Posted on 16. Jun, 2008 by frank in faith, leadership
This summer kind of took me by surprise as I ended up having to lead our Student Ministry. It has been great to jump in to this department again and to work with a great team of people to reach the teens in our church and this community. While I know this area of ministry is not my primary passion, discipling new leaders is a huge passion for me, and I get to do just that with our group of interns this summer.
Since we only have a few months together I need to focus my efforts with them and be as intentional as possible. I want our church to have it’s needs met so we can have a successful summer, however, I also view this as an opportunity to do so much more than get some grunt work done. We have four great young adults that have a lifetime of ministry ahead of them and I want them to look back on this summer as one of the best learning experiences of their lives.
I plan on accomplishing that by focusing our time together in four categories that I call the DEMO method:
1. Develop – I want each of us develop spiritually and draw closer to God over the next few months. We will be doing this as we study a few short epistles together during this summer. We will also be going on a short retreat at the end of the summer to reflect on what God has done – in and through each of us.
2. Encourage – I want to encourage each intern to focus on their strengths. Often I will see leaders focus on the weaknesses of those that report to them, and push them to improve or invest tons of energy in getting better at things they are just unskilled at. Instead, I want these interns to discover what they are good at, but not be satisfied with good. It is my hope that they will use this summer to become unbelievable at the things they are already good at.
3.
Manage - I want them to learn to
manage their weaknesses. While I don’t think it is a good idea to invest tons of time trying to be awesome at the things you’re not good at. I do think we need to acknowledge our weaknesses. Everyone has things that they lousy at. But
instead of working to become kind of good at the things we find challenging we should learn how to manage our weaknesses. Often I have found that the best way to do this is surround myself with people who are incredible at the things I do poorly. The best example of this so far is our most recent staff addition,
Steve Lybrand. I met Steve a few years ago and he has a real passion for helping others through the toughest times in life. He is skilled in those challenging moments where someone is suffering and needs someone to talk to. He has so much more patience than I do. After serving as an unpaid intern for a year, Steve now is on our staff serving as our Pastoral Care Coordinator. His job is doing something that I don’t do nearly as effective as he does.
4. Overcome Obstacles – I want to help each intern overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of serving Jesus and our church in the way that they feel called. Sometimes those obstacles are financial, other times those obstacles are personal. It could be something like coping with an insecurity or dealing with eliminating a bad habit.
So far over the last four weeks we have gotten off to a great start. Working with these four college students has been invigorating. I hope they learn as much from me as I learn from teaching them this summer.
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