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.

Hey! Listen!

Tonight, I write. I don't know why. I only know that my heart literally tells me that I have to. I almost feel that I am struggling inside. Like there is a huge block of emotion or passion that is about to spill out of me. I honestly have no idea what that would look like or what that would be. And I don't want it to pour out as an eruption like a volcano, or the way I would spaz out on my brother, growing up. I want to focus it into something more. Something that I currently don't know I am capable of. Something I can only do because of God.


I think it all stems from the fact that I am always thinking to myself, "I want to change the world." I being me. Change being to make something, something that it isn't. The world being the place where you and me alike spend every minute of our lives. It's kind of a big deal. It's no task that should be taken lightly because if it were, the momentum would always stop short of change.

I think my passion today is to really start ministering to my youth. As most of you who are reading this know, I just got my first job as a Youth Director a few weeks ago. As of right, now my ministry has not sprouted. I work under Pastor Bill and he runs the confirmation program (Definitely one of the most swell confirmation programs that I have seen). But as of right now, that is all I am really doing, other than meeting youth and their respective parents.

I realize that is very early in my ministry job and that my ministry will take a long time before it really begins to sprout. But either way, that is why I feel like I am struggling. I want to do effective ministry so bad that it is eating me from the inside out. I want to implement some new programming, but in order to get that off the ground, I need to know my kids better and their needs. Because they come first.

And what is the point of trying to have engaging conversation with them if all they is to NOT talk about the letters of Paul and the concept of grace. They want to talk about stuff that is happening in their lives that week. They want share their own passions, and maybe even their own faults.

I dream of launching a new program on Super Bowl Sunday during halftime. Where we can literally just sit around and talk about what is going on in our own lives, and having. Maybe call it, "Shema" which is Hebrew for listen. Because if we want to minister the first thing that we always have to do is listen. I would want it to be a room open for speaking, and saying what you need to say, and others listening respectfully and then responding. I would want it to start off with minimal structure, because I don't know where it needs to go.


But I still sit here and wonder. Do I have time to waste another week? What would happen if I waited a week longer to start implementing this programming? Do the kids deserve to be forced to wait another week? If somebody, told me that only two kids are going to show up to this gig, I would still make it happen. Maybe those kids need it and needed last week, but it wasn't there.


I didn't have a destination in mind for this post. So if you made it this far, thanks, we made it together. Don't forget to come back for other thoughts from me and to see how these ideas unfold in the real world.

Changed.

I grew up in a small town in Minnesota, where not being open to new ideas was good idea. On a daily basis you would here kids being called names that I would never hear tossed around, now. You would see girls laughing at another for what she wore that day. And you'd even hear the crap continue through each class hour. It all just seemed ridiculous to me. I didn't get it.

But it was the small town factor that made it the way it is. It breeds itself a disaster. No new ideas come in. No old ideas go out. Kids have to tear apart other kids in order to have friends and feel good. They bring others down to lift themselves up. To be honest, I can't even blame them.

I can't blame the kids who called me a "fag" on a daily basis. I can't blame them for longing for acceptance somewhere and ended up turning to negative actions to get there. I longed for belonging there, too, and never really found it. (I don't want a pity party, I just want to be real with you.) It's not their fault they were raised in a town where this crap was acceptable.

I can't sit here and point fingers at them, though. In return, I wrote these kids off as "stupid hicks" who will never go anywhere. "Stupid hicks" who would never understand me. These kids weren't outward believers. I thought I was better than them. I thought I was living a superior life. I built myself up...

too.

I can't blame the kids who made high school hard, in fact I forgive them.

It's better than that. Lately, my Facebook has been gathering likes from people who I wouldn't expect likes from. I have posted statuses about faith, and received likes from the unlikely (see what I did there?) I have seen statuses about faith posted from who I thought to be the unfaithful. Best of all, I have been proven wrong.

They have...

gone somewhere.

They have...

understood.

They have...

changed.

And if they haven't. We need to give them time. We need to give them forgiveness. We need to give them love.

Tick. Tick. Tick...

So for Christmas this past year, my girlfriend bought me the Rob Bell books I didn't yet own. (Errr... four out of five of them.) I first heard of Rob Bell a few years back when I watched his NOOMA videos. I became a fan pretty quickly because he pushes his viewers/readers to think outside the box of Christianity. He offers new perspectives that are pushed aside by other authors and pastors. Currently, I am reading Velvet Elvis, Bell's first popular book.

Before we dive in, let me tell you a bit about where I am in life.

My name is Zach. I am a sophomore and a Youth and Family Ministry Major at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have known I wanted to work in ministry, since was a freshman in high school. I would often give mini-sermons on Wednesday nights at my church when I was in high school. That was how I was able to express myself and my religious beliefs. They would inspire me to think critically about life and religion intertwined. But I don't find myself doing that much on a regular basis anymore. I think critically for class purposes, but never for the sake of learning and sharing what I learned. That is why I have created this blog. So that you can listen to what I have to say, and chew on it. And then, spit something back at me.

Today, I would like to talk a little bit about knowing oneself and being happy with who you are.

Rob brings up this topic in the third section of Velvet Elvis, entitled, Tassels. Rob was filled with success and yet he seemed depressed. He had built one of the most successful churches in the history of church, yet he found himself locking himself in a closet so he could be alone before a service started. Rob was living a "Christian lifestyle" but yet he was failing to be happy. He was always helping others. Always trying to teach others about Jesus. Staying late to talk for a few extra minutes wherever he went, but this didn't fill him up. Rob was always trying to help others with their issues. Sit in the midst of their problems. This helped him cover up his own wounds.

I talk about this experience that Rob had, because it hits home for me. It is my story. It could be your story, too. I don't ever let myself get really worked up. I don't ever show my colors when I could be emotional. I take it and bottle it up, right next to my heart, where it sits and waits to explode.

Is this you?

Are you a time bomb waiting to explode, like I often am?

And when I do explode. I scare myself. I hate it when I do. I am trying to find a way so I don't do that anymore.

We are this way, because we don't want to face the true struggles that we have been through. We don't want to show others our weaknesses. We want to be fake. We want to be "happy." Bell talks about how he had issues that he never worked out from when he was thirteen. I have never really worked out my relationship with my own Dad, or even given it much of a shot. (It kills me to write this, where anyone could read it. But let me be honest, because if I am not, I am just bottling it up and keeping it inside for another time to explode.)

This past semester I struggled financially at school, and almost couldn't enroll for the spring. I owed an absurd amount of money, and I couldn't wrap my mind around how I would eventually take care of it (God worked it out.). But I hadn't told anyone. The school notified my grandpa and he called me. I blew up on him. He didn't deserve it. Later, I told my girlfriend about what was going on. And after that conversation. I really don't think I could have felt better.

When we talk about our problems, we pour out the bottles, creating less pressure, less stress that will eventually defuse. When we talk about our problems, we grow in relationship with those we love. When talk about our personal problems, we are able to learn something about ourselves.

We've got to know ourselves and what we can do and what we can handle. We've got to know our limits, and we've got to know when we need to talk. So today, I invite you to learn a bit about yourself. Think about something you struggle with. And share it with someone you love. After that's exactly what I am doing right now.