Why I Wrote my Free New e-book – Growing Student Leaders

By Doug Franklin September 17, 2013

Youth ministry is always changing but the shifts that are happening these days seem permanent to me. There is a real sense that we must go deeper, but we have to do it with less time, more distractions, broken families and smaller budgets. These obstacles are huge but we can’t keep sending out students who are ill-equipped and don’t understand scripture. These challenges are causing us to ask the question, what is really working? We don’t have the time, money and volunteers to pursue multiple shallow strategies.

I believe that what is working today in youth ministry is the development of students from disciple to leader. The end goal is not just making disciples; it’s making disciples who can lead others to become disciples.

What we want our students to do is live out Christ. Students who understand who Christ is and have internalized his teachings and are practicing them as they live in this culture with their peers. We want them to have a spiritual effect on their friends. We want them to go into all the world and impact it for Christ, baptizing those who believe and release them to influence others.

After spending twenty-five years in youth ministry I am convinced that what keeps youth workers from taking that deeper step of develop leaders is that no one has done it for them. No one has mentored them as a leader. They don’t know how to challenge a student to move beyond discipleship to leadership. We need to break this trend. I dream about a day when thousands of young Christian leaders will be released from our youth groups each year ready to engage and lead in this world.

To help youth workers better understand leadership development I have created a free 40 page guide on how to develop students into leaders. Growing Student Leaders has everything you need to start the process of developing a student leadership program in your church. If you have 3 students or 300 the proven strategies in this free e-book will help you. If you ever have a question on student leadership, our team here at LeaderTreks is ready to help. Give us a call at 877-502-0699 and we are happy to spend time talking it through with you.