One of my greatest privileges as a youth pastor is on Sunday nights after the evening service.  Most youth pastors would trade their electric drum set for an organ if they got to be a part of this.  On Sunday nights for one hour after the evening service, I have the honor of sitting around a table with 12 of the guys in our student ministry to study leadership together.  Half of the guys are already called into full-time ministry to be senior pastors, youth pastors, missionaries, etc.  The other half are just incredible servant-leaders within our student ministry.  We have about 5 seniors involved and 2 others from each grade down from there.

I’ve been asked before how we developed this ministry that we call KTL.  By the way, KTL stands for “Keruxon Ton Logon” which means “preach the Word” in the Greek.  And to be honest, the only reason we ended up starting this ministry is because there was a need.  I’ve been here less than a year.  When I got here last November 2007, there were 3 guys in the student ministry who believed they were called be future pastors.  So the reason this student ministry exists for for 3 reasons (I believe).  First it exists because these young men have been faithful to the gospel of Christ in their lives.  Secondly, it exists because the parents of these young men have been faithful to Christ in the way that they raise them in Him.  Third, it exists becuase their former youth pastors were faithful to preaching and challenging the youth ministry to step up, to lead and to look to Jesus

I wanted to be faithful to what God was doing here, so I told them that I’d start meeting with them on Sunday nights.  As soon as we started the ministry, we have had other young MEN step up saying that they too are called to be pastors, missionaries, and future church leaders.  So last semester in the Spring of 2008, I taught 6 of our guys how to preach Christ from every text of Scripture.  In the month of May, 4 of them got to take a passage from 2 Samuel 17 (on David and Goliath) and preach it in view of Christ and not just on “how to defeat the giants in your life” – or some other cheesy veggie tale cartoon.  The guys did incredible.  You wouldn’t believe the power with which they preached, the clarity they used to teach, and the response of the other students!

Our desire is to keep the preaching class in the spring where the guys can have their own “student preaching month.”  But now we’re in the fall.  So we have extended our invitation to the guys you read above…those who are called into ministry and those who we see as leaders already in the way that they are serving, stepping up, maturing, etc.  I’m simply taking them through J. Oswald Sanders’s book “Spiritual Leadership.”  Its a good book on leadership, it covers so many different areas of leadership, but there are many times where we have to point the application more to Christ than to generalities.  We merely use the book as a springboard into Christ-centered discussions on teenage leadership within student ministry.  I hope this can be of help to you!