Empowering Students to Lead!
There is a verse in the Bible that I was taught as a young Christian. In Bible college I learned that my role as a pastor is to NOT do all the ministry on my own. Don't beleive me? Then read this:
"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ." Ephesians 4:11-12 (NLT)Here are some thoughts I have learned from empowering students:
* It tends to be better when students lead
Don't get me wrong, we have failed by letting students lead but when we empower students to lead it tends to turn out better! A junior in high school: organized this dance, got the team together to learn the dance, had the team there on time to run through the dance and they preformed it as an opener to our ministry night. I love empowering students to lead! Honestly the only thing I did for the dance was ask her to lead it and then check in with her, weekly, before the dance.
* Students feel more buy in
We currently have an amazing student leadership team in our high school ministry and on that team we have a young lady who loves to dance! Now, not only does she love to dance she is really good at dancing. A few months ago I asked her if she could choreograph a dance to open up our ministry night and she killed it! We decided to do it again and this time we filmed it (Watch it here). There is some huge buy in when you empower students to lead.
* More students are involved
For this particular instance we had a few students involved who may not have found another way to get involved in the weekly program (other than inviting a friend). This gave them a cool way to invite their friends to watch them dance/sing. I love it when we get more students involved and help them to have more investment in the ministry.
How are you empowering students to lead?