Discovering Leaders

Offering an opportunity for leadership is providing youth and adults with an opportunity to use their gifts.

En - able - ment = Empowerment

There are some primary factors in uncovering and enabling leadership within your own community. They include:

1. Surfacing people's gifts. This assumes
• charism of community
• gifts of the Spirit
• God loves us/them
• needs can be met.
2. Equipping the leaders. We must provide training, resources, support and recognition.
3. Organization of the work. We must place people in a circumstance where they can work and share their skills and gifts. They must have a context that is workable for them.
4. Supporting the leaders. A minister must not minister alone. Support must be affective and include celebration and thanks. Support must provide for evaluation so that there can be assessment, measurement, encouragement and correction. Support must include supervision so that leaders are not on their own, have a sense of limits and control and have someone else with whom there can be reflection and explanation.
5. Sharing the story. We must provide opportunities for the community to hear what is happening and to give leaders an opportunity to hear each other's stories for consideration and learning.

We must see and present leadership as an opportunity and a privilege, not as a problem and a source of guilt and burden.

Developing a Support Group

It is important to ensure that the youth ministries of your congregation is not a one-person program. Neither you nor it will survive. There needs to be a common understanding of the ministry: goals, purpose and direction. There must be people within the congregation who are advocates and supporters of youth ministries. It may be that before you can develop a youth program, it will be necessary to form a support group. If the congregation has already agreed to a youth program, then it is essential to put a support group into place.

Group Makeup

The people who are in a support group need to be people who have a genuine concern for youth. They should understand that they are not being asked to do youth ministries but to support it. They should be representative of the congregation and larger community in age, race, gender, and interest. To begin, the group should include no more than 3-8 people. It may grow and diversify over time if it is a large congregation with an active program.

Group Tasks

The function of this group is to provide support for youth ministries in the congregation and for the leadership of the youth ministries program. They should be asked to pray not only for the whole direction and work of youth ministries, but also for individual young people and leaders. They may choose to study together and to seek a vision for the youth ministries of the congregation and the surrounding community. Their task is to uphold a vision for youth ministries in the congregation and to create through their own involvement and interest a climate of concern and for youth. They may be asked to advocate for youth in the structures of the congregation. They may be useful in assisting in the recruitment of volunteers and resource people for your youth programs.

This group should not be comprised of the people who have a hands-on role in operating the program. They may have no obvious active involvement or they may become gradually more involved. They will need to meet occasionally, with flexibility in terms of time and membership. It may be that this group only meets once a month in support of a working program, but more frequently at the beginning or in other times of difficulty and crisis. Leadership in this group should be shared.

Developing a Working Group 

The working group is the team of people who actually work with youth in a variety of roles
and with a variety of tasks, each requiring a specific but limited time commitment.

It is important to ensure that the youth ministries program of your congregation is a team ministry. Team ministry is essential for a broadly based and effective youth program. It is important to have established a purpose statement and to be working with agreed long and short-term goals in your work. You will need to know what you, together, are trying to accomplish and whether you are moving in the direction your parish is supporting. These people will assist you with youth ministries in your congregation.

Team Members

These people will like young people and be willing to be with them or be willing to work on their behalf. They will have some interest or skill to do the specific job or task that they are asked to do. It is essential to try to match people and jobs. It is also important to share the load as much as possible.

Recruiting Members

This is one of the most important pieces of building an effective and enduring youth ministries program and involves care and planning; as well, recruiting may take some time. (For more information see the RESOURCES section on recruitment.)

Supporting Your Team

If you want the ministry to grow, support cannot be ignored. This may include the need for training for some of your leadership and working team in areas that they request. It will require the general support of the congregation and the specific support of your support group. Some public act of commissioning or blessing for youth leaders or volunteers helps affirm this work as ministry. Praying together before events and involving the volunteers who do the small and less noticed jobs can build ownership and involvement. Encourage the young people to express their appreciation. Be creative and thankful.

It sounds like a lot of work to get started in building a team. It is. But if this part of the work is done well, the difficulty and despair that inevitably sets in for a program eagerly and hastily begun may be avoided. Careful preparation of a ministry is vital for the health and well-being of both the leaders and the participants.

Program Areas

1. Christian Education and Catechesis
   Focus: To nurture personal faith development and to share the values, beliefs and story of the faith community with young people.
2. Community Life
   Focus: To build Christian community with young people through programs and relationships that promote openness, trust, respect, cooperation, honesty, responsibility and service; and to create an atmosphere where young people can grow and bring their struggles, questions and joys.
3. Service
   Focus: To provide opportunities for community service through education and programs.
4. Guidance and Counsel
   Focus: To provide support, education, resources and counsel for decision-making, crisis intervention and prevention.
5. Prayer and Worship
   Focus: To enable young people to grow in their personal spirituality and to provide a variety of worship experiences to deepen their relationships in community; to involve young people in the sacramental life of the church.
6. Justice and Peace
   Focus: To develop social consciousness and commitment to peace and justice; to provide opportunities for education and social action.
   
   N.B.: There may be duplication from one area to another. The same program or event might be effective in other component areas.