Leadership Skills

Here is a list of characteristics a successful leader has or is working towards.  This is a short list that I picked up from a friend; feel free to add to it in efforts of developing your leadership skills.

• Integrity - be honest.
• Vision - plan and prepare for good things in the future today.
• Trusting - trust others in order to be trusted.
• Be Positive - look for the good in people and circumstances.
• Compassionate - care for people.
• Motivator - encourage and get others excited about being involved.
• Commitment - follow through.
• Prepare - be ready, for anything. 
• Flexible - be ready and able to change due to circumstances.
• Communicate - share your ministry information with parents, students, leaders, etc.
• Brave - be willing to take chances.
• Respectful - do to others as you would... you get the point!

As a Christian leader your first priority is to keep your personal relationship with God fresh, pray, read His Word everyday and continually ask for His direction in your life and ministry.

Interact Not Entertain

I watched a mother at Panera talking on the phone, not to her son.  For more than 25 minutes she carried on a very energetic conversation with... someone, while her son ate and sat.  His continual attempt to interrupt the phone conversation was met with a hand gesture to stop, stern look and a mouthed non-verbal "wait."   The first couple attempts the son made were with a great deal of energy as he saw something that caught his attention and filled his, what must have been about four year old, mind with excitement and wonder. The following attempts were a little less exciting and seemed to come with a great deal of apprehension, almost knowingly aware of the pending response. The final attempts were not even directed toward the mother, but now to an older couple sitting at the table closest to his.  The "grandparent" aged couple smiled, pointed and spoke with the small boy; they seemed to be enjoying the interaction as much as the he. Then it happened, the small boy moved from his chair to the edge of the table were this couple sat.  He was there for only a few minutes smiling, giggling and enjoying the time when the mother finally reengaged informing him it was time to go.  As the small boy left with his mother he waved and said "good-bye" at least three times to the strangers who took an interest in him.

Sharing this story is in no way a knock to the mother or parents who need to work to support their families. This is a wake-up call to those of us who minister to students.  How do we engage the students who are right in front of us? How do we take an interest in them?  Students who come to our ministries desire someone to interact not entertain him or her. 

The little boys response to his mother is much like the responses we will receive from students. How we respond to students will determine how excited they become about the ministry and Jesus.  They will either move closer or begin to look for other people and places that take an interest in them.  

My prayer for us is that students know we care, not because we teach it, but because we live it!

Basic Student Ministry Tip 16

When preparing messages, put a team together to help you. This team will help with creativity, developing ideas and series titles.  Meet with this team monthly in a fun, creative environment.  Plan messages at least three months out so your team can continue to pray and think about the message topics while looking for ways to support the series. When putting a team together, variety is important. Find people with different interest, vocation and backgrounds.  This will increase the potential for creating some great messages.

Basic Student Ministry Tip 15

A great way to save your time and budget is share resources.  How to utilize sharing resources among ministries:

• While programming for the year make a list of the materials, resources and items that will be needed for your programs and events.
• Consider an "all church" mailing that includes a list of items that might be needed throughout the year to help with a ministry program or event.  Ask those that receive the mailing to fill in their contact information and check all items that they would allow church ministries to borrow.  *Please don't forget to budget for repairs and replacement if something should break.
• Connect with other local churches to borrow their resources.  We are ALL called to be good stewards, not just our church.
• Advance planning gives you enough time to email a list of needs to see if other leaders have any of the items.
• Share first; this opens the door for others to be generous with you.
• Encourage others ministry leaders to look for ways to share resources.
• Return items clean and on time.  If you find yourself sharing often, create a team of volunteers who will pick-up and drop-off.  

Start sharing and you will begin to start saving!

How Offensive Are You?

I once heard a speaker tell a group of pastors that if they weren't offending people then they weren't really preaching the gospel.  

I am happy to respond to this statement with one of my own.  A child coined it back in the 80's on a half hour TV show.  His response to the person who just gave him startling, shocking or insane news was, "whatcha talkin bout?"   This question was usually directed toward, but not limited to his older brother Willis.

I am always amazed at how many Christian leaders I meet that believe the best way to share Jesus with the "lost and broken" is through a judgmental approach of laying out the list of what we can and cannot do (this list usually involves no coffee in the sanctuary).   If these lost and broken people would work on following our list they might someday arrive and be like, or better yet, one of us.

Jesus clearly communicated to all people that in order for us to have a relationship with Him we must love. Love trumps all!

⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  1 John 4:7-8

Let's break it down like this; in a Bible quick search you can find the following words and how many times each is mentioned (this may vary depending on translation, NIV was used for the following search):

• Correct = 5
• Discipline = 12
• Rebuke = 33
• Encourage = 43
• Teach = 236
• Love = 258

This tells me that I need to evaluate what my motives, ministry and relationship with Christ is built on.  Is it teaching people the right thing at all cost, using our list of rules that has little room for grace?  Or is it living a Christ filled life, teaching and speaking truth in love and allowing the Holy Spirit to ministry to a person's heart.  We need to continue to remember that we don't change and then come to Jesus.  We come to Jesus just as we are and then our lives begin to change through the love, encouragement, teaching, correcting and discipline of the Holy Spirit and people who care that make up the body of Christ.

We are going to offend people and I am sad to say I have many times.  However, I never want to become comfortable hurting people, especially brothers and sisters in Christ.  I choose to represent my God as a God of love... now where have I heard that before?  That's right, directly from God himself (1 John 4:16)!

"You don't have to be offensive to be on the offensive." 

Basic Student Ministry Tip 14

Plan your ministry calendar at least six months in advance.  Here are a couple ideas to help with the planning your calendar.

• Check the "general church" calendar to make sure you don't schedule an event that would conflict with another ministry.
  
• Invite volunteer leaders and parents to a calendar planning party (have food and have fun).
• Confirm with vendors and event locations before putting them on the calendar.
• As difficult as it may be, try to put cost, times and locations on you calendar.  This will make future planning for families much easier.
• Don't worry about cool images and fancy font; make the information easy to read.
• Have your calendar proof read by the lead church office manager/secretary, and a volunteer from your ministry to make sure everything looks good.

Remember the saying, "if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail."  Plan your ministry and get the information out to the people in your church and community. 

Basic Student Ministry Tip 13

Make sure you have the proper forms and paper work to protect you and your ministry. You also will be able to help a student who is in need of medical attention if you have the correct paper work.

Requiring signed forms from parents/guardians also gives your ministry a "professional" look and will usually help parents know that you care about their child. Take time to have the right forms and you could save yourself a great deal of time and stress.