This past Tuesday, I realized I had made a big mistake. Every week, I work with middle school students through an organization called Campus Thrive. It’s an incredible ministry and we’ve seen significant fruit this year, but I still needed to fix something.

I had forgotten to consistently cast vision for my students on why they do Thrive.

As humans, we need a purpose. While our great purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, we still need a vision for the specific events in our lives. We need to be constantly reminded of this vision as well, otherwise we’ll forget why we do things and either stop doing them or get burnt out.

Here is one of the BEST videos I’ve ever seen about casting vision for leaders. It is entertaining, interesting, and extremely insightful. You really need to watch it, and I promise it will be worth your time.

Now that you’ve seen the video, what vision are you casting for your leaders?

We recently spent some time learning from 3DM Ministries. They’re an incredible group with very clear language who are dedicated to seeing Biblical discipleship fill our churches.

One thing we appreciated was the “leadership pipeline.” It is a very helpful tool for developing leaders, and has given us a lot to think about. I want to share the pipeline with you, share where we are need improvement, and challenge you to think through improvements you can make as well.

The Leadership Pipeline:

The Pipeline has 4 Phases:

1) Recruit: If you want to train leaders, you must first get leaders! This is actually something we do really well,  and I say this because we rarely have a shortage of volunteers. If you are struggling with finding volunteers, here are some practical tips from our awesome volunteer coordinator, Anita.

2) Train: While this step seems obvious, it can be very tempting to skip it and move volunteers onto step 3. As youth ministers, discipling or teaching students can be rather natural. We don’t think about how we lead, we just lead. The problem is, most leaders (both students and adults) are not necessarily naturals. We must take the time to invest in them so that they can become confidant in their leadership abilities. I would give us a 6/10 on this, because we do have some training in place and provide good resources, however we need to grow in our ability to train leaders throughout the year in a more relational way.

3) Deploy: Nothing is more discouraging for a volunteer than never having anything to do. Imagine asking to help with something, being told “absolutely!” and then never getting to actually help! It is essential that every volunteer has a place and gets placed somewhere they can succeed. Sometimes we’re afraid to deploy because we want control or because we cannot trust others to do the job right. But that is why step 2 is so important! If we have spent time training them, know their skill set, and recognize their love for the Lord we can deploy them and trust them to do the job right. Deployment is another strength of ours, because we have hundreds of volunteers doing hands on ministry every week. If anything, we deploy too quickly and need to spend more time training.

4) Review: Often times, we think we’re done training leaders once they’ve been deployed, but this is not Jesus’s way. When the disciples went out on mission, they always came back to discuss how things went. Through review, we are able to determine how our leaders are doing and know what further training they need. Review requires relationship, and the step is essential for continual growth and encouragement. If you don’t review, you can lose leaders who have been frustrated for months, and you may not have even known they were frustrated! This is easily our weakest area when it comes to leadership development, and we really need to review better. We’re taking steps though, and hope that by the end of the semester we will be much better at review (we’ll let you know when we do).

What does your leadership pipeline look like? What are your strengths? Weaknesses?

This morning I was feeling a bit discouraged when I arrived at Campus Thrive club. I was tired, had a headache, and was feeling frustrated about my day. Towards the end of Thrive, a 7th grade girl stood up and shared her testimony.

It blew me away.

She was incredibly articulate, and spoke straight from the heart about her struggles in life. She used to be angry at God for them, but after coming to Thrive and worshipping with the other students her heart was changed. God has been healing her, and she wants other students to feel the same way.

She finished with this: “The other day I was raking up leaves and putting them in a bag. I realized the last bag I was using had a hole in it. I went inside, grabbed some tape and scissors, and fixed the bag so it could hold leaves again. God does this for us, without him we would be empty. But he comes in and fixes the holes in our lives so we can be full again. He’s done this for me and I know He’ll keep doing it, and he can do it for you.”

