SL Makes a Difference
Servant Leadership Trips Make a Difference
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to be a part of a Servant Leadership experience in Chicago. It was an incredible experience and I sit back and reflect what made SL such a powerful time. After numerous trips domestically and internationally over my close to twenty years of youth ministry, SL has several components that make it strong and impacting.
- It provides a service environment intertwined with a strong teaching environment. Students serve during the day and are taught by strong communicators in the evening. Often conferences have strong teaching and a missions trip has strong service, but rarely do you see the two offered together.
- There is something powerful about students being together for worship and service. I have taken missions trip with just my ministry because of the community it builds within the group and because I can help structure what happens. On the other hand, I have seen multiple groups come together and do something great together that you couldn’t do with just one ministry. SL offers the best of both words. I found that SL offers a lot of individual group processing so you can build that community as an individual group as well as the bigness of numerous groups coming together to make an impact in a city.
- The strong corporate worship. SL has an energy with multiple groups that would be hard to attain with just one ministry. It is also a teaching experience for some students who need to see their peers really focus on worshiping God.
- Not having to plan everything and just focus on your students if freeing. Having planned and run numerous missions trips, having someone else just tell you where to go and not having to sweat the logistical details is a stress reliever and lets the leader focus on the important things: relational time with students.
As a long time student ministry veteran and one who now works with numerous student ministries all over the country, SL is a powerful tool to help students live out their faith by living differently, loving recklessly, leading courageously and dreaming wildly.
