Ministry Playbook — Finding Potential Leaders

I am hoping to make several posts over the next months in regards to how we “do” ministry…in my case, campus ministry. We will call this the Ministry Playbook. I hope to highlight several things that are working well for us as well as share some of the things we have done that have fallen flat on their face.

This post is piggy-backing off of yesterday’s question. Ever since I have been in campus ministry, I have struggled with the process of choosing student leaders for our ministry. Specifically, I have wrestled one question:

What is more advantageous: students with natural leadership abilities or students with a desire to serve?

Naturally, finding students with both of these qualities would be ideal. But they are often a rare find.

And so, do I just focus my attention on those who already have the natural ability to lead others? Or, do I focus my energies on those students who are willing to serve, but perhaps lack the natural ability to lead?

I want both. And so, we have kicked off Leadership Coaching Sessions.

Our LCS are designed to connect with both type of student. We personally invited those students we feel have a natural bent towards leadership to join LCS. And then, we put out an open invitation for the rest. If they have a willingness, they will come. And this way, we connect with both kinds of potential leaders.

Many folks are uncomfortable with an open invitation to be involved with leadership. I think this has a few benefits. First of all, you can see which students you may have missed who have a desire to lead. Secondly, simply because they show up for the LCS does not guarantee that they will become leaders within the ministry. But it does provide for weeks of discipleship and teaching. There are more that I will discuss in the coming days.

Tomorrow, I will highlight the details of how we train these potential leaders through our Leadership Coaching Sessions.

5 thoughts on “Ministry Playbook — Finding Potential Leaders”

This is interesting. At some point in time I’d like to implement some kind of a program like this if I ever get a big enough youth group. High School students may not have the same kind of freedom to explore their potential as College students would, but I do think it would be good for them to learn and use some leadership skills before going off to college.

Reply ↓

Brandon on September 16, 2009 at 7:58 am said:

Josh, I think you can and SHOULD do leadership stuff with a handful of your high school students. I know I did it when I was in youth ministry. I hand-picked those students who I felt had the gifts and desire to lead…and then we did some training and I turned them loose to do just that; lead.

And I had a fairly small group. Even if you just have 3 or 4, maybe find 1 to invest in. It will, of course, look differently from what we do here…but it will valuable for your youth group and super-valuable for the student(s) you work with.

Reply ↓