HOW DO I SET LEADERS FREE?

You are about to watch a video that could possibly revolutionize the way you lead your team of youth leaders. This is Anton Krupicka. He is a minimalist runner and a member of team New Balance. This is a shoe advertisement and a story wrapped up in one. As you watch the video (embedded below) you're gonna be amazed at the epic beard for sure but at the same time you're going hear story.

While Anton talks about running and his relationship to the tools and the sponsor who supplies the tools I want you to imagine that you're New Balance and your leaders are Anton.

Your leaders want to run. They want to experience the chase and have their roles trimmed down to the barest essential. Along the way they want to take the journey all in. The more we are tempted to make the simple complex the more we will possibly slow down and hinder their performance as well as their joy.

There are times when you turn around and you see your leader taking matters into their own hands in the same way Anton took a knife to his running shoe. In those moments it's not a time to force your tools back on to the leader but instead to ask your leader why they chose to think differently. You might discover a better way or a new tool that can help them feel more secure, free, and equipped to do what they love most.

Leaders want to win. They want to be faithful. They want to be in the race for the lives of students. They will laugh at their falls and be able to get up again if you as the leader seek to be genuine in your responses and resources to set them free. Find out why they run, what compels them, and meet them where they are at.

YOUTH LEADERS HELPING YOUTH LEADERS

I have another blog that is all about resources for youth leaders. Some of the best resources can't fit in a blog post. The one resource that needs to be talked about the most is you! The Repository is a directory of Youth Leaders who are volunteering themselves as a resource for consulting, help, or tangible items that you can borrow to help you reach out to students.

Being on the repository is simply an agreement to serve. You setup consulting times that are convenient to you and you decide if the partnership is right for tangible resource use. You are contacted by email only.

Fill out the form at YOUTH LEADER STASH to jump on board. You can view a list of Repository leaders here.

ENCOURAGEMENT

A couple of weeks ago me and my family left Austin to head for the Gulf Coast to have some fun on the beach at Mustang Island. At the same time we were there the NW Austin area YoungLife team was also in that part of Texas planning their Fall semester of clubs and events.


I have a great relationship with YoungLife and because their wins our my wins we are able to see into each other's dreams and needs throughout the year. I love the exchange because ultimately we are chasing after the same things. We want to see students come to Jesus and we value relational ministry. 


So when their area director called us and said, "Hey can you guys come up to the place where we are staying and let us be a blessing to you?" My wife and I loaded our boys in the car and headed to their part of the beach. That night we gathered in the condominium they were staying in to eat with their team.


After dinner I was talking with one of their leaders when I felt a change of light and silence in the room causing me to look up and see the faces of their college kids and leaders surrounding the table. That's when Billy their area director spoke up. For the next ten to fifteen minutes Billy looked us in the eyes and shared with his leaders everything that we do for students in NW Austin through Gateway and the Uprising. It was very humbling and for a few seconds I felt tears swelling up within me. It wasn't over the top or in lieu of any string attached. Quite honestly it was the first time in a very long time that anyone ever talked like that to us and in front of my sons. 


What Billy and his team didn't know is that it could haven't come at a more needful time in our lives. The thing that I was struck with after it was all over was the fact that Billy intentionally or unintentionally taught his team of single and college aged leaders what it looked like to speak life and love to people who may never be able to repay it. For Billy I know it was from the heart.


I would encourage you to create a teaching moment like this for your staff, interns, or leaders. Think of ways and maybe even people who need life breathed in to them like this. 

THE YOUTH PASTOR IS A STRAY DOG

Dear brothers and sisters... I want to describe for you two types of dog. The first is my beautiful and wonderful Zoe. Zoe is a black lab who I love dearly. She is cared for, fed, and a part of this family. I love having her around and her desire to be loved and give love is incredible. Below is a picture of her at the lake doing what she does best.

Enjoying the wild, running free, and fetching the tennis ball gives her a chance to waller in being everything I knew she could be as a pup when I first laid eyes on her. But this is not us? Or at least not the majority of us on the inside.


There have been years and tremendously horrible seasons of my life that I was a stray. Strays have no home. They roam the alley ways, roads, and back corners of this world going for days at a time ransacking the garbage piles and handouts. They have learned to live with going from place to place coming oh so close to being caught, shot, or near death. Darkness looks more like the dog you see next in this post. 

Emaciated, starved, diseased, guarded, defensive, unapproachable, alone, uncared for, and unchecked. You think about and can even talk about the life you should live but you've learned that the way you are is as good as it gets. The only problem is that this is more of a description of your soul than it is your appearance right? How did you come to this? You deserve so much better as a daughter of Christ or Son of the most high. You have spent so much of yourself taking care of others that you have failed to see your condition. I think you took that first job and got hurt so you learned to guard yourself and run. 


You had high expectations on yourself but awkwardly discovered that what you endeavored to give to others would not be given to you. So you lived with it. You worked somewhere for two years then another for just a year then again another for two. You never planned that it's the nature of what you do but you've absorbed it because everyone thinks of you like Zoe. Your pain, hurt, fear, and loneliness has left you diseased and starved in your heart hasn't it? James puts it this way... "God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble." Don't learn to be content with being a stray. You can't live off of the scraps of a rag tag spirituality bitter against the ones who are being cared for around you. You need grace and it won't be found in your desire to cling to the idol of independence and indifferent allowance.


Put your guard down and wander into the door of community. Don't hold hostage the people around you with your fears of being caught, shot, or dying to self.


¹³Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." ¹⁴Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.