Running With Stallions

Every year for the past several years, I’ve been privileged enough to take a team of high school students to serve as LEAD Team alongside Generate Camps by YM360. This has become such a huge part of our discipleship strategy and student leadership development. In fact, I would say if you’re looking for a very practical, hands on leadership development opportunity for high school students, visit generatestudents.com and check out the LEAD Team option. While there, our students have the opportunity to lead their peers in times of recreation and services as well working hard behind the scenes in some really incredible ways for high school students to be able to do. It’s an incredible week and as hard as it is, our students love it!

We just returned from our LEAD Team trip this year and while there I had a conversation with an adult from another church that led me back to a conversation I had while at LEAD Team a couple years ago. We were able to bring not only some strong student leaders this year but some high-energy ones. In this conversation, this adult was bragging to me how well our team was doing and how much energy they brought to the environments they were in, especially the recreation time. I thanked her and without thinking I said,

“I’d rather tell them ‘woah’ than ‘giddy-up.’”

The significance of this statement is, it isn’t mine. This came out of that conversation I mentioned from a previous year’s LEAD Team. In 2021, we served at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO as this LEAD Team I keep mentioning. There was one particular group there attending camp that was a lot of energy. It was a larger group and they seemed to enjoy one another, enjoy recreation, and enjoy camp; a lot. They had these chants and games we’d find them doing all over campus. It was infectious in the best way possible. My team was all about the hype as well and loved joining in on the chants as they could. A couple of days into camp, I found myself having a conversation with that group’s student pastor asking if his group was always like this and how this looked for them back home. It was during this conversation he uttered the statement above.

“I’d rather tell them ‘woah’ than ‘giddy-up..’”

It stuck with me. Not only because of the catchy nature of this statement but because of the greater impact. What if we, as leaders, especially those that work with students could create cultures that encourage the “giddy-up” for those in our groups? I firmly believe in empowerment and most of my time in student ministry has been with this concept in full force. To look back over the years and see students lead out, not only in excitement and energy, but who they are and as they were created to be is one of the most amazing things for me.

Do you find yourself having to constantly encourage your teams to step up or step out or are they all go much of the time? What kind of culture do you have? I know me personally, I want to continue to strive to be more like the pastor I spoke with in Bolivar and for the most part, we’re able to do that.

Let’s giddy-up! Stay the course, you have what it takes!