Empowering the now and the next generation to be leaders who make an impact, now and in the future.
Internship to leadership is not a program it is a journey and is about ensuring young people have the opportunity to grow into leaders who make an impact now and for the future generations. It’s about equipping and empowering young people with the skills and confidence to lead a ministry, work in a team and empower others. Internship To Leadership is what we have to grab hold of if we are ever thinking of where our ministry wants to be not just where we are now. It’s very easy to concentrate so much on where we are now and forget that God wants this ministry to be a legacy and for us to think forward into the future.
To begin an internship with City Youth the young people must go through our leadership school. Called City Youth Leadership School, and we run this once a year in the middle of the year school holidays. It is a three day school which is specifically designed for potential leaders. Young people who have the potential to be great leaders but don’t yet have the basic skills to do so. During City Youth Leadership School the young people are empowered to be great leaders through teaching from phenomenal speakers from all over South Australia from different churches and through small group participation. This is a great way to develop and equip the young people with the foundational leadership skills to begin the young people’s next step in becoming a great leader.
The topics that we cover are: The Call – through the use of biblical characters in the bible and the exploring of their call on their life the young people discover how they know they are called to leadership, why they are called to leadership, and if they are called to leadership.
The second topic is: Follow the Leader – through the use of principles in the bible the young people will discover how to follow a leader, how do they know they are following a good leader, and how important it is to follow a good leader. They learn respect, and honour and participation.
The third topic is: Leadership Principles – through biblical leadership principles the young people discover the basic leadership principles of being a good leader for example: you know you are a leader when you have people following you; otherwise you are not really a leader. This topic proves to really encourage them and gives them a little deeper meat to get their teeth into in regards to being a good leader.
The fourth topic is: Take one – Action – in this topic they start to discover, so now they have been told the basic leadership principles, how do I apply it to my life, and ministry to be a good leader. So the young people look at how to put these leadership principles into action.
The fifth topic is: Integrity/all eyes on you – in this topic we delve deep into the issue of leadership and integrity and how they must go together. We speak about how when you are a leader, everyone else is watching. So its important to make choices that will not give your followers a distorted picture of God focused leadership.
The sixth and final topic is: Team – we look at what is a team, how to be working as a team, how to be an individual in a team, how to work together to see a vision/dream realized.
This is the basic course that we run for the young people to take any kind of leadership role in the youth ministry. The reason for this is so that every person involved in leadership has had the basic training as a leader and therefore we have something to build upon. If they were just to begin an internship with out any kind of basic leadership skills we would spend all of the time teaching them about the basics of leadership and no time developing their leadership skills.
At the end of attending the leadership school, the young person decides whether they want to take their leadership foundation further because they feel that they want to start to get involved in a ministry within our youth ministry and grow as a person.
If they say that they do this is where they begin an Internship to leadership journey. The internship to leadership journey is a commitment from the young person for a year; to take a year in their life to really develop their relationship with God, and their leadership skills. It’s also a chance for them to discover what area of ministry they would like to be part of, or even what ministry they would like to begin. The Internship to Leadership Journey consists of three areas: mentoring, ministry team and review/positioning.
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Download: Internship to leadership… Journey by Neil Milton (pdf)
About the Author:
Neil Milton is the Youth Pastor for Adelaide West Uniting Church in South Australia and is also the Schools Outreach Coordinator. Neil’s passion is in the area of evangelism, preaching and empowering young people in leadership.
Before he began his relationship with Jesus Christ he had made some bad life choices, and had got mixed up with people who would steer him away from ever knowing Jesus. Now through the grace of God he has been given the blessing of impacting young people’s lives to make positive life choices, through connecting with them in schools and through being the Youth Pastor of City Youth (CY) the youth ministry for AWUC.
He believes in empowering young people at a young age and to help them to discover Jesus in a powerful way that will grow them and help them to run the race with passion.
Neil Milton believes “Internship to leadership Journey” will equip the young people in a way that will grow them and empower them to be the influence in their world and to see it transformed.
Email: youth@adelaidewest.uniting church.org.au
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