rants of a beggar

I have been praying about moving forward with a Leadership Development process in my church recently.
I’m calling it “Roots” which is a campaign designed on bringing people from the fringe, into the core.

The heart of this campaign is to change the spiritual climate, by developing people that can model spiritual growth and foster that change in others.

In order to impact the “body” as a whole, change must be fostered through a core of people that model it. Change cannot be forced or manufactured by programs or processes.

It must simply take Root in the heart of men and spur on the heart of others…

Let me start by sharing cool stuff God has let me be apart of…

First off, I am a Youth Leader. I have been involved in my local Youth ministry for about 5 years. About as long as I’ve been in Rhode Island. It has been an awesome experience for me. God has given me a deep love for these teens. It blows my mind to see them mature into Men and Women of God… simply amazing.

I have had the honor of working with Ed (@epichette for twitter folks) who was recently put on staff to be our Youth Pastor… I have seen God grow the ministry in so many ways.. its unbelievable. But things in the Youth have not always been easy. Recently we have decided that the youth needed a change in how we were doing things.
We sensed a stirring of unrest, and a spirit of chaos underlying everything we were trying to accomplish during Youth night. We have since met this resistance with force. Making drastic changes to the way things operate. And crying out to God for His spirit to bring reverence and order to our Youth night.. .. and as always.. God is faithful..  the past 2 weeks have been a good turn around for our kids..

My heart for them has been, to identify and disciple key leaders in the group.
God has stirred my heart to raise up leaders. Especially in the youth, so that they may grow in ownership of the Ministry. Their are kids that lead weather they realize it or not.
If those leaders care, the people around them will follow and also care about what is going on. And the same leadership works in reverse when they choose not to care.

My biggest concern is that the problems we are dealing with in our youth, stem from the adults. Our youth can be used as  a spiritual barometer to measure where we as adults are at spiritually.