Aotearoa Diaries: Emerging Leaders

My most recent TV addiction has been The Voice Australia. If you don't know anything about The Voice, it's essentially kind of like American Idol, except with a twist in that celebrity coaches listen to singers in blind auditions (they sit in chairs with their backs toward the singers) and decide if they hear a voice they want to work with. I enjoy it because 1) there's a lot of good singers, and 2) for a change, these are coaches who offer encouragement rather than tear people down.

In one episode, Kylie Minogue, who is the homecoming star in this season, talked about how when she was an artiste starting out on her career, she didn't have anyone to hold her hand on the journey to offer guidance and encouragement. Now that she's back in Australia for the TV show, she wanted to be that support for a new artiste waiting to be discovered, and to walk that journey with her.

I guess I found myself resonating with her words because in a lot of ways, a chunk of my new season of ministry is doing just that. Yes, I am starting a ministry for university students. But as I have been working on narrowing down the focus of what this ministry will look like, I began to realise that my biggest passion is in helping students connect with, and stay connected to intentional faith communities. The thing about student ministries is that while we may hope to be a part of their lives forever (and letting go will be a big struggle for me, let's be honest), the reality is that for most, we only get them so intimately for a very limited time. But if we are able to help them connect with communities that really get into the stuff where life meets faith, hopefully it will become such a natural part of their lives that no matter where they head off to after uni, finding spiritual communities to be plugged in to will remain a priority.

Which presents the other reality: I have to find out where these intentional faith communities are, or if they even exist. What I began to realise is that while there aren't many in existence, there are several within local churches with a passion for starting healthy young adult ministries that integrates with, rather than exist as a separate entity from the rest of the congregation (important issue that we'll address on a different day) And so, how can we, as The Bridge, help them get started?

Which leads me to an exciting part of this journey: helping to identify emerging leaders within the young adult circles amongst Auckland churches who have that passion and desire to create an age-appropriate ministry for their peers. At the recent Emerge retreat sponsored by the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand, several of these leaders had approached me to discuss this issue when they found out about what I was doing. Just the other week, I had coffee with a few leaders from a church just outside the city to discuss these same issues (and some anonymous kind soul in the cafe even shouted us scones!). And I've met with several key leaders in student-led Christian organisations in one of the city campuses to talk about these same things.

I will admit that in many ways, I was envious of these younger leaders because they had people who identified their leadership abilities and have taken an interest in developing them from a much younger age. For me personally, by the time I had my first conversation with leadership development sage, Arthur Kelly, I was already past the target age of the "emerging leaders" demographic. I remember his words clearly: "I don't know why you weren't a part of this group, but you should have been." By then, I was already jaded by unhealthy ministry practices, and unsure of who to turn to help me process all that I had seen and felt when my picture-perfect image of church and ministry life completely shattered.

Thank God for Arthur Kelly, MaryAnn Hawkins and Paul Dreger who stepped in before I had the time to consider leaving the church or ministry life.

So while I am envious, I am also thankful for the opportunity to play a small role in walking the journey with some of these younger leaders. As my mother (who shudders at the thought of being in any kind of ministry leadership role) would say, "The church can only survive if there are young people in the church."

So yes, I may still be relatively young, but I am not going to be around forever, so it's always time to think of the future.

And no, I'm not kidding when I say I truly love what I do and the fantastic people I get to hang out with, and even more so that I get to call it my job.