7 Most Important Questions For A YTH Leader
The most difficult person to lead is yourself. With that in mind, let’s take a look at 7 important questions for YTH leaders.
Answering these questions honestly can give us a feel for the kind of work we are doing. Seek the honest answers to these questions and then do something about correcting the areas that you feel are neglected.
While working with YTH leaders to evaluate and measure their ministry, these seven questions are central to good measurement. I'm sure there are many more questions, but, here are seven evaluators of healthy YTH Ministry:
7 Leadership Questions:
1. Have you grown spiritually/naturally or declined spiritually/naturally in the past 6 months? (The spiritual gifts are the disciplines such as prayer, fasting, reading, study, worship. The natural gifts would include communication/preaching, relational skills, administration, leadership development)
What have we done to increase both our spiritual and natural skillset?
2. What is your philosophy of YTH ministry? What is your model? (Discipleship approach, Evangelism approach, Small Group approach, External community and para-church involvement, Student-led ministry, Fine Arts approach, etc.)
A philosophy will guide your weekly work.
3. What are your strengths? How much time do you spend on your strengths? What activities are you doing to shape your strengths? Every one of us is a professional at something.
It is better to spend more time on your strengths than your weaknesses. Your strengths are something nobody else has. We should become elite at our strengths because that is what sets us apart from everyone else. We probably have more passion for our strength than we do our weakness!
4. Who is your university? Who is your Nathan (editor in chief to David) and who is your Jethro (wisdom and yoda to Moses)? Is there someone you would like to be buried next to? How often do you meet with them? Call them? Who is your Barnabas (encourager to Paul) or your Luke (administrator of the disciples)? We all need help to create a shared ministry effort. Shared ministry will reach more people.
We all need someone in our life that we are afraid of spiritually. We are in the wrong room if we are the smartest person in the room. Is there someone around you that challenges you by removing the ceilings and fences, so you can jump and run.
5. Who is following you? Look at the people who want to be with you and who are asking for time with you. You can tell a lot about yourself by the kind of people who are following you.
Are quality people leaving you? Do the broken seek you out? Be careful when the advantaged or the disadvantaged do not want to be around you.
6. Campus questions: Can you name the high school districts or schools in your area? What are the names of the principals and the key people (teachers, coaches, counselors) on each campus? Name the key student at each of the schools represented in your YTH ministry. How many students do you know outside of your YTH ministry? When is the last time you were on a campus?
7. When is the last time you cried for a teenager? I didn’t say cried because of a teenager…
When is the last time you heard a teenager’s story? Do you know the names of your teenagers? Do you know their family background and the most formative events in their life?
Empathy, compassion, and understanding context are some of the great characteristics of a YTH leader.
Finally
Healthy leadership happens with great measurement. Do a little mid-course correction right now. Go back over these questions. Ask them to yourself. And have another person ask them to you.
These questions will tell you how well the work and the ministry is going. They are both personal and organizational markers. They are measurement and evaluation questions. Evaluating our mission and our wins is encouraging. And painful.
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