I have recently come to the end of teaching a course called Growing Leaders.
Those who came held various positions in the church including home groups, men’s groups, ladies’ groups and so on. Only one of the 30 people was a youth leader. It prompted me to ask – how do we ‘grow’ our leaders? Or do we treat them a bit like heather on a moor – leave it alone and it will grow anyway?
Volunteers
In my experience it is the volunteer leaders who lack the input which could make them so much better. The full-timers have courses and conferences they can go to but, for every full-time leader there must be ten volunteers serving in local church youth ministry. They are often hard-pressed in their daily lives with employment, family and church life to be balanced. The question must be asked as to how we support and equip people who are often under daily pressure.
At a personal level it must be done by pastoral structures within the church. So often we find leaders who were roped in for a ‘season’ and nobody has ever asked them how they’re doing. I’ve recently been struck by the loving concern showed by Paul to Timothy (‘my dear son’). There must be structures (more importantly – people) who take time and trouble over those in youth leadership roles, as Paul did with Timothy.
But I think we can do more. In a church I visited recently each small group had ‘adopted’ one of the youth team and regularly prayed for and took an interest in that person. Of course the leader needed to feed the small group some prayer points, but it appeared to be working well.
Inaccessible courses?
Both colleges and denominations have produced courses, but they may not be accessible to the people who need them most. Most volunteer youth workers do not have the time to attend long courses, but if material could be produced which could be used on occasional days away (often the best a volunteer can do) it would help. It would need to be maybe six sessions of 90 minutes which could be used over a year at any appropriate time.
Many of our team members travel to work and use their laptops on the way. I would hope that someone could produce material which could be used at a time convenient to the user, rather than hoping they will turn up to an evening meeting or a weekend retreat. These people are in far greater numbers than full-time youth workers. We have appropriate ways of helping these crucial workers. Perhaps we should turn our attention to those who serve on a voluntary basis and ask are they ‘growing leaders’.
