My Five Strengths for Leadership

The other week my ministry practices class was required to take a strengthsfinder. It was packaged in a book by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie called Strengths Based Leadership. As you will see with my following reflection on the strengthsfinder, I have this to be very useful and insightful. So let me share with you the reflection essay for my ministry practices class.

So since I now know my strengths, or have at least specifically identified them, I am able to line them up with my vocation of youth ministry. According to the gift assessment from the other week my gifts are: Ideation, Activator, Empathy, Strategic, and Includer.

I think my favorite strength that was identified is my gift of Ideation. It is the gift of thinking out side of the box, creating new and crazy ideas to get a job done. I think it would be safe to say that a friend,Kent would also have this gift. Right now, I would say I am currently using Ideation to start to brainstorm a curriculum to be used with a certain video game franchise, finding God and gospel within the fantasy world. Ideation can be more than this, though. I could use it to recreate the fall “all-nighter” at All Saints. It helps me ask the questions, “Why do we do it like this? What if we did it like this?”

Right here is where my next gift comes in. It is the gift known as Strategic. Strategic empowers me to run through possible ways of problem solving. Strategic helps me answer the question, “What if we did it like this?” I am capable of seeing the outcomes of different approaches to see which will be the most successful. To apply this to youth ministry I would be able to know which kids might be able to see the something more behind a game of pick-up basketball. I might able to visualize and see if a blueprint of the new layout of the youth room will actually work and if it will encourage successful ministry. I might be able to see how someone’s actions could affect a friend later on. The possibilities are endless. It makes me feel like a psychic (hehe).

My next gift of Activator surprises me in some ways, but not at all in others. It says that when I get an idea, I pounce on it. But I had an idea to paint the youth room and I was really digging it, but it sure isn’t anywhere near happening yet. I have a few female youth who are excited to do it. I need to get on that. I am a procrastinator. I let things wait. But on the flip-side, I am spontaneous, and I see how this applies. If a great opportunity arises, I can easily make room for it in schedule and do it. I often just go with the flow of life, taking one thing at a time. Sometimes that one thing that needs to get to me, doesn’t reach me.  But I can easily use my gifts better. I need to find the date when those girls can come paint and I need to get the paint and have a good time. It’s not hard. I sat down the other day and hammered out some dates for other upcoming events. It was a piece of cake, this is something I need to improve on.

Empathy is my next strength. It is the most common for our class too. And for good reason. It enables us to picture ourselves in others’ shoes. It helps us feel with them. It enables us to develop meaningful relationships where we truly value the other person. It’s so obvious why this great in youth ministry and why our class seems to do it well. We love loving other people. We love hearing their stories and why they feel the way they feel. We are people people.

My last gift is Includer, which means that I have a tendency to like all people no matter who they are or what they believe. It means I like to talk to the people who may not voice their thoughts. It means I like to try to present the opportunity to be a part of a group to those who aren’t in the group. It means I enjoy having meaningful conversation where I can learn a new idea, and that i can build on that idea when I stumble across other evidence. It has a lot of little different perks that stem from wanting to hear lots of thoughts on the matter. I think this trait is more apparent in my life when I am a leader and not one with an opinion. (I tend to stick my idea think it is the most right.) This is very useful in small group discussions making sure that everyone states what they think and it doesn’t allow for one person to rule over this conversation. A lot of the times I wish more people would have this strength.

So those are my top five strengths. I am very happy to know them with a precise label. I think I have learned a lot from this strengthsfinder, and I am excited to put them into action (there is my Activator gift again) especially the painting of the youth room. 

 I would really like to encourage you, my reader, to go out and purchase this book, take the online assessment and see what your gifts are. There are over 30 possible gifts all given with great detailed explanations. You never know what you might learn about yourself.

Maybe we've been looking at it wrong.

So the word "bullying" seems to be everywhere lately. You read about it online: in the news and Facebook. You hear about it in school. And it's even coming to a theater near you.

And I am sick of the bullying. I think we all are. We hate to see our friends and siblings and kids (as in my youth) hurt. We hate it when they are shot 'the look' from across the room. We rage when they come home crying on the school bus. We hate it when we get a school-wide email informing us of an incident of someone being bullied.

I know you've heard. But I got to say something about do. Do something about it. So I am writing here today. I grew up getting bullied. I don't want pity, but I need to share it so this blog can make a difference. I was called a "fag" on a regular basis (I still don't know why, I was one of those kids with a steady girlfriend). I was probably called that because I dressed different and didn't care what others thought of me. I would often receive that dominant non-budging should contact in the halls.

It just made me sad, it brought me down one level of awesome whenever it happened.

I can't say I have never been the bully. I know I have put people into boxes and not given them chances because I perceived them as goofs.

A few weeks ago a friend shed a new light on a situation.

He said he was at a spoken word competition and a lady there shed a light how we should treat others.

Every person has a story. There is a story for why we are the way we are. Our stories are not comprised of our choices only, but they are affected by how others treat us.

As human beings we need to look into someone and think.

We need to stop. And not judge.

Maybe that person isn't social because they were bullied in middle school. Maybe they were bullied in middles school because they happened to be the tallest person in the grade.

Maybe the person wears all black because it is the only way they can get the attention which they crave because they are neglected at home.


Maybe they always wear headphones because it was the only way to ignore people making fun of some physical feature that they have to carry everyday.

I think this is a really old concept probably one that I have brushed off before, but I think it used to be looked at as "We need to understand people for who they are." Which makes just as much sense as what I am saying, "We need to understand why people are the way they are," because once we know this we know "who they are"; we know their story.

