The Student-Led Problem

By Doug Franklin October 12, 2012

I have been reading a lot about student-led youth ministry lately. Honestly I am thrilled. Since 1994 I have been talking about the need to put students in charge of the ministry.  The whole idea of LeaderTreks was to help youth pastors develop students as leaders and allow them (students) to own the ministry. My deep belief was if students were owners in the church, they would stay in the church. Today’s movement is good but it does have a problem. You can’t just start a student-led ministry without first developing students as leaders. Moving to a student-led model will require youth workers who are trained in leadership development. Not many are so they skip this step. Skipping this step will lead to failure and my fear is soon youth workers will say, “student-led ministry doesn’t work.” If you want to pursue a student-led ministry then you will need to spend a good amount of time on developing students as leaders; you can’t just place them in leadership role and say, “go get them, best of luck.”

A great resource to get them started in leadership is Student Leaders Start Here. It’s a solid LeaderTreks resources on how to get a healthy start in student leadership.Check it out here https://www.leadertreks.org/store/student-leaders-start-here/