There’s something powerful when we ask someone to join us in leadership.
A few weeks back I had a student step up and serve in a way that almost no one noticed, but in the exact way I needed at the moment. It was unprompted and genuine–two of my favorite aspects of serving.
On the heels of that morning, I encouraged him to sign up for our worship team, and in return I got one of the best answers I’ve seen.
Our worship team (and leadership team) application was online this year. One of the questions read: “Why do you want to be on worship team? Put some thought into this.”
His response? “Because Wes asked me to.”
I’m still smiling. Here I was expecting a thoughtful response from anyone applying (I should know better, right?), and he tells it how it is. Simple. Understated. Truth.
I mentioned my struggle with this last week, but I regularly try to find the line between acknowledging what I see in a student and trying to coax out the potential I see in a student. A healthy conversation uses encouragement, an unhealthy conversation uses guilt.
One of those works in the long term. The other doesn’t.
This kid would likely never see himself as a leader. He would, especially at this point in his life, never acknowledge he has influence. But I saw something in him that morning, and encouraged him to pursue it. Now we are going to take steps together to help him grow.
A quick note: he unknowingly answered the first two questions of 3QL: what needs to be done and what can I do. Some kids get it. When they do, I want to continue to train them to build on what they do naturally, and then help them take the next step to ask the 3rd question: who can I get to help? That’s the power of the three questions. It gives a student a framework to follow to help them leverage their influence.
The same is true for us! The three questions help me leverage my influence to accomplish more. And I hope you would say the same thing!
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