'Popular' leaders, then, are those able to make everyone, including the poor, the vulnerable, the frail and the wounded, part of the forward march of youth. They do not shun or fear those young people who have experienced hurt or borne the weight of the cross. (Christ is Alive!, paragraph 231)
In the last blog, Pope
Francis: Let Them Lead WITH You, I wrote that Pope Francis’ call to
ministry leaders was to accompany young people as they lead. In this post, I
want to focus on his even more radical vision for young people—that they would
lead everywhere.
There was a common strategy that
was used to train me when I was learning to do youth ministry. It was believed
that if you got the most popular kid to be active in the ministry, he or she
would soon bring lots of other youth. It was purposeful, it was deliberate,
sometimes it was successful, but it was elitist.
It was also not scriptural. If Paul
and the Holy Spirit are to be consulted, “God has chosen the foolish things of
the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to
shame the things which are strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). Yet there I was trying
to woo the captain of whatever team was in season, believing this to be the
best strategy. It would take me a long time to realize that no one would have
made Peter captain of anything. Or that Jesus’ tactics would have been
criticized the minute he began with Matthew the tax collector.
In youth ministry the temptation is to
gradually build up young leaders until we can hand over new levels of
responsibility to them when they are ready. Pope Francis isn’t buying our
perfectly scripted plan. He’s concerned because when we construct those
processes, we are doing so with the intention of creating leaders who will
perpetuate us and our programs. And when we do that, we’ve effectively created
an exclusionary practice.
I believe the Holy Spirit is using
Pope Francis to call us further out of our posture of superiority. How many
times have I heard someone from the church or from Young Life complain because
a young person didn’t prioritize youth group, or Campaigners, or club—as if
their faithfulness to the gospel was measured on the scales of activity that we
created? God’s vision for them is bigger than this, and our participation in
His kingdom must be bigger as well.
The way I was initially trained had me
excluding some students as I went after the popular kid. And it led me toward a
rotten internal philosophy where I believed that by building a relationship
with the popular kid I could somehow make him “mine,” and he would be an
ambassador to draw kids to my (fill in the self-important event here). The Holy
Spirit has always been too wild for that kind of manipulation. I am thankful
that though it’s taken me a while to grasp it, Jesus has been patient with me.
How patient will young people be with us if we continue to try to fit them into tight windows where only a few will lead?
Where have young people shown incredible leadership outside of official church ministry?
How do I imagine growing the gifts of a young person outside of my structures for discipleship?
What gifts of leadership do we celebrate in young people?
Do we reserve congratulations only for a select few young leaders?
Excellent series of blog posts, really makes you think about which young people you are investing your time in and how you are creating space for many to become leaders.
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