I am unashamedly a fan of Kenda Creasy Dean. Her book, Almost Christian, is one I believe every pastor, youth worker, and parent should read.
As as result, when my colleague and I decided to use a book as the framework for our adult leader's training this year, I immediately recommended Dean and Ron Foster's, The Godbearing Life. The fact that this book was written 15 years ago points to just how prophetic Dean is. Far from sounding outdated, many of the issues discussed in this book are ones that the majority of the youth ministry world is just beginning to wrestle with now.
Yesterday, was our leader's first discussion of the book and it did not disappoint. Our focus was on Section One: Redefining Youth Leadership. Since it's some of our leaders' first year serving in our youth ministry, I created a job description for them using ideas from this section of Godbearing Life. Here it is:
Your Role as a Youth Ministry Adult Leader:
Grow in your own faith so that you can point students to Jesus.
Get to know students by creating a safe-environment in which students can share openly and honestly and by establishing expectations and holding students accountable to them.
Be an adult guarantor who sees in your students the potential they do not necessarily see in themselves.
Draw attention to what God's doing in the lives of students so that we can foster on-going faith in their lives.
Over the years, I've created a number of leader job descriptions. However, what I like about this one is that while practical, it's driven by theology.
Fellow youth workers: Do you have a job description for your leaders? If so, what does it include?
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