Monday, April 2, 2007

Watching youth lead is amazing. Last week was one in which there were opportunities to watch youth lead within the group itself and within a worship service.

I guess this is something within ministry that I think is very cool to watch but harder to work at and to make successful. It seems sometimes that people just want to be led; all the time. They don't want opportunities to lead themselves. But in all actuality one person cannot always do all of the leading. They have to be able to have those around them also lead while they maintain leadership as a whole.

Sometimes it seems in youth this ability to have student leaders isn't always easy and sometimes don't seem possible. It was really neat to see students step up and take leadership last week. The youth group was leading a Lenten Service on Wednesday night in which there was a drama and worship. It was cool to of the students who I have always hoped would be able to step up and take leadership finally take that leadership. They both stepped up and did a great job in leading.

Its powerful to be able to sit back as a leader and see those who you are leading take the leadership and lead you. It made me really think about where I want to be able to shape my own ministry if I ever am able to be a youth pastor. I like the idea of focusing on raising student leaders so that they can not only establish themselves better as people but that they can also see the impact that they have on their peers.

There is something within leading itself too. I think that it is powerful for the youth leading as well. From my own experience as a college student I have grown so much by leading, learning from the mistakes and accomplishments. I can imagine this wouldn't be different for a high school student.

Within the service that the youth were leading it was neat to see the response of the congregation to their leading and to the things that they introduced within the service. There were different stations that were set up in the service to enable different kinds of worship. There was one station in which you could light a candle to represent what was holding you back from Christ and another station in which you could write on the back of a tile what you needed to lay down at the cross. After writing on the tile you would then glue it, writing side down onto the cross and leave it there, symbolising how we need to give Jesus different things in our life and leave them at the cross. The people responded well to this and you could tell that the congregation too was encouraged to see their youth participating in the leading of a worship service.

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