Video Transcript: The Transformational Youth Leader

In this section, we're going to be talking about leadership and the leader. What  does it mean to be a transformational leader? I've had some experiences that  have helped me grapple with this. Early on, I was part of a parachurch ministry,  and there was a gal on staff that worked with youth at risk and actually coming  out of incarceration. And there is this one gal that she worked with that she was  especially close to, and it spent a great deal of time, I think, over a year, with this person, and she saw what she thought was dramatic change, and talked about  her, introduced her to friends, actually, at a major event, she was brought on  stage and gave her testimony. And it was a very, a very satisfying, very, very  encouraging thing for this staff person. But then something happened, and she  she went back into the old lifestyle, and I remember how much that crushed this  staff person, and it just made me wonder, you know, what are we doing to real?  Is there anything more that we can do? We know that God is the one who is at  work. But is there something that we are doing or not doing that is hindering  real, real change? Also, when I got started in ministry, it was John Perkins that  asked the question that became a defining quest for my life. He asked the  question, how, how do we build incentive in our youth? And by that he meant,  how do we create change? What do we do to help create change from within, to  motivate youth toward toward a better life and toward God? Another experience  was I've been involved in youth ministry for a long time, and early on, I would go  to this I was a part of a national movement called the Christian Community  Development Association, and I would part of it was attending forums, youth  forums, and I would sit in and listen to other youth leaders talk about some of  the challenges that they were facing and they came from diff some of them work with youth groups, some with churches. Some were from schools, some were  tied to larger organizations, say, like a rescue mission or something like that, but they all shared the challenges of working with youth in trouble. Well, because of  my years, 20 years later, I've gone to that same forum, different faces, but  discovered the same problems, that somehow what we were doing was not  making a significant impact on the young people that we were we were serving.  I mean, on another note, I I've been involved as a trustee for a seminary, and we had a guest speaker come in and talk to the student body, but also talk to the  board, and she also was tied to a school, and one of the things she shared was  that she felt that the thing that professors feared most was the fear of  irrelevance, that somehow what what they were doing, would that really be  making a difference? Or will they begin to be seen because they were seminary  professors? Would they begin to be viewed as irrelevant to the to the work that  God is doing, and what is needed for the work. And so all of these things caused me to realize that we had a we had a challenge before us, a friend of mine  involved. In has been involved in World Mission for years. Said that great strides in the world, in the World Mission movement can be observed. Yet a paradox  seems evident. While there are more Christians in the world each day, more 

Bible translations, more unreached people groups hearing or reading the  Gospel, and more and better resources for conducting mission. Churches are  losing their influence and impact on in their communities. The urban world  seems to be on a downward spiral. In the wake of recent confrontations  between black youth and police authorities, tensions have reached the fever  pitch aspersion, casting aside one glaring truth remains, urban youth are in  trouble, and so this need for leadership, leadership that transforms, is important, and that's something we need to remember and understand about  transformation. And Paul said this, you yourselves are our letter written on our  hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ.  The result of our ministry. God is at work, but he also works through us. God is  engaged in transforming people's lives, but he also does the he does that  through his people, which makes the young people that we impact. Our letters, if you want proof that we are who we are, and that God validates who we are,  what we do. You look at the letters that have been written as a result of our  ministry, and then Jesus said this very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me  will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than  these, because I go to the Father. And then there's this familiar passage with  Isaiah, where he comes to a point where he sees God and he hears God say,  Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And Isaiah replies, Here am I send me.  God is a missional God. God is a sending God. He is the one who does the  transforming of people's lives, but he works through His people. Here's another  one. We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power  is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not  crushed. So that is our that is our experience. Ministry is hard, and yet God  continues to work. And another passage from Hebrews 12. Since we're  surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every  encumbrance, the sin that so easily entangles. Let us run with endurance, the  race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus. And so this is who we are. We  are the conduits through which God brings about transformation. He brings  young people to the point of saying yes to Jesus, and he does that working  through us. So the question we need to ask, and we really do need to ask. It is  what is our role? I mean, God does transform us, and we experience that  transformation continually, continually. The Scriptures tell us that that that is our,  our, our journey through this, this process of the enrichment of our salvation,  that's wonderful, but God transforms others, and he uses us in the  transformation of others, and so therefore, what is Our role? Jesus said, When  we pray, we should pray Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is  in heaven. Realize that when we pray that we are not just asking God to make  that which is up there, that is his reign, his control, his dominion. We're asked.  We're asking him to make that come down here and we participate in that we  are committing ourselves to active participation and effort toward that end, when

I first started in youth ministry, going into a. A new community, and I recognized  that I was working with some tough kids, and there was a little bit of fear, but  there was also something that I knew. I knew that in working with kids in the  neighborhood I had, I had an edge on them. There's something I knew that they  did not know. And what I knew was that God was either in them or he was on  them. He was either in them because they had accepted Christ, or he was on  them, working on them, working through circumstance. God. God desires that  none perish, but that all come to repentance. So God is constantly at work. I  knew that, and that was my edge. Didn't matter. Didn't matter if I, if I didn't relate  to them in any other way except my skin color. I knew there are things I knew  about them that gave me the edge and that knowledge leads to courageous  action. So what does it mean to be a transformational leader? I believe that  there are four areas that when we pursue them properly, they will contribute to  us being transformational in how we do our youth ministry. And that's what we're going to go through. Go through in this course, we're going to look at four areas  that are significant in terms of our ability to be transformational, to experience  transformation and to be transformational in our work with others. The first is  discipleship. How do we understand discipleship? What is it there is some  confusion there, and we wanted, we want to address that. The second one is,  servanthood. Is that just a nice idea? What did Jesus mean? Did he just mean  that we need to serve, serve people at different times? Is that something we do  once in a while, or a component of our lives. Is he saying more about that? And  then there's the divine imprint. Again. What does that mean? How significant is  that in our work with young people to recognize being created in the image of  God, and what that means to the youth, and also what it means to us terms of  how we serve. And then last is leadership. We're going to be looking at  transformational leadership, and we're going to be looking at heroic leadership  as well. So that's what's in store for us in in this, in this course, and we'll just,  we'll just dive right in