puts the least importance and Sonlife puts the most, with Purpose Driven somewhere in the middle. Of course, it is important to note that this is true in “pure examples” of each model.

Clearly, no church ministry is a pure example as even North Point and Saddleback evolve and change from year to year and draw upon new insights gained mixed with seeking the Lord’s direction for these ministries.

If nothing else, this brief look should send the reader looking for something more than pragmatic solutions offered by ministry models and modern gurus. Let’s examine the gospels to the environment of leading, pacing, and walking with Jesus models as well as how this was implemented in the early church.

A diverse group of men

In the first century, Israel’s social structure was made of two distinct sets of cultural separators. There were people who lived in the cities and people who lived in the villages. Also, there were people who liked what Hellenization brought to Jewish culture and some who were vehemently opposed to its influences. (Matthews, p. 222) Interestingly, Jesus chose his disciples across the strata of these subcultural separators. Among them, a tax collector, a future physician, some fishermen, and a zealot, etc. From those diverse backgrounds of village people and urbanites he saw their potential to spread the gospel after his earthly mission was complete.

The sacrifice laid out

It was clear from the formation of this group of followers that Jesus intended them to make a supreme sacrifice for an indefinite period of time. “Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.’ And they immediately left the nets and followed Him… and the left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired sevants, and went away to follow Him” (Mark 1:17-18, NASB) To Matthew, Jesus simply said “Follow me” and Matthew left the office he was collecting taxes in and followed Jesus. (Matthew 9:9) For the rest, we don’t see specifically where several of the disciples were called and we don’t know how Jesus did this. We can see that within a short amount of time during his Galilean ministry, Jesus has called out a number of people to follow him as disciples and many more followed him for various reasons. (Mark 2:7)

Jesus laid it out. To follow him meant forsaking everything. It is clear that every time a potential disciple is called, he is told “it will cost you everything, your whole life.” This is an eerie foreshadowing as Jesus would later demonstrate to his disciples the true meaning of this cost. As Jesus hung on the cross he uttered the word tetelestai, it is complete. The tense of this phrase is powerful because it conveys that an act in the past, with continued results in the present. (Pritchard, p. 79) The same would become true to anyone who called themselves a disciple. They had completely given themselves to Jesus for ministry in the present. Their personal lives were finished

Testing decided the candidates

“Yet there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and would betray him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.’ From this time many of the disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (John 6:64-66, NIV) For some would-be disciples the cost was too great. While they had agreed to leave everything and follow Jesus, and Jesus allowed them to freely do this, there came a time when they checked themselves and realized they were not capable of paying the price of discipleship. Several times in the gospel accounts we read of people who Jesus allows to call themselves leaders step away because they could not agree to the cost. Likewise, Jesus provided them the ability to decide for themselves if the Father had called them. Though he was God, he allowed them to judge their motivations for themselves.

The twelve were made known

Shortly before the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes his selections known of who was in his inner circle and who was out. (Luke 6) After this, though others would follow Jesus, it was clear that they were not in the inner circle. Jesus was decisive and somewhat exclusionary. These 12 men would be granted access like no other men would be given for millennia, perhaps ever.

A simple judge of character

Still others thought that they were willing to pay the price and were rejected immediately because Jesus could see plainly that they were not ready. “Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

Public teachings, private tutoring

The disciples were witnesses to the Sermon on the Mount. But they were not the objects of his teaching. While the timing is not for certain known, it is clear that there is some travel between the location of the Sermon and Capernaum. Certainly, during these travel times the Twelve were asking questions of Jesus and learning how to apply all that had been shared.

Gradually brought into Jesus’ prayer life

Early on we read that Jesus’ habit was to wake up before everyone else and go off to somewhere private to pray. Progressively through the 3 years, we see that a few disciples are brought closer and closer to Jesus as he prays. It grows from waking up and not knowing where he is only to find him off praying alone, (Mark 1:36) to asking Jesus how to pray, (Matthew 6) and culminates as Jesus prays in the presence of John and a few others. (John 17)

Watching him at work

There are too many references to list of examples of Jesus doing the Lord’s work while the disciples watch on. More than simply watching, as time went on Jesus allowed them to participate in his work. This made certain to them that they were being trained for more than observing, one day soon they would be in action. But not too soon, Jesus was patient.