Has a student ever encouraged you? How so?

One of our favorite ministries we work with is called “Thrive.” Thrive is a campus ministry that teaches students how to be leaders for Christ on their school campus. It is incredibly effective and incredibly simple.

Thrive clubs have two different meeting times every week. Adult leaders meet with the student leadership and teach them spiritual and leadership principles. The students also plan out their second meeting time of the week, which takes place on the school’s campus. During the campus meeting, students lead worship, do games, perform a skit, teach a lesson, and share a testimony.

Student Super Heroes on their campus

We love Thrive for the following reasons:

1) The Gospel is being taught by students at their schools!

2) We get to teach students how to be better leaders.

3) The students love it.

4) Middle School students can pull it off and do a great job!!

5) Through Thrive we get to connect and work with other youth pastors in the area.

6) Since students lead, it is completely legal.

7) Thrive has free curriculum the students can use as lesson guides!

If you still need more proof, check out this 7th grade student’s thoughts on Thrive:

“I have wanted to become a Thrive Leader since I was in third grade. My older brother was in middle school at the time and he was a leader. They got to meet at Chick-fil-a every Monday morning. He said that it was really fun, and I thought well of course it is, you eat Chick-fil-a!

But as I got older and closer to God I started to understand why he enjoyed it so much. I realized that Thrive wasn’t about the chicken biscuits they got or even hanging out with their friends.

Now that I am a Thrive Leader myself, I understand that Thrive is so much fun because of God. You get to praise the Lord, share the scripture, and your faith with everyone at your school. Not only do you feel Jesus Christ moving through you but you can feel him working through your school and friends. Helping others get closer to God is something that you can’t even begin to explain.

Being a middle school has its up and downs, but knowing that God is there for you is a feeling like no other. You really begin to notice that God is there to catch you when you fall down.”

There you have it! We believe that Campus Ministry is essential here. We have seen incredible fruit and growth through efforts in the schools. Are you involved on your local school’s campus? What has been successful? What has been unsuccessful?

Something we say a lot around here is, “you cultivate what you celebrate.” This is a simple truth that is constantly played out when developing student leaders.

It never ceases to amaze me how much of a difference encouragement can make in a student. When you compliment them on a project or attend one of their events, it can literally make their face light up. While there is potential for pride, when done correctly, encouragement spurs most students on to keep getting better at what they do.

Knowing that student culture is created based on the things you celebrate, it is extremely important to ask yourself, “what do we want to celebrate?”

If you want to raise students up who are great at music and can use their gifts for the Lord, celebrate music! If you want to create student disciple makers, celebrate student led discipleship!

The opposite can also be true. If you tell students that they are not capable of being leaders, you will create a culture of students who come only to be fed.

This change does not happen over night. When you cultivate something, it takes time! But when you celebrate something, people take notice. They get excited about getting on board, they seek to become better, and they can truly be empowered to make a difference.

Questions for the week:
What should you be celebrating that you are not?
What are you celebrating that you should spend less time on?

Without volunteers, our ministry would never survive! As church employees, we wish we could connect deeply with every student individually, but we simply cannot. That’s why volunteers are so important: they represent Jesus to each student and make sure no one falls through the cracks.

The difficulty for most ministries, however, is actually recruiting volunteers. In the following video, Anita, our volunteer coordinator who supervises over 250 volunteers, shares some practical tips for recruiting and keeping volunteers.

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5 key tips for recruiting and keeping volunteers

1) Identify Your Needs in Student Ministry: Do you need small group leaders? Worship Leaders? A set-up team?

2) Identify Your Target: Who should you go after to be a volunteer? Your number one source should be parents, but you can also go after friends, young adults or college students, and even High School students who desire to help with Middle School. Another important idea is to target people who are gifted in the areas of need from point 1. It would not make sense to go after a worship leader who cannot sing!

