Creating Effective Youth Leadership Meetings
Looking back on my years as a youth pastor, I can remember how much anticipation there was for our leadership meetings. Our leaders did not want to miss our meetings. However, we did not get to that point easily.
I think there are some key ingredients in an effective youth leadership meeting. Here are six elements:
Make sure that the frequency of the meetings are an advantage and not a disadvantage - If you meet too little or too much it can be a disadvantage, but, if you meet just the right amount, it can become an advantage. That may mean weekly, biweekly, or monthly meetings. If you're not meeting on a regular basis you're not growing as a team in all of the areas that are required.
A well-timed youth leader meeting creates planning, training, and relationship that requires time on task together. What should be clear to every youth leader, is that effective meetings will create clarity, maturity, vision, and unity.
Every meeting should contain the following elements:
Dedicated time of building relationships with the team - It is important that you have refreshments or a meal prepared. Depending on your budget, you can do something that is lighter or more formal. The point of the meal is very spiritual and important for developing deep community. Some things happen around the table that cannot happen anywhere else.
Make sure that everyone gets involved in the planning of the relationship time. This is where relationship building can create a more effective experience. If you need to, have the leaders rotate and take control of this part of the meeting with planning, assignments, or crowd breakers.
Sharing wins can be elite culture building - Everyone wants to be around something that is exciting and growing. By sharing wins this creates that kind of experience and ultimately the atmosphere of the ministry.
When the team gets together and shares what God is doing through them, it brings group health. When other leaders hear about how God is using another person on the team, it creates accountability and faith. How does that happen? Look at it this way.
It creates accountability when a leader has not been connecting with students for various reasons, and, they hear how another leader has creatively connected with a student. It creates faith by hearing what God is doing and becomes viral helping others believe for the same thing.
Every meeting should have a time of calendar planning and assignments - Discussing calendar and assignments can foster great clarity for everyone involved. Obviously, an annual calendar should be in the hands of the leaders, but, taking time out of every meeting to plan for the immediate events creates more success.
Maybe you need to assign leaders to a small group, or maybe you need to solve a problem in the youth service by moving leaders next to a student, or the calendar and assignment time could be as simple as making sure you have enough leaders for the next event. This is also a great time to solve problems and ask questions to the team.
Development is a critical part of an effective youth leadership meeting - If there's one critical thing that is lacking in youth ministry today, it is ongoing leadership development. We cannot do adequate leadership development in a quick meeting 15 minutes before the youth service. We cannot do effective youth leadership development quarterly or four times a year. Youth leadership development takes a systematic and comprehensive plan to prepare a team to lead such an important ministry in the church.
Here are some important topics to cover in youth leadership development:
teen generational traits and sociological characterization will help leaders relate to teen culture better
basic counseling skills with teen topics in mind (family, dating, identity, social media, at-risk behaviors)
role playing various conversations with teens that could range from how to lead students to Christ, or, how to talk to students who are depressed or suicidal
every team should cover basic natural skill-sets such as communication, personal life discipline, and relational / social manners
every team should cover basic spiritual principles such as personal spiritual disciplines like prayer, reading, fasting, giving, and simplicity
Leadership development can be done in many formats. Consider going through a book together as a team, or watching a video series from Alpha or ted.com, or even having guest speakers in from the community.
The final element in the youth leadership meeting is prayer and worship - Hopefully this goes without saying. And when we talk about prayer and worship, I don't mean opening or closing a meeting in prayer or simply singing one song together. I'm talking about planned and organized prayer and worship. This can create a presence-based youth ministry within the core people who will shape the culture of the youth ministry for the students.
I can remember youth leadership meetings that were interrupted by the Holy Spirit in my home or at another leaders home. I can remember the youth team on their face in the youth room praying for the students the entire meeting. Get creative with this by doing prayer walks, dividing the roster into prayer teams for the leaders, and taking time for intercessory prayer for the area schools.
Finally
Bring others around you with varying organizational gifts, food preparation, or venue planning for the meeting. Allow the leaders to own it. By moving the meeting around to different locations, you can bring creativity and variety to the meeting. We had our meetings at the school, at an airport, in the youth room, at homes, and at the beach.
If you are going to create anticipation for the youth leadership meeting, it will take work. However, it is worth it because a value-added leadership meeting will bring greater effectiveness to the overall youth ministry. And your leaders will see the meeting as unmissable!