4. Have an awesome place to hold youth leadership meetings.
A safe, warm and comfortable place for youth leadership meetings to be held is our next must-have. While each of our churches may be working with different budgets and resources, every effort should be made to give these meetings access to whatever audio and video tools we can muster to help them succeed.
Don’t forget the medium can help carry the message! Music, movies and more should all be available to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.
5. Offer unique challenges.
Can anyone deny that youth love excitement, adventure and challenge?
When our program offers leadership development flavored by these experiences, we can make education as fun as it is effective. And when education is fun, there’s less worry that our youth won’t show up and learn the important life skills designed to serve them, their peers and their church.
Resist the tendency to be too serious by encouraging smiles and laughter. Give the youth a reason to keep coming back other than a stoic sense of responsibility! Unique, fun challenges bring out the best in our future youth leaders.
6. Don’t ignore fundraising.
Make no mistake, the better funded your youth leadership development program is, the greater its ability to succeed will be. It’s an unavoidable fact of life, so do your best to overcome any shyness about fundraising.
It’s for the best of causes and the more effective you (or whoever will be in charge of fundraising) are, the better shape your program will ultimately be in. Chances are, there are many people involved in both your church and community who would love to help out the program once you share with them all the exciting details of what you’re doing now and plan for the future.
Spread the word!
