2 Tips to Make Your Student Leaders Successful

Jeremy Pettitt gives 2 best practices to help your students leaders have a successful year of ministry serving at your church.

Here is the link to the Student Leader Book:

http://awana.org/store/Awana-Student-Leaders:-Wh...

Video Transcript

So, lately I've been getting questions from Awana leaders and commanders about using student leaders in your Awana ministry. Using them to help run Cubbies or Sparks or T&T depending on what age they are. Some people have asked me, "What are some best practices? What are some things that can help us as we begin to engage student?" Let me give you a few things that I think you need to do as you prepare to use student leaders and as you continue using them. The first thing is: I think you need to communicate clear expectations. What are you expecting them to do? Sometimes we think, well, we just expect them to show up and help with the group. But did you expect them to show up early? Were they supposed to set something up? Were they supposed to get the supplies ready? Were they supposed to show up at training? Were they supposed to show up when you have leader meetings? Or, they just show up when you them want to?

You need to clearly communicate, both to them and to their parents, what the expectations are. One of the ways you can do that is actually to draft a contract. There is a sample contract in the All About Student Leaders book that we wrote. You can see the link below for that. It'll show you where that is. But there's a sample contract in there that says: This is what you're agreeing to. I encourage you; have them sign a contract so that the expectations are extremely clear. The other thing I think you need to think about is assigning them a mentor. Helping them find one person who they can go to when they're struggling with something. Or, when they need to make a decision about, "Do I show up tonight? Or not?" I think a mentor will really help, if you can find one person, and maybe it's the leader they're working with in their group so that they understand all the things that are going on. Maybe it's another person who's a leader or a director for your Awana ministry. But make sure they have one person they can call and say, "Hey, listen. I'm struggling with this." Or, "I got a lot of homework this week and I don't know if I can make it. What do I do? I'll do my best. Or you know what, I have to skip tonight. Someone in my family died."

They need someone to contact and connect with that they feel comfortable with. Because the last thing I'm going to suggest is that you actually hold them accountable. They want to know what they can do better and if someone is not there who's observing what they're doing, who's engaging them on a regular basis ... I even heard of one leader who basically created scorecards with the end of the year, they were evaluated and reviewed. And it wasn't some way of being harsh or saying, "You got an A, or a B or a C. You're not a good leader." It was more just to say, "Here's some places that we saw you do amazing work this year. Here's some places we saw you grow. And here's some places we think you can improve in the years to come." Make sure that you're holding them accountable so that they know, "Hey, you know what? I'm getting better as a leader." Think through. What would you want that leader to be in 5 years if they continued working in your ministry. You need to begin right now developing the kind of leaders that you want for the future. Because even if they don't stay at your church, they may wind up at another Awana somewhere.

And don't we want the best leaders we can possibly develop for the kingdom of god. Begin holding them accountable. Begin communicating clear expectations. Begin by helping them understand that there is someone there who cares about them. And you will develop the kind of leaders that can do that far into the future.