Episode 47: Student Leadership as Discipleship (Doug Franklin)

Preparing students for leadership doesn’t mean we’re always putting them in front of the room. It simply means we’re challenging them to trust the Lord by serving him courageously with their gifts and passions. In this way, student leadership is an expression of student discipleship… but how do we get started? That’s the topic for today’s conversation with Doug Franklin from LeaderTreks. 

Discussion Questions:

• What is leadership, what isn’t leadership, and how does the gospel shape the way we approach that question? 
• Could you share a little from your own background about your own personal journey of leadership development? 
• How did you discover the power of leadership development in ministry to teenagers? 
• When we say that leadership development is an expression of discipleship, what does that mean? 
• As a youth pastor, I’ve had many starts-and-stops in launching student leadership teams. Most of them fizzled out after just a few meetings. What are some common struggles youth pastors face and how can we set our students up to really catch a vision for spiritual leadership? 
• If someone’s listening and they want to get started but don’t know what the first few steps would be, what would you recommend? 

Doug Franklin is the Founder and President of LeaderTreks Youth Ministry. Doug and his wife, Angie, live in the Chicago area and were instrumental in the months leading up to YPT's launch.

Resources mentioned:

• LeaderTreks Missions Trips
• Rethinking student leadership (free ebook)
• Deep Discipleship Curriculum
• Student Leaders Start Here
• I Am a Disciple: student devotional

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YPT has published an ebook that's a free download for subscribers. Youth Ministry is Theological Ministry collects ten articles from the YPT archives to help new readers catch the heartbeat of Youth Pastor Theologian is written by six different contributors from across America, Mexico, and the UK.