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Chewing on Junior High Student Leadership
I’ll be at the Youth Specialties ‘National Youth Workers Convention’ four times this Fall leading a few middle school ministry workshops. One that I’m super excited about, but also beginning to stress over, is a brand new workshop on developing student leaders in middle school ministry. We have a pretty good student leadership program in our ministry, but it’s certainly not as good as it could be nor do I feel like an authority on the topic. Without question, our student leadership program is a vital part of our ministry and the students who are involved really like it.
One of our struggles with it has always been the question of are we really developing student leaders (and, how do you even measure that…) or is the program just another place for our core kids to hang out together? I suppose it’s really a little bit of both.
I guess the best way to approach the workshop will be to discuss what an ‘ideal’ middle school student leadership program may look like and then share a little bit of the ‘real’….what it looks like for us and other churches.
I suppose I need to take a little pressure off myself. One thing I’ve learned through the years is that middle school workers appreciate any chance to get together to talk, dream and share our journey.
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I’m no expert butni have a learned over the past couple of years that all “leadership” is really servanthood. The true leaders in a group are the ones who serve. And that’s on all levels I believe. Spiritual, and social.
I definitely resonate with that. We canceled our junior high student leadership team last year because it had just became the group for cool kids. At the end of last year we really experienced a lack of momentum because we had not trained up leaders within the group. We started it again this year and were purposeful with how we chose the students. Now our big debate is whether it is a leadership skills training group or spiritual formation. Or is it both? It seems like it should be both. Student leadership in JHigh isn’t easy but it is so rewarding. I wouldn’t be in JHigh ministry today if it wasn’t for my junior high youth pastor challenging me to be a part of the student leadership team.