Your staff is maxed out. Your volunteers have been stretched as far as they’ll go. Everyone seems to be hitting the ceiling of their potential, and you’re worried your ministry team will never achieve your vision.
Or maybe there’s one team member who’s struggling to keep up with the rest. Their inexperience or lack of motivation is beginning to hold everyone else back. It’s time to infuse your team with the one thing that can take your team members past their individual limits: strong leadership.
A team is only as strong as it’s strongest member. No, I didn’t get that wrong. We often think our team is as strong as our weakest member, but that’s not really true. The leadership of our team determines how far it will go. In fact, great leadership can push weaker team members to new levels. With strong leadership, we will be challenged to dream big dreams and do the impossible. Strong leadership will motivate the entire team to rise beyond obstacles and take up challenges that would have been left untouched.
With weak leadership, however, nothing will happen. Weak leadership lets our teams stop in front of obstacles, leaving room for gossip, bad attitudes, and short sightedness. Teams with weak leadership will often crumble at the first sign of hardship. So instead of looking at your team and focusing on the weakest link, look at yourself and ask:
- Am I casting a vision only God can accomplish?
- Am I giving each person on my team evaluation so they know how they can grow?
- Am I encouraging everyone with specific, positive words?
- Am I taking risks?
- Am I caring for people on my team?
- Am I motivating the freeloaders?
- Am I dreaming about the future?
Are you asking yourself these questions in how you work with your youth ministry staff? What about your volunteers? Do you see your student leadership team asking these questions? Think of these questions as if you’re doing leadership push-ups. If you ask them regularly, your leadership will slowly get stronger until these values are second nature to you.
CC Image courtesy Matthew Simantov on Flickr.