Vision casting

In Matthew 9, as the disciples prepare to leave Galilee Jesus reminds them that there is still plenty of work for them to do later. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” (Matthew 9: 37b) This is a constant theme of Jesus with his disciples. They are clearly being trained to do a job that will involve their multiplying of new leaders.

Trial and error

Jesus sends out the twelve to do some “beginner work” of exorcism and healing the sick. Little did they know, before too long much more would be asked of them? It is intriguing that Jesus sent them out knowing that they would struggle and made certain that he would be following up with them.

Leaving them

It was undoubtedly hard for the disciples to understand that their role would not be to usher in the kingdom of God. Instead, they were setting the groundwork for the church age to come. It would be their responsibility to not only set up a church in preparation for the imminent return of Jesus, but also to multiply their leadership in case this didn’t happen in their lifetimes. In fact, as time went on Jesus made it clear that this would be the case.

All alone

It is an important step to recognize how the disciples acted in the moments leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s noteworthy that only Judas abandoned Christ. The rest scattered temporarily, but none left Jesus completely. During the time that Jesus laid in the tomb the eleven actually stayed together. This was an important developmental stage and shows the type of fellowship Jesus strove for had been accomplished.

Stepping up when the time arises

As soon as we get to Acts we see that the eleven grab a hold of their task and get to work. Within hours of Jesus’ ascension and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began their work without their leader. This is leadership passed on. Within a generation, The Way would become more than a cult of Judaism. Within a matter of centuries, even the highest levels of the most powerful government in human history would be calling on Jesus as Lord. While there was a supernatural element to this, it is also the result of the disciple’s obedience and acting on Jesus’ training and preparations.

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What among this is universally transferable from Jesus’ earthly ministry to a youth workers role in creating an environment that fosters student leader development? To some degree, Jesus didn’t provide a roadmap, but he did provide powerful transferable principles that are worth implementing in any student ministry context. Let’s examine seven and see how they can be implemented across the board.

o Emphasizing diversity: On the surface this sounds like a politically correct place to start. However, it is clear that Jesus intentionally sought out to develop leaders who weren’t exactly like him. Likewise, developing emerging leaders is not like an Austin Powers episode. It should not be our goal to create Mini Me. Instead, we are wise to fill our ranks and attract students that are diverse. We can do this by recruiting a diverse group of adult volunteers and by widening our narrow minds to welcome those in who think, act, and look differently than we do.

o Publicly communicate a vision of reaching people: This not only reminds people what your church’s student ministry is about, it also let’s those who want to be leaders know what the goal is.

o Emphasize the cost: Don’t make the mistake that if you tell students “it won’t cost a lot” that they are more likely to buy in. Instead, by setting high expectations the potential leaders know that sacrifices will need to be made in order to be influential among their peer group.

o Set the bar high: There is nothing wrong with a faith goal. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with a potential leader looking at himself in the mirror and realizing that they are not ready to make the sacrifice. While they may be temporarily discouraged, at least they know where they need to grow.

o Make it public: There is a popular school of thought in student ministry that student leaders should not be labeled as what they mature for fear that it may become a reverse self-fulfilling prophesy. While there is some truth in that, and it is clear that adolescents may fail while being trained to influence others, there is a lot of wisdom in making it known publicly that individuals have been named leaders.

o Regular follow-up: Students are learning. In particular, ministry training is often done incrementally and a dose at a time. Having regularly scheduled times when you query them about their progress will help keep them on track.

o Pray with them: This simple step is often skipped. Spend concerted amounts of times together in prayer. Likewise, unashamedly pray in front of them and allow there to be times when people find you in prayer.

o Create opportunities for them to lead without you: Maybe it’s allowing them to lead a group meeting or Bible study when you are on vacation or maybe it’s sending them off to do a service project alone. But the true test of student leaders is how they lead and implement what you’ve taught them. Provide for this learning curve before they graduate.

Works Cited

Fields, Doug Purpose Driven Youth Ministry, Zondervan, 1998

Livermore, Dave Connecting your journey with the story of God: Disciplemaking in diverse contexts, Sonlife, 2001

Matthews, Victor H. Manners and Customs in the Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, 1991

McKee, Jonathon Web Article, Moving Students to the Right… Developing Student Leaders (http://www.thesource4ym.com/archives/arc20040316.asp#TITLE1 )

Stanley, Andy Seven Checkpoints: Seven Principles Every Teenager Needs to Know, Howard Publishing, 2001

Thomas, Robert A Harmony of the Gospel, Harper Collins, 1978