Need help identifying the skills needed for effective relational youth ministry?

Chip Borgstadt

Leaders are developed, not born. What a relief for those who are looking to develop effective youth ministries! Use the following checklists to identify the skills needed for effective relational youth ministry. Remember that leader development is a lifetime process. Everyone can grow in his or her skills.

Ten Relationship Skills
Relationships skills help people work together. They can be considered principles that show respect for all involved. Youth leaders model the skills long before they see them expresses in the lives of those they lead. Commitment and patience are hallmarks of effective leaders.

1.Introducing oneself to youth and youth to other youth.
Initiating relationships by sharing names and safe personal information.

2. Giving and accepting compliments. Showing mutual willingness to identify positive personal characteristics and accomplishments.

3. Giving and accepting negative feedback. Showing mutual willingness to help others identify and grow beyond limiting habits and responses to situations.

4. Disagreeing appropriately with another person. Affirming another while confidently explaining one’s own position.

5. Asking for another’s point of view. Encouraging another to express his or her ideas and opinions.

6. Saying No Assertively Being willing to express a definite answer and sticking to it. Doing so requires a clearly stated rationale to back up the decision.

7. Asking for help from another. Showing willingness to seek and accept assistance from another. One must know how to recognize the other’s competence and involve that person in the current situation.

8. Listening to others. Intentionally and actively listening another and using questions to encourage the person to keep talking. Confidentiality issues may be involved.

9. Discerning another’s moods. Intentionally attending to visual cues and language to determine another person’s emotional state. This involves respecting the person without responding to the emotion only.

10. Engaging in conversation with others. Starting, maintaining, and ending a conversation in which all persons are encouraged to share ideas, opinions, and experiences. This skill also involves building a sense of inclusion for newcomers to the conversation.

Fifteen Interpersonal/Leadership Skills
These skills foster relationships between people and help connect them to the group. Such skills recognize the importance of each person’s ideas, values, time, and relational styles. Leadership skills foster the cooperative development of community by calling upon the gifts and involvement of each person.

1. Dealing with youth embarrassment. Recognizing social interactions that embarrass youth and helping them shape behaviors that draw a desired form of attention. This may also involve helping youth reconnect to the group after and embarrassing situation.

2. Handling conflict in the group. Helping both sides listen to each other and find a solution acceptable to all.

3. Dealing with accusations Systematically listening to youth to identify all aspects of the situation. This involves fostering reconciliation between individuals and the group. It may require finding ways for restitution and restoration to occur.

4. Solving problems systematically. Developing and using a strategy for addressing problems in a variety of environments. Such a strategy includes identifying the situation and various approaches to solving it, examines the consequences of the approaches, and helps the individual or group select the best option based upon available information.

5. Dealing with boredom. Recognizing inattention and planning alternatives to keep others actively involved in learning.

6. Building consensus among people. Identifying common motivations and goals and helping others see how cooperative efforts will benefit all.
7. Developing and implementing plans. Assessing needs and resources and identifying a sequence of steps and alternatives to accomplish a stated goal.

8. Identifying group goals. Working with a group to identify priorities and possibility for community action. It involves getting input from all members of the group whenever possible.

9. Delegating. Empowering others through increasing levels of responsibility.

10. Assessing and evaluating group growth. Determining indicators of group growth and measuring the extent of progress.

11. Gathering information. Using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observation, and suggestions to increase awareness of group needs and priorities. The process may also apply to an individual’s identification with the faith community.

12. Following another in leadership. Modeling attentive behaviors, accepting delegated responsibility, and giving verbal recognition of the other person in the leadership role. This skill involves displaying a willing attitude through cooperative behaviors and statements.

13. Planning and leading a meeting. Setting goals for the meeting, developing agendas, identifying issues for discussion, involving all present, gathering input, moving the group to a decision, recognizing others’ contributions. It may also include post-meeting evaluation.

14. Identifying and developing youth talents. Intentionally looking for talents and finding ways for youth to use them in community-related settings.

15. Setting appropriate boundaries. Determining the appropriate level of information that can be shared in different situations. This also involves recognizing when a youth is sharing personal information too quickly.

Developing Leader Skills

• Pick a skill each week and discuss it with your leadership team. Identify situations in which the skill would be beneficial and some specific ways it might be expressed. Focus on the skill during the week, identifying how it has been helpful in working with youth.

• Form pairs within the leadership team, and list five to seven skills to watch for over the next few weeks. Each person “catches” his or her partner using the skill and writes a few notes about when it happened, how the youth was helped, and how the ministry grew because of the experience. Over the course of several weeks, try to observe all the listed skills.

• After six months, have the whole leadership team review the skills from those two checklists. Add to the list any other skills needed on your team. Focus on those skills as you observe and evaluate youth ministry functions.

• Consider working with youth to develop these leadership skills. They will find them beneficial in school and work situations as well as within effective youth ministry contexts. Don’t attempt to teach these skills in a classroom-like setting to a large group of young people. Select a small group of leaders, and work with them in a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Watch for and recognize the youth’s use of these skills systematically. The youth can thus monitor their growth in leadership.

Note that identifying the various skills and designing ways to use and teach them involve direct experience, not just intellectual consideration. We all learn and retain more when we are involved in the learning and can put it to use in our lives.

Brought to you by your youth ministry colleagues at Cokesbury.

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