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As Christians, we are responsible to God to develop ourselves as leaders to be most useful in the Kingdom. We are also responsible for handing off the reigns of leadership to those on the path behind us. In light of this, student leadership development is not only a good idea, it is essential for building God's Kingdom. 

The heart of youth ministry is to help students grow in their relationship with Christ. We do activities and events to help students grow closer to Christ. It can be easy to lose sight of our goal by focusing on entertaining and getting students to come to youth groups.
                         
5 PURPOSES OF YOUTH MINISTRY 

Youth groups exist to establish meaningful relationships between mature adult believers and students to help the students grow in their relationship with the Lord. Students want to learn from people who care about them; they want to be discovered and known. When youth ministries create opportunities for students to enter meaningful relationships with adult believers, they lay a foundation for evangelism and discipleship.

PURPOSE #2 – PROGRAMMING

Youth ministry programs should focus on the three things that youth ministry does: Reach lost students, help students GROW closer to Jesus, and send students to GO and use their gifts. I call this Reach, Grow, and Go intentional programming. Every event and experience in a youth ministry should have one of these focuses. By keeping events focused on these elements, the youth ministry will do an excellent job walking the fine line between attracting and disciplining students.

PURPOSE #3 – DISCIPLESHIP

Most youth workers would agree that youth ministries exist for discipleship. At LeaderTreks, we define discipleship as multiplication through relationships. Through relationships, we make disciples who, in turn, build relationships and make more disciples. Youth ministries that focus on and prioritize discipleship help students walk
in obedience to the commands of Christ through a Christ-centered relationship with a mature believer. Rather than settling for shallow faith, they prepare students to commit to faith in Christ, feed themselves spiritually, and consistently live out their faith at church and in the world. In a healthy youth ministry, transformation is valued over attendance numbers. And there are always more adult volunteers focused on building Christ-centered relationships with students for discipleship than adult volunteers helping with logistics.

While much of your time as a youth pastor will be spent with students, you are probably aware that they only make up one-third of your ministry. You also have to focus your attention on adult volunteers and parents. Without the involvement of these critical adults, the odds of you having a lasting impact on your students go way down. Partnering with parents is one of the most successful routes to make disciples. By design, parents are meant to be the chief disciple-maker of their kids (Deut. 6:4–7, Prov. 22:6). Even if you have a student attend everything your youth ministry offers, what does that time add up to? Four, maybe five hours a week? That is a fraction of the time they spend with their parents every week. Most parents want to discipline their kids but struggle to know how or where to begin. They need a partner. They need you.

PURPOSE #5 – STUDENT LEADERSHIP

Youth Ministries can't just have programs for students. They need programs that allow students to have a ministry to their world. When students see themselves as participants, they choose what they like at church. But when students see themselves as leaders, they will invest in the church's ministry and become lifelong owners of the church. As Christians, we are responsible to God to develop ourselves as leaders to be most useful in the Kingdom. We are also responsible for handing off the reigns of leadership to those on the path behind us. In light of this, student leadership development is not only a good idea, it is essential for building God's Kingdom.