Are you looking to grow the size and health of your youth ministry? GrowYourYouthMinistry.com ***** Has your student leadership team become a clique within your youth group? In this excerpt from an "Ask Me Anything" episode, we answer a question from Jesse Howell in regards to avoiding a student leadership team becoming an alienating group within your youth ministry. We unpack the dangers of creating a 'members only' clique and how that can disastrously impact a youth group's dynamics. If you're a youth pastor or involved in student ministry leadership, you'll discover how vital it is to build a culture of servant leadership, drawing inspiration from Jesus's example of service.
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How do you develop a healthy student leadership culture and avoid clicks? That's what we're talking about today on the ministry coach podcast.
Speaker 2:
Let's jump right in. This is the first question, and this comes from Jesse Howell from YouTube, who says most of the time I've seen youth pastors make their young people leadership team into their members only click, which in turn really harms the youth group severely as a whole. How do I, as a pastor of young people, keep the leadership team from being a giant click of godly destruction?
Speaker 1:
Ooh, that got intense at the end. Godly destruction. Well, of course we like what a shame if something that was meant to be bearing fruit in your youth ministry turned into godly destruction, then it was at that point you'd be like we shouldn't have even had a student leadership team. And you know, I think I think Jesse kind of hit it on the head it's the youth pastor turned it into that. And so I think, as the youth pastor, you're going to be pivotal in how you steer the culture of your student leadership team. We always talk about how every youth group needs a student leadership team. It's so good to have a core group of students who are invested and learning and committed and setting an example, and it really does reverberate to the rest of the group. I've had a year where I didn't do it because it's like running another youth group.
Speaker 2:
I was like I am tired and I paid for it.
Speaker 1:
It really did feel different because everyone was the really core magnetic group pulls everyone else to the center. You know what I mean? Like it was like this gravitational pull when they're invested and they have jobs and all of that. So, yes, let's do it, but, like Jesse said, let's not make it toxic.
Speaker 2:
And.
Speaker 1:
I think when you call a student, you're a leader. All of a sudden they can become very like oh really, and the power goes to their head because they're not mature enough to handle the term leadership necessarily.
Speaker 2:
They almost feel like being a leader means you do less.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
The minions below. You do more, so I'm up here now. You guys do all the work.
Speaker 1:
And so that's why it's up to us to definitely nip that in the bud and redefine it. And so here's what I do Almost at every single student leadership meeting that I have. I talk to them about serving, and I said that is what godly leadership is. Is it serving? It's not being served.
Speaker 1:
Our theme verse for our student leadership team is for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many, and we talk about that all the time of like. We are signing up to be the ones who serve the most, and here's what that looks like. I'm like you, guys. Your number one focus should not be each other, should not be me. It should be new students, fringe students, shy students, disconnected students, and I am asking you to make a beeline for those people and I tell them the reason why is because the level of inclusivity and love that you show those students, that could be the thin line between whether they come back to church or not. I said, guys, I could preach my best sermon, we could play our most fun game, I could give free pizza and ice cream away, but if nobody talked to them, nobody loved them and nobody saw them.
Speaker 2:
They'd be eating pizza and ice cream.
Speaker 1:
And nobody wants that.
Speaker 1:
No, I said they might not come back and you might. I said just think about that for a second. The power of you, one hello, one, come sit next to me. One, what's your name? One, be on my team is the difference between somebody growing in their relationship with Jesus because they're gonna come back, hear the word of God, dots will connect, they'll become part of a community. So all that to say, jesse, I think what we need to do is teach students. You are the servants of the group and we're not a holy huddle little team like oh, you guys are all my favorite people.
Speaker 1:
Chris Brown, who's our senior pastor at North Coast Church, he said I used to tell my leadership kids don't talk to me at youth group, don't talk to me at events, I'm not here for you. You guys are good, you guys know the ropes, you know everyone, you're totally comfortable. My time and effort is going to be best spent on the vulnerable, the new, the shy, the fringe, all of that, and I need you guys to follow suit. So don't glom on to me. You guys do, you, and we'll hang out another time, but we've got to be others focused during this time. So I just think if you teach that mindset, it might be impossible to have this little click of. Well, we're the in-crowd.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
It's like if you're the youth pastor teaching them what leadership truly means then and then modeling that week after week, then it would be hard not to have a click Now.
Speaker 1:
What we do want is for others to look and say, hey, being involved looks super fun, I want to be a part of that. So if we're modeling it correctly, it shouldn't be like whoa, those are the kids that are cool and snobby and exclusive and they are favored by the youth pastor. The youth pastor picks them for everything or lets them slide and they don't have to follow the rules and they walk in like they own the place, like we all know that vibe of like you know. But if they can see the leadership in a healthy way, whoa, like there were kids playing worship and there was kids working in the snack shack and there was kids helping run a game or setting up, like I want to be involved, and so modeling it like ooh, that's, that's enticing, not like, ooh, I don't want to be a part of the, the bratty kids, you know, and you have a lot of say and how that culture develops. You have to just be very, very intentional with it.
Speaker 2:
So if you guys don't have a student leadership team yet, make sure you check out our episode about how to launch a student leadership team.