The Church is One Generation from Being Out of Leaders.

I was selected (voted) to be on the Elder Selection Committee for the church I attend. So far it has been a very  powerful experience for me spiritually. I have been praying more, more deliberately studying leadership passages from the Bible. I’m thinking and seeing things on a different level from within the church.

As a committee we were voted on by the members of the congregation and we had our first formal meeting. Two of our existing elders joined us, giving us some much needed guidance, direction and prayer. After the elders left our meeting we discussed process over the next several months before the selection process would wrap up with our recommendations to the elders for their consideration.

Yet I was surprised at one major flaw in the process. There is a lack of a leadership development process of potential elders. There is no plan, no process, no mentoring, no equipping, no intentional leadership development of leaders who could be potential elders.

Now I’m a huge sports fan and there are many profesional leagues that have farm systems. Why doesn’t the church have a farm system of developing leaders for specific areas of ministry based on their spiritual gifts? Why?

So what does your church do or your youth ministry do to help develop people based on their identified spiritual gifts for the next generation to replace the current generation?

Toronto & GTA Youth Workers!

Start your fall ministry off in the right direction by focusing on you before you start pouring your life into your students all year!

come experience One.Day of encouragement and practical youth ministry training with your team while discovering the basic tools needed for you to have a strong ministry year.

Facilitated Topics:

• relational youth ministry. (not another program right!?!) 

• what relational youth ministry looks like in your context.

• uncovering the lost art of mentoring.

• discipleship: shaping students for God's mission.

When? Saturday, September 24, from 10am - 4pm

Where? Morningstar Christian Fellowship, 7601 Sheppard Avenue East (Sheppard/Morningside), Scarborough

How Much? $10

Google+ has intrigued me and I’m very curious what you think. I've seen a lot of Google+ action happening over the past few weeks and several people experimenting with it. I received my official invite from a friend last week and started my own experimentation this past weekend.

Many people (my wife included) were slow to the “Facebook world” because they didn’t want more guilt for not being able to respond to everyone. I settled on a “group” page (www.facebook.com/thinkyouthministry), but even that is getting confusing to me because I was recently able to get my actual name (www.facebook.com/jeffreysmyth) on Facebook and now all my friends have found me there. Argh!

So far, I like Google+. I like the ability to filter people into groups (i.e. family, friends, youth workers, my small group, etc…). It seems more manageable, but I’m not sure people will embrace it since 1/6 of the planet is on Facebook.

What do you think?