I am not saying you have to like everyone you meet, and if you don't want to love everyone you meet, I am not going to make you.

I plead and beg you to stop putting people in boxes for the way they have become, and get to know them and get to know their story.

*Sidenote, there is a movie called Bully coming out on March 30th. It currently has an R rating and there is a petition to get it changed to a PG-13 so youth can see the movie that pertains directly to them (Ellen is on board with this campaign). There is more information and a link to the petition here.

My Faith Story. (Written for class, Youth Ministry Practices.)

    Boom. There I was, at camp. It was Friday, and it had been a great week. I had slowly developed and become a leader amongst the group that week.
    I was going to be a sophomore in high school that fall and I had been going to camp every year since the fourth grade. I loved it. I had grown up in a little Lutheran church outside of Cannon Falls. They sent campers every year to camp, Good Earth Village. When I was young my dad made me go to church, but by the time I was in high school, I felt like I made my dad go to church. It was great; it was somewhere where I could belong. I guess I have always believed in God. When I was a little six year old, my evangelical cousins had me "accept Jesus into my heart," but I am pretty sure he was already there.
    My pastor came up to me that Friday lunch, and asked me a question. It wasn't too complicated of a question, and I didn't have to give a complicated of an answer. But at the same time, it was a defining question. It was a question, that if answered correctly, my life would spin into a whole new direction that I never would have expected it to be. My pastor asked me, "Zach, I have seen your leadership this past week, would you like to come back on Sunday and attend the Youth Servant Leadership Institute?" I answered, "You mean this Sunday? Sure." And that was it. That was the question that changed my life.
    That week I told myself that I wanted to do ministry; I thought I wanted to be a pastor. I had known before that, that I wanted to be a camp counselor. But now I knew ministry is what I wanted to do it with the rest of my life. That week we explored who we were individually, what gifts we had been given, we served and built the walls for a Habitat House, grew and learned as a team of growing youth, who eventually became family. I think back on it now, and see that it was the affinity of the group really pulled me in. It was the caring and relational ministry that my pastor and the camp provided for us, and helped me develop vocationally before I even knew what the word "vocation" meant. This week instilled something bigger in me, something I did not understand at the time.
    Through this program, I met people that I never would have met. These people introduced me to the program known as Teens Encounter Christ (TEC). For me, TEC showed that God loved me more than anything. At every one of the eight TECs I worked, you could feel His energy and presence within the room. The most specific time was the last time I sahred my faith story (it was quite different then). He was there, in the tears and hugs that followed my talk, and I mean this in the most humble way possible; people told me that they now believed in God because of my story. Truly His spirit was alive and working in that room the day I gave my talk.
    Through TEC I have been exposed to people who don't share the same Christian beliefs that hold to be true. I have engaged in many conversations that have challenged me to find what I believe and validfy them.
    But God has been in more places than just these. My friends and I once illegally climbed an abandoned grain elevator near the U of M. We climbed and climed, up old, rickety steel staircases, internal and external of the building. We got to the top floor, and look out a window at the sun over the Minneapolis skyline. It was gorgeous, but it got even better. We looked up inside of one of the conveyor belt machines, and saw a light coming through from the roof. Within seconds I was climbing the belt, and I poked my head through the whole.
    Boom. Life, light and wind hit me. I was on top of the world. I climbed up and sat on the roof (my friends followed). A high hit me like nothing before. My arms were covered in goosebumps; a tear came to my eye. The city of Minneapolis shined like a beacon. The wind soared through my hair, as I sat and stared. God was there, sitting on top of this abandoned grain elevator, right next to me. It was better and more awe inspiring than what Mufasa showed Simba in the Lion King. It gets better. I got to spend the moments with two of my best friends. We talked about life, and how we had changed throughout the year of knowing each other.
    The most spiritual night of recent times was the night that my favorite metal band, August Burns Red, came to town. It was the most crowded room I have ever been in. I am sure I was touching seven other people at all times. But it was the crowdedness that made me feel like I belonged. It was the crowdedness that showed the Holy Spirit to me. The lyric, "We sing for you." Is the most memorable moment of that night. 700 people screaming at the top of their lungs, "We sing for you." We sing for God. The roar of the Chirstians when the lead singer mentioned that they do this for Jesus is something that I will never forget.
    God continues to show up more and more in my life now that my eyes are searching for him. He freezes Minnehaha falls, and stays within them. He was my friend, Dan, who showed up to say hey and be with me on the worst night of recent memory. He resides within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and he shines his light through every person on this planet.
    I interviewed for a part time youth minister position last October. I felt it went extremely well. Then I never really heard back from the guy who interviewed me. I tried to contact him to check up on the status of the position, but he didn't respond. Well, until a month and a half later. He invited me in to hang out at confirmation, so I did, and that went well, too.  But then I didn't hear from him again, well, for four weeks.
    One evening while I was on break, I got an email. It was from the pastor I interviewed with. He informed me that he would like me to work for All Saints Lutheran Church as a part time youth minister. It was real. It was actually happening. I was officially a youth minister. And I still am. And I really hope I never have to stop being one. God didn't just give me this though. He taught me many lessons. Seven months ago, I was seriously doubting if this is what God wanted me to do. God made me wait months on end for this job to become mine.
    And so here I am wearing many hats: college kid, metalhead. student, camp counselor, sinner, youth minster, saint. But I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for my creator, lord and savior, Jesus Christ.