3) Recruit, Recruit, Recruit: Do whatever it takes to recruit people! Make phone calls, invite people to dinner, send out e-mails, post it on facebook or your website, ask in the church bulletin. The more personal the invite, the more likely the response, but blanket e-mails will turn up volunteers you may have never known.

4) Train Your Volunteers: People don’t like to fail, so set them up for success and they will want to volunteer all the more! Have a solid information packet ready for them that answers their questions, but be prepared to be there for them personally as well. Don’t assume that others know how to disciple just because you do, we must continually train our volunteers!!!

5) Celebrate Your Volunteers: People love being appreciated. Celebrate them by sending them a card or gift on their birthday, sharing amazing God stories that they have been a part of, calling them, praying for them, and so much more. You will be amazed at how encouraging the little things can be and people return to things when they know they are appreciated and making a difference.

What are some ways you celebrate your volunteers?

One of our major beliefs here is that every student is uniquely gifted to glorify God. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” While some may be excellent discipleship group leaders, others may be better at hospitality. While some may love setting up chairs, others may love sharing the gospel with their football team.

In keeping with that, we seek to celebrate the different gifts of every student. We celebrate their gifts because we know it will spur them on to continue working and grow in their abilities. We truly believe that God can use our students’ gifts to change the world, and so we encourage them as much as possible.

This coming weekend, we will be celebrating the students who are creative at heart. On Saturday night, about 30 students will be setting up art and photography displays, performing music, and glorifying God together at the Music and Arts Festival.

Last year was our first Festival, and we were amazed at the talent our kids displayed. It was humbling to see and hear the incredible gifts that were in our midst that we did not even know about. This year, we’re expecting it to be even better.

So here is the challenge/question: Are you celebrating your students’ gifts? If so, how? If not, you could have incredible talent right under your nose and not even realize it!

Patrick, one of our performers, just recorded a song with some friends at school and Chuck Leavell (the keyboardist for Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, and Rolling Stones). He sings the chorus of the following song. It’s worth listening to:

Last week, we introduced the first benefit of student led discipleship. You can read about it here. This week, we’ll be exploring the second benefit: spiritual growth amongst our leaders.

Girls leading their discipleship group

One student, named Rebecca, had this to say about being a LUGHead (High school student who disciples middle school students):

“Being a middle school discipleship leader has helped me grow in my relationship with God so much. Each week, preparing a lesson has helped me to learn how to dig into Scripture and really learn about God in new ways. I’ve never prayed for anything as hard as I have when I became a LUG Head. Everything that’s within me wants my LUG girls to know God in an intimate way.”
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There are two simple and consistent fruits that we have seen in student led discipleship. Today we will hit on the first benefit, and next Tuesday we will explore the second one.

Students Leading Time in the Word

The first is the reproduction of disciple makers. Each year, we have more applicants to be LUG Heads (the name for our High School students who disciple middle school students) than the year before. When we ask freshman why they want to become LUG Heads, the answer is almost always the same: “I want to have the same impact on middle schoolers that my LUG Head had on me.”
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We are really passionate about discipleship here.

Jesus pronounced His Kingdom on the Earth through discipleship, and we simply cannot come up with better methods than Jesus. So I stick with discipleship.

Discipleship Defined

The word “discipleship,” gets thrown around a lot today, but how many of us know what it means? Some see it as Bible study, others as a relationship, and others just think it is a strange word.

The dictionary defines disciple as “a follower or student of a teacher, leader, or philosophy.” That definition is decent, but we can do better.

When Jesus trained the disciples, his goal was to multiply himself. I don’t mean he wanted to create 12 clones, but rather 12 men who were capable of carrying on and extending his work. Yes they followed him, but once he left Earth they were meant to continue his work in new places and for new generations.

This is discipleship: training and teaching others to fulfill and extend a mission in ways that could not be done by yourself alone (for the record, Jesus could have done more by himself, but he chose to limit himself in part to set an example for us).

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