The Fall Semester of 2011 has officially come to an end. Classes are over, finals have been taken, and students have graduated. It's a bittersweet reminder of how short the college experience is! I can remember my first encounters with some of the new graduates. I'd just gotten back from Iraq and met all of these new wide-eyed freshmen. Now those same kids I met are graduates and on their way to to be used by God in great ways all over the country. I'm very proud of each one and even more thankful that God has allowed me to stick around long enough to see a cycle of students through to completion.
Reflecting on the future loss of even more quality leaders in the Spring reinforces the urgency I must have preparing for this Spring. This Spring we are trying something new at Challenge. This coming semester we will be starting a new Community group (Journey in the Wilderness) focusing on developing potential future leaders.
The past 2 years since I've been at Challenge something that I've noticed and have been a little frustrated about is how much time we lose in the fall. We have future leaders go through an application and interview process but its fairly truncated. It doesn't give the students a chance to really figure out if they will be capable of committing to serving on our ministry team nor does it give the staff a lot of time to really assess these young leaders character and spiritual maturity. What I've been finding the past two years is that students get on the ministry team and are as soon as the semester starts are expected to begin serving. However something that's been difficult is that often times these young leaders aren't quite ready to begin leading on their own. They haven't received the training or discipleship necessary to really do what we expect of them well.
So this Spring the community group we are starting will be a semester long commitment to go through a Ministry team basic training. The students will learn what it means to become a person of character and how God requires His leaders to be people of great character. They'll be learning basic skills for bible study so they learn how to study the Word of God. They will learn how to develop basic spiritual disciplines. They'll discover their personality traits, leadership traits, and spiritual gifts.
I'm really excited to begin working with these students that will be in our Journey in the Wilderness course. This will be a great growing experience for the students and me. So preparation of course requires lots of prayer. Prayer for the students that we've approached to be in the group and for the ones that just might ask to join. More importantly that the students that we do get to start will have the character to finish. Also for me, I'm currently writing all the course material and its quite a bit. It's an 11 week series almost set up like "Experiencing God." Please pray I get it done before January 10th and that the material is good.
Reflecting on the future loss of even more quality leaders in the Spring reinforces the urgency I must have preparing for this Spring. This Spring we are trying something new at Challenge. This coming semester we will be starting a new Community group (Journey in the Wilderness) focusing on developing potential future leaders.
The past 2 years since I've been at Challenge something that I've noticed and have been a little frustrated about is how much time we lose in the fall. We have future leaders go through an application and interview process but its fairly truncated. It doesn't give the students a chance to really figure out if they will be capable of committing to serving on our ministry team nor does it give the staff a lot of time to really assess these young leaders character and spiritual maturity. What I've been finding the past two years is that students get on the ministry team and are as soon as the semester starts are expected to begin serving. However something that's been difficult is that often times these young leaders aren't quite ready to begin leading on their own. They haven't received the training or discipleship necessary to really do what we expect of them well.
So this Spring the community group we are starting will be a semester long commitment to go through a Ministry team basic training. The students will learn what it means to become a person of character and how God requires His leaders to be people of great character. They'll be learning basic skills for bible study so they learn how to study the Word of God. They will learn how to develop basic spiritual disciplines. They'll discover their personality traits, leadership traits, and spiritual gifts.
I'm really excited to begin working with these students that will be in our Journey in the Wilderness course. This will be a great growing experience for the students and me. So preparation of course requires lots of prayer. Prayer for the students that we've approached to be in the group and for the ones that just might ask to join. More importantly that the students that we do get to start will have the character to finish. Also for me, I'm currently writing all the course material and its quite a bit. It's an 11 week series almost set up like "Experiencing God." Please pray I get it done before January 10th and that the material is good.